Authors WANT  Reviews

Simple! How many times have you read pleas on social media for readers to write reviews? – Probably Loads.

Does the thought of writing a book review send you racing to the hills? – I can see plenty of you nodding in agreement.

WHAT holds you back?

6 common replies:

I can’t write.

I can’t write paragraphs about a book.

I don’t know what to write.

I’m afraid of what people will think of my review.

I’m an author and don’t want a backlash on my own books.

I don’t have the time.

Let’s turn this around

I can’t write – I bet if you can read, you can write.

I can’t write paragraphs about a book – Good News, Amazon accepts one sentence reviews now as do many other sites.

I don’t know what to write – Ah! Quick Question – Why did you like or Dislike the book? Got an answer? Then you have a starting place.

I’m afraid of what people will think of my review – Facing fears is part of life, it is hard, but I bet you’ve faced much harder challenges. Authors LOVE reviews, other readers also like to read them to see if they agree or disagree. Every reader will get something different from their experience. An honest review from someone who genuinely read the book IS REALLY APPRECIATED.

I’m an author and don’t want a backlash on my own books – This one STOPS TOO MANY AUTHORS from writing book reviews and it shouldn’t. In fact if you are an author, one way to hone your writing skills is to READ, READ, READ and from this you will be noting what works, what doesn’t and you will have all the skill sets to write a review. IF YOU WRITE WITH HONESTY AND COMPASSION I can’t see an author would want revenge or to be labelled a TROLL, these are far and few amongst the millions of authors who GENUINELY WANT A REVIEW.

I don’t have the time – time is what you make of it and those who have this as their reply probably won’t have time to read this post, so we’ll say no more.

So BE BRAVE – make a promise that the next book you read you will write a review.

Not sure which star rating to use? Read more here

Goodreads Ratings                                                                                                                                                          

Amazon Ratings

4 Quick Ways to Write a Review

1. Go to Goodreads or your Amazon account. Start with a one liner. Can you include the genre? The lead characters? The setting? Say “I really enjoyed this book” or “The book didn’t work for me”.
2. As above, this time write 4 sentences. Keep them honest and make them about your own thoughts from the book.
3. If you wrote your review for Goodreads, copy and paste it to your Amazon account. Or vice-versa.
4. Really, really stuck for something to say? Read some of the other reviews for the book, they might jog your memory about a point, but still make your own review honest and genuine.

Finding yourself in a loop of reviewing friend’s books, just so they review yours? Review swaps are never a good idea, they become shallow and very obvious to other readers and you will only end up feeling guilty if you can’t be honest. Draw a line, perhaps explain that you don’t wish to review books for friends and you won’t ask them to review yours in turn unless either party truly wishes to read the book. But that no one should feel obliged to review as a swap. You can still support them by buying a copy of their work, this way their reviews will be from REAL readers who have found and bought their books and in the long term will be the reading audience of tomorrow.

Check out my simple book review templates, written to encourage those NEW to reviewing who need to boost their confidence.

There is NO SELL BY Date on writing a review – read a book a while a go that you ALWAYS MEANT TO WRITE A REVIEW FOR? Feeling guilty that you didn’t write a review at the time? No Problemo! Write this in the opening line “I read this book a while ago.” An author will be SO pleased to get an honest review that they won’t mind if there was a time delay on your side.

Go. Go forth and review.

As an author AND an avid reader, I thank you for this, Rosie!

And to support Rosie’s post, here’s one from Barb Taub (on her always entertaining website) announcing that August is “Write An Amazon Review Month”. 

Before I became an author, I had never written a book review. Now, it’s an automatic part of my reading routine. How about you, dear blog readers? How do you feel about writing reviews?