Q&A: Are book reviews by Amazon Top Reviewers more important?

QUESTION: What sort of book reviews are the most influential to Amazon customers? It seems to me that reviews from so-called Amazon Top Reviewers might be taken more seriously. Otherwise I'm not sure the reviews mean very much, when readers and reviewers with no particular qualifications weigh in on your book.

ANSWER: How much impact an Amazon review has depends mostly on the credibility and helpfulness of the reviewer. It all boils down to this: Does the review help Amazon shoppers decide whether they're likely to be satisfied with the book?

None of this depends on whether the reviewer is designated as a "Top Reviewer." However, I'd add this: Amazon gives added weight to reviews by Top Reviewers when its system calculates which review(s) are assigned to Spotlight positions (Spotlight Reviews are the one or two reviews that appear above all other reviews, sometimes permanently.) So reviews by Amazon Top Reviewers tend to have more impact simply because they're much more visible.

If an author gets a helpful review from a Top Reviewer -- and Amazon gives that review a Spotlight position -- that review can do more for your sales than a rave review in Publishers Weekly or a writeup by any other "professional" critic. After all, that Spotlight Review can
be read by hundreds of book buyers daily -- for the next decade or more -- while those "professional" reviews will be lining bird cages tomorrow.

I'm not saying that Amazon's system for assigning Spotlight Reviews is infallible, or that the best reviews will definitely be spotlighted. I'm saying that reviews by Top Reviewers are given the most weight in the selection process.

This is a double-edged sword, of course. Sometimes a Top Reviewer will pan a book, give it one or two stars out of five, and that review gets the Spotlight. Obviously, this doesn't help sales -- word of mouth doesn't help your book if it's *bad* word of mouth.

For more detail on this, see the section of my book on "amateur" online book reviews.