Thoughts on Book Reviews

Last week, I asked for volunteers for my advance review team. I said this week, we’d discuss book reviews so here it is! This covers reviews on Amazon, GoodReads, and any website where book reviews are given.
Amazon uses an algorithm uses books sales and reviews to rank its books. The more books you sell, the higher your rank. The more reviews you have, the higher you rank. The more “verified” reviews a book has, the much higher the rating. (Note: a “verified” book review is one that Amazon can verify that the reviewer bought the book from Amazon or Kindle). Why is it important for authors to try to increase their ranking? Because Amazon gives you wider exposure which means more books sell for the author. That’s why it’s every author’s greatest wish to have lots of book reviews, good or bad. Well, maybe not bad ones, but a review, any review, is like giving a gold nugget to the author.
How do you write a review? The best reviews give a short one or two sentence synopsis of the book that doesn’t reveal the ending or give anything away. Next, tell what you liked or didn’t like about the book. It’s as simple as that. Most of all, be honest. Think of it as telling your friends about the book. What did you like about it? Why would you recommend it to others, or why not? If you didn’t like it, say why. Stick to how you feel about the book, and don’t attack the author personally.
Amazon occasionally deletes some reviews if they can tell the person is related to the author or has some connection to him/her. They mainly do that with unverified reviews. I’m not sure if websites like GoodReads does that or not. I tell those who buy books from me to say in their review that they bought the book from the author and are giving an honest review of the book. I think that will prevent elimination of your review.
I hope you’ll review all the books you read. It’s a good way to help your fellow readers. Book reviews are very useful to me when I’m looking for new books to read. I read through many of them to get a feel of the story before I buy it. It’s hard to find books that are clean, and reviews help me know which ones meet my standards for reading.
Thanks for all you help with reviewing my books. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. It’s that nugget for me!