As a first-time author, you wanted to get a lot of sales from your self-publish books but sad to say, you don't have any reviews. Check this out, I will tell you something regarding this setting up an advanced review team - step-by-step to help you succeed in your self-publishing journey.
Today's article has three points and you're going to stick around. Because the third point is a secret as to the most important thing when you're building your advanced review team. Let's get into it.
The topic for today is, setting up an advanced review team - step-by-step. When your first getting started and you have your very first book on the market. You wanted to see a lot of sales but you don't have any reviews.
Or maybe even worse somebody doesn't even know, read your book and gave you a one-star review. Therefore you're going to want to stick around because I'm going to tell you exactly how to set up an advance review team. To ensure you're getting the reviews that your book deserves.
Grab a copy of my free Self-Publishing Checklist to make sure you're not skipping the secrets to get your book onto the market and selling. Let's get into it, from my own story when I first got started I published my very first book. I wasn't ready for my friends and family to leave reviews.
No problem, right? You know these people they'll going to leave positive reviews that's seems like a wonderful idea. The only problem is the reviews were taken away, why would they do that? The answer is, they simply don't want a bias reviews.
They want to make sure that we use our organic and unbiased as much as possible. There are some ways which we're going to discuss around this a bit. In general, they'd like to see organic reviews but the problem is organic reviews tend to be negative.
If you're happy with something you will generally say nothing but if you are upset, unhappy, or dissatisfied then you'll leave comments. Some people will leave negative comments just because they don't like the way that Amazon sets things up.
Their payment and whatever it might be but it has nothing to do with your book. They're going to use your books, your review area to complain about Amazon this happens all too often. The only way to compensate of course is to have reviews.
But the reviews from family and friends create a problem for Amazon especially when they are on the same IP address. That is the internet connection the address that you have in your internet's connected to.
When the review is left on that address it traces back and says "wait for a second, the person who publishes the book is on the same network of the person's reviewing" Maybe it's the same person or somebody who knows that person. They will know the person you're at the same address.
That's one of the reasons they remove the reviews. The next thing that I was exposed to was using VA's to do reviews or swapping reviews with other authors known as review swapping. It seems completely reasonable after all you read their book and they read your book.
The problem again is that Amazon has serious issues with this because they're going to expect "If I don't give them a five-star review then why would they gave me a five-star review rating?" That's the first challenge that we saw is that Amazon isn't happy with this particular process.
They're not happy with this place up and the second thing is it creates chaos in their algorithms. There seems somebody leaving a review on Puppy Training. The next day they leave a review on Science Fiction and the next day they leave a review on Romans Books.
This creates complete chaos inside the system and they're seeing it from the reviews being left on this book. It's just not working that well for Amazon so that people who do like your books would also recommend your book. But if they find out the people who've been reviewing and liking your books.
Avoid Review Swapping
They're leaving and liking reviews all over the place. This is one of the reasons Amazon hasn't heard it about in a while but a while back it will be a regular purging that would be going on. In regards to the reviews on Amazon and I got some people in trouble for exactly doing this.
One honest review for one honest review before you know that Amazon is sending you warning messages regarding your reviewing styles. This would also get you into trouble so I would not suggest doing review swapping. The final two methods were what about asking your list? send emails out too.
First of all, you should be able to have an email list of all of your readers. The second thing is you want to send out an email to them and ask "do me a favor and review my book" this result is incredibly few reviews for some reasons. Even if they like you, it's inconvenient.
They've already bought your book or maybe they can't even buy your book. Now you're telling them to review the book, there's no real benefit for them. They're generally just ignoring those sorts of requests you can do it and you really should do it when you're coming out with the book.
And asking them but that has not that much impact. Another thing is just asking in the book itself, you should of course be asking for reviews of the book. If you like this book, click here to leave a review on Amazon.
But the other problem with this one is that people just don't generally do that either. They are not looking to help you out only if they are unhappy with the book are they going to leave a review? Remember, you can never ask them to leave five-star reviews.
