How To Post an Amazon Review: Random Acts of Publicity

RandomACTS
For more information on the Random Acts of Publicity Week, see this post or the Facebook Event page.

Today’s task for Random Acts of Publicity: Post a review of a book somewhere. Your blog, GoodReads, Amazon, a school newsletter, a bulletin board. Anywhere.

Amazon Reviews

Are you like many authors, always intending to post a review on Amazon, but haven’t taken the leap yet? Here’s something to think about.

2x: Experts are twice as likely to share information. Why should you, an author (or aspiring author), review a book for someone else? Because as an author, you’re an expert on literature. Studies of word-of-mouth promotions say that experts usually tell twice as many people about something they liked. You are more likely to talk up a book than the normal Amazon shopper simply because you are an expert.

What to Put in an Amazon Review

OK. But what do you write about in a review?
Your honest opinion about the book! That’s it.

Short 50-300 word reviews will work best, something short enough to scan easily. Usually people reading the reviews want a quick glance at what others are saying.

You can also post videos, reviewing a book. Tape yourself talking about the book and upload it, following their instructions.

How to Post an Amazon Review

I suggest you write your review before you go to visit Amazon. That way, you can revise and edit until it’s right. Once you get to Amazon, you can just cut and paste.

  • If you don’t have an account with Amazon, you’ll have to create one. There should be a link for this on the front page.
  • To post a review, go to the page for the book you want to review and scroll down to the reviews. On the right hand side just above the other reviews, you’ll see a button that says, “Create Your Own Review.” Click on that.
  • It will ask you to confirm that you are over 13, to rate the title, and give your review a title.
  • Below these questions is a box for you to either write in, or to cut and paste your review.
  • Notice a couple things.
    • Product Links. You can use the insert a product link to link to other books/products if you want. That means you can add links to other titles by the author, if you want to.
    • Tags. The Tags are important to fill out, too because they help the book get found by Amazon’s search by topics. The more times reviewers agree that this book is appropriate for this topic, the more likely it is to be in the top search entries.
    • Video Reviews. Also, notice that they accept video reviews! Haven’t done that myself yet, but I want to on a couple books.
  • Preview the Review. If all looks well – click to post it!
  • If needed, you can come back at any point to edit the review.

Today’s task for Random Acts of Publicity: Post a review of a book somewhere. Your blog, GoodReads, Amazon, a school newsletter, a bulletin board. Anywhere.

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