How to help your favorite author, part 2

Last time I told you about a couple ways to support your favorite author. Buying books or reading them in Kindle Unlimited are great ways to get more visibility for a book. The increased sales and page reads give a book more visibility in Amazon’s system.

Reviews

Another way to help your favorite author is to review books. Reviews provide “social proof” — they tell potential readers that other people liked this book. (Or didn't, but we’re going to pretend all the books you read are good.)

Amazon has a five star system. One thing a lot of readers don’t know is three stars is not considered a good rating by Amazon. So if you like a book—even a little, giving four or five stars will help the author. Giving one, two or three stars can really damage a book’s chances.

A lot of folks don’t want to do reviews because they don’t know what to write. I’ll give you some ideas here, but you don’t have to write anything. Just the stars are super helpful.

No Spoilers, please!

If you want to write a review, here are some things to write about:

• Your favorite character–and why you loved them
• The best setting
• What spoke to you emotionally about the story
• What makes you want to read another book by this author
• The tone of the book: light-hearted, suspenseful, fast-paced…

Try not to include any spoilers—potential readers might not buy if you give away the secret twist, or tell the ending.

Who can review

Amazon won’t let you review unless you’ve purchased at least $50 of product from them. This includes anything you buy on Amazon, so you can rate books you haven’t bought. However, if you have bought the book, your review will be listed as a “verified purchaser.” Readers often give more weight to verified buyers.

Strangely enough, Kindle Unlimited readers are not tagged as “verified purchasers.” That's something a lot of authors are lobbying Amazon to change. They know what books you've checked out–why wouldn't they credit you with having read it?

ARCs

No, not Noah's Ark. If you enjoy reviewing books, you can become an ARC reader. ARC (Advanced Reader Copies) are copies of the book an author gives you for free in hopes you’ll review it. If you get an ARC copy, you should include the words “I received an ARC of this book” but don’t say “in exchange for.” That sounds like the author traded the book for a good review, which is against Amazon’s rules.

Another thing that’s against the rules is reviewing a book when you have a personal relationship with the author. So you can’t write reviews for friends or family. Sometimes they’ll even delete reviews if you are Facebook friends with an author!

If you’re interested in being an ARC reader for me, shoot me an email at info@juliahuni.com. I should have a book ready by the end of November!