You can simply say, leave an honest review I do ask if you like the book leave an honest review. But otherwise, I simply don't do that. So, setting up an advanced review team - step-by-step, let's get into it exactly the step-by-step phase.
First thing is, you need to build an email list we need to know who are the people who are interested in your book in the first place. Those people willing to give you their email address may be a quick reference guide. If you have a non-fiction book or maybe they are willing to give you their email.
Just to get a short story or some other tip like something they may not know. Maybe you go to the biographies if they want those biographies they've going to give you the email list. This is a great way to sort of exchange one for the other.
The other thing is, you have to ask them if they want to be part of the advanced review team. What exactly is the advanced review team? You're going to get an advanced review copy of your book before comes out. You can also do it for books you have already released.
You're going to tell them "look, here's a free copy of my book, I ask you not to share with anyone, read through the book, read through the copy, and leave reviews on this book". That's when the book comes out, they'll immediately have a copy that they're able to review. Does that have to make sense?
They're able to put the reviews directly on top of this book and this going to help you get sales when your book first hits the market. The second thing and you need to remember to do it, you're going to make sure you can track if the people leaving reviews or not.
This comes in ties in a bit with the secret answer of the day, which is you should only allow people who have already left at least one review on anything on Amazon. That person is going to be on your list, and you're going to say "can you show me any review you've ever left on Amazon?"
You have to remember to leave a review on Amazon. You have to have at least purchase $50 worth of stuff within the last year. Otherwise, you're not allowed to leave a review on Amazon.
Building An Email List
They're doing this to prevent Virtual Assistants who just leave a lot of reviews and swapping reviews with each other. And that will create some challenges here that will show they even could leave a review. Because of this person has never left a review or purchased much.
They do not even know so you're giving your books away for free. I want to see at least one review in the last twelve months so that you can verify the person has the eligibility styles to leave reviews. They haven't been ban from leaving reviews on Amazon.
And also that person is willing to leave reviews. They could cheat the system with you by just simply grabbing a random review that was left by somebody and say "okay, that's my review". But that's when the next part comes in, then you will give them the copy.
You ask them and say "you have ten days before the release of the book". Once the book releases you'll follow up and say "look you have ten days to read through the book". You can give them a month if you wanted to but ten days is good.
Then you follow up and say "can you please send me a copy of the link of your review?" Remember here's where the tricky parts come, you have a copy of their original review. So that the names and profiles should match exactly. Their profiles are not allowed to be secrets.
And when you click on it you should see all the reviews that they have left. This will establish their doings if the person after two books they've established already on the Amazon. Not their real identity but their reviewing identity as they choose to cultivate that.
But once they've done these two reviews, I will give them two chances so you have one on your first book. Then the next book you release if they fail to not leave a review either of the two books, you will pull them off on your list.
And you will say "I will invite you to come back again, but right now this isn't going to work because you have enough to review". Then after the second book, they should at least be able to reply why they haven't left a review. Give them more months and they'll be given a chance.
But if they do not leave a review you just start to give them a free copy of your books, that's always a terrible idea. You need to be very careful about that. You could also do the same thing with books you've already released onto the market.
But you continually building this team, you have these people you're able to send your books to. And you're able to follow up, they actually can leave reviews for your books that are actual people. This is something you're going to want to do as you come up with books.
As they come all to the market then this is something that Amazon is completely okay with. You're not to get ban for doing this particular thing. This is a standard practice thing, this is what many majors do. And this is probably the most effective way of getting reviews for your book.
In a way of doing it quickly but without violating the terms and you will notice it's all coming back to having an email list. This is something that if you haven't already started, you should get started. There are free ways to do it, just google how to build an email list for free.
They will show you and there are a lot of ways to do it for free. Then you just need to start building it and you can transfer this email list to another provider. Once you start to build up the size of your email list that's something you're going to want to consider.
My question for you today is, have you built an Advanced Review Team? If you have, write "Yes" below in the comments. If you haven't, write "No" because I need to know where you're coming from on this particular issue. Check out my other articles and videos for more answers to your self-publishing questions.