Why Amazon book reviews are important

Reviews are vitally important as they provide a view of a book, other than the author's. Every book has 'blurb' on the back cover, which tries to draw the potential reader in, and encourage a purchase. A good review, however, is far more powerful, and will greatly assist in selling the book. Equally, bad reviews can have the opposite affect - and bad reviews are what most authors fear. However, so long as the good reviews outweigh the bad ones, there isn't a serious problem. Take this product:

The marketing campaign revolves around the fact that it divides opinion. People either love it, or hate it - and I'm talking about the product, not the marketing campaign. Personally I don't like the flavour of Marmite, but that doesn't make it a bad product - it's just down to personal taste (no pun intended). Marmite is probably the most famous product for splitting opinion, and the manufacturer plays on that point. 

The same can be said about books. Let's take one as an example - The Da Vinci Code. At the time of writing this post it had 4,276 reviews on Amazon.com. 18% of those were one star. Yet it is a book which has sold in its millions. Even with so many negative reviews, Dan Brown's next book, The Lost Symbol, was a big success in terms of sales, and looking at the reviews on Amazon, had as many bad as good reviews. Many of the negative reviews were perhaps as a result of all the pre-launch hype (there was a six year gap between the two books, and The Da Vinci Code had created a certain expectation for what was to follow), but that said, there were equally as many good reviews. Later this year Dan Brown's latest novel, Inferno, will be released. It too, I predict, will receive mixed reviews, because like everything in life, it will divide opinion and taste. But I also predict it will sell in large volumes, as Brown has now created a solid fan base, and most of that will have been achieved via reviews and recommendations in the past. As authors we need to accept we will get negative reviews (see my post about how to handle bad reviews) and realise not everyone will enjoy our work. The alternative is that nobody reviews our books, and the good reviews are not written, which in turn means there's no one to help light the all important sales fuse.

To end this post on a light note, here is possibly the best (and shortest) book review of all time from Ambrose Bierce (b 1842 d 1913) - "The covers of this book are too far apart."

Handling bad Amazon book reviews

If you haven’t already had one, you can rest assured at some point soon you’ll get one. What am I talking about? That one star Amazon review where the reviewer has gleefully ripped your novel apart in public. Most reasonable people who don’t enjoy a novel will either choose not to provide a review, or if they do, will attempt to be as constructive as possible. However, as in all areas of the Internet world, trolls lurk around every possible corner, ready to pounce. If you only have five and four star reviews they’ll be eager to drag your average down. They’ll love saying things such as - ‘If I cud give no stars, or even better, minus stars, then this pile of rubbish would of got em. My advise is dont read it !!!’  Yes, so often they are littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

So how do you handle a negative review of this sort? My personal opinion is to completely ignore it. Don’t in any circumstances try to challenge what has been written by entering into a war of words. I have one character in my current novel who has a personality disorder. One reviewer commented that no one would behave in the way my character did in the novel. Part of me was tempted to say something, but I resisted the urge. What the reviewer didn’t know is that I sought advice from my wife about personality disorders, when developing the character . . . as she is a consultant clinical psychologist, and is well versed in dealing with people who have such disorders. So often a reviewer will make a comment, not knowing what they don’t know. All of which leads me on to perhaps the most irritating comment reviewers so often make - ‘It was too far-fetched’. Fellow author Jill Edmondson invited me to write about this very subject on her blog, so I won’t repeat verbatim here what I said, but suffice to say, people who think in black and white will very often not understand creative concepts, ideas or anything out of the ordinary. They’ll not see one shade of grey, let alone fifty, and will often write a review in total ignorance.

One other good way to make yourself feel better about the review is to look at other products on Amazon. Search for something you've purchased, and are delighted with. There is a very high chance that someone will have a totally different opinion. Just consider the music you like, and others don't, and vice versa. Opinion is totally subjective.

Finally, just remember you are one of a select few . . . a person who has actually written a book, and published it. Many people have the desire to write a book. Very few start one, and even fewer finish one, let alone publish it. It is very easy to criticise another person’s efforts, but it’s a lot harder, as all authors will testify, to provide other people with the opportunity to read something in the first instance. If the vast majority enjoy your work, then feel satisfied you’ve done a good job. Satisfying everyone is an impossible task.

Here is a clue about tomorrow's post.  

Marketing Tips for Authors - The 4Ps Part One

Pick up almost any text book on marketing and somewhere within it you’ll find the ‘4Ps of Marketing’ (The Marketing Mix). Some ‘gurus’ have, since the inception of the 4Ps, added a few more Ps to the tally, but for the sake of simplicity, I’ll, for the moment, stick to the original four.

So what does each ‘P’ stand for? The first is ‘Product’, and in this article we will assume you have a book to sell, so the book itself is the first of the 4Ps. (Well not totally, but we’ll come to the reasons why a little later). Next comes ‘Price’, and with it a whole host of associated problems. The third ‘P’ is ‘Promotion’ – primarily getting the correct message over to the correct audience. That isn’t as easy to achieve as it might sound, and of course price will play an important part. Then finally, the fourth ‘P’, which stands for ‘Place’. How are you going to get your product to your customers? With the introduction of ebooks and print-on-demand, the cost implications of printing and storing physical books have reduced significantly. This huge differentiator between the traditional publishers and self-publishers, where the latter couldn’t compete with the former due to the huge resources required, is slowly becoming less important.

In this particular session I’m going to discuss in more detail Product. Price, Promotion and Place will all be dealt with in later articles, when I’ll be looking at each in turn.

I stated earlier that the book was not the whole story (no pun intended) when considering what was meant by Product. I can explain why by giving you just two names – JK Rowling and Dan Brown. Ignoring JK’s latest book for a moment, when these two authors released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and The Lost Symbol, respectively, the result was global sales from day one. If JK Rowling had in fact released Harry Potter #8 at the time, Amazon would probably have crashed, such would have been the demand. Because The Da Vinci Code was such a success, almost regardless of what Dan Brown wrote, the next book was going to be a huge seller; and it was.  However, almost 3,000 reviews on Amazon US suggest The Lost Symbol has been considered average, at best (with all the five rating levels getting almost the same number of reviews), but The Da Vinci Code had already done the hard work, and had created a brand for Dan Brown. All the previous books were re-released, new covers complemented one another, and book shops were selling copies by the truck load. Some may say all the hype may have ‘overvalued’ his brand, which didn’t really deliver with The Lost Symbol. I look forward to his next release with interest, just to see if the wheels are in fact starting to wobble on Dan Brown’s wagon. Conversely,Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows has a little shy of 4,000 reviews on Amazon US, of which a staggering 78% are 5 star. JK Rowling has created an enormous brand with Harry Potter, plus a bank balance, allegedly, in the region of $1bn. It will now be interesting to see how her writing career progresses after Harry Potter. Early reviews of The Casual Vacancy are totally split, suggesting a ‘Marmite’ book, which will mean in the long term, if the reviews continue in a similar vein, the weakening of her brand. The key point for me about product is, understand what your customers want, then give them what they want, again and again - without compromising on quality.

In the next article I’ll discuss that all important topic of Price.