kindle

How To Get Good Reviews For Your Kindle Book

Reviews are very important on Kindle. Of course a good or bad rating can have a big impact when it comes to influencing the buying decisions of your readers – most of us are considerably more likely to buy a book if we think it sounds good according to the previous buyers. Likewise, if a book is often described negatively then we will often be put off (by the way, if you want to learn how to write a 5 star Kindle book, check out this post here.

Actually though, this isn’t the biggest way that a review impacts sales. Ultimately, most of us will at least read the free sample of a book on Kindle if we are sufficiently interested in the topic.

The bigger problem then, is that reviews can impact rankings. If your book has bad reviews, then it won’t rank as highly on the Kindle Store and this will mean that far fewer people are able to discover it and thus spend money on it.

So the question becomes: how do you ensure you get the best reviews? Let’s take a look…

Write A Great Book

This should go without saying but it’s incredibly important to write a good book if you want to get the best reviews.

This means that the writing style should be on-point with good use of language, correct spelling and good grammar.

Likewise though, it also means that the book should be interesting, unique and engaging. It needs to provide some kind of value and that means that you need to provide some kind of takeaway for the reader.

And if you are writing a non-fiction book, you need to ensure that your book is well researched and factually correct.

Write An Accurate Description

In a bid to make the most sales possible on their books, a lot of marketers and writers will write a highly persuasive and sales-y description for their books. The aim here is to make people want to read the book and to thereby over-sell it.

While this can help to give you an initial surge in sales though, it can also end up hurting you if what’s in the book doesn’t live up to the hype.

Make sure your description is accurate and that you don’t give away all the surprises inside. You want your readers to come away pleasantly surprised and not disappointed when they’ve finished the book.

And ideally you’ll have them wanting more; this is why creating a series of books can be highly lucrative if done correctly.

Charge Correctly

Ultimately, a review should tell people if a book is good value or not.

And the best way to make a book good value is to decrease the price – thereby meaning that the readers get more for less.

Actually, one of the very best things you can do for your book in terms of ranking is to lower the price for a while to drive sales and to increase the number of positive reviews.

Respond

Another tip is to respond to your negative reviews. Don’t be defensive or aggressive and respect your readers’ right to their opinion. At the same time though, you should be sure that you respond in order to apologise and to explain your point of view – you can even offer a refund.

This not only shows that you offer good customer service (thereby taking some of the sting out of a bad review) but if you’re lucky they may even change their rating once they feel heard!

Another way to increase the positive reviews for your Kindle book is to ensure you have great pictures in your book and there are a number of things to keep in mind concerning your pictures. So let’s look at that next…

How To Take Stunning Pictures For Your Kindle Book

Pictures can add a great deal to a Kindle title and really help it to sell. Not only is the cover one of the most important features when it comes to grabbing attention and drawing people in but the images inside the book will also help to illustrate your points and also make the pages pop more.

This is only even more true now that the Kindle Fire and other full color tablets are becoming more popular as many users’ preferred reading devices.

But the question is: how do you take great quality pictures for your book? It’s not enough just to add images: they need to look fantastic if they’re going to help you sell.

Of course you can use free stock images or you can buy images – but this will pale in comparison to the benefits that come from creating custom images that perfectly illustrate what the text is saying and that your readers aren’t going to accidentally find anywhere else!

So here’s how you do it…

Invest In A Good Camera

A good starting point is to invest in a high quality camera. This should have a decent number of mega pixels and should also have a good lens and lots of features.

A DSLR can help you to pull off more impressive and stylistic effects but it’s not necessary if you want to save money or you’re not sure about learning all the different settings.

A bridge camera is a camera that is much cheaper and that offers a good ‘half-way’ point between a DSLR and a decent superzoom.

Think About Lighting

When you take your photo, it’s not just enough to think about the object itself. At the same time, you also need to think about the lighting which will have a big impact on how it appears.

Avoid having glare (unless it’s intentional) and make sure the subject of the photo is well lit.

Ideally, try to have light hitting the object from the side.

Think About Composition

Also important is to compose your shot. This means thinking about the foreground, middle ground and background.

It also means deciding where you want your subject to be among these elements and how you’re going to lead the eye from one to the other.

Having an object out of focus in the foreground, or putting your subject to the left of center can make for a more interesting shot than just taking photos of everything head on.

Tell A Story

Perhaps most important of all is that your photos tell a story. That is to say that it’s not good enough for your photos to simply be of something: you need to make sure that they express emotion or suggest what has just happened or what is just about to happen.

Instead of taking a photo of a party for instance, you could take a photo of a glass that’s empty with lipstick marks around the top. This creates much more intrigue because it gets the user to think – which in turn increases engagement for your book.

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How To Write A 5 Star Kindle Book

Let’s say you want to write a Kindle book.

And further, let’s say you want to make sure it gets 5 star reviews and makes you a very nice, juicy, residual income.

Here’s how you might do exactly that:

First, choose a BIG niche that sells really well.

When you’re talking about Kindle, you’re talking about VOLUME. After all, a $2-4 profit on a book means you’ve got to sell a lot of books to make real money.

Selling a lot of books means you need a big money-making niche – something like:

Food / cooking
Self-development
Relationships
Making money
Diet / weight loss
Health / fitness

You can’t go wrong with any one of these niches.

Now then, narrow your niche down to a specific topic. For example, you might narrow down “Diet and weight loss” to “How to lose belly fat after 40.”

Forget about reinventing the wheel – it takes too much time and it’s too risky. Instead, you’re going to improve the wheel.

Go to Amazon and search for all the belly fat and fat loss books, especially the ones tailored for people over 40.

You’re interested in anything in this sub-niche that is selling under the Kindle Bestseller rank of 20,000.

Why? Because of they’re under 20,000, then they’re likely selling about 10-15 books per day or more.

What – that doesn’t sound like a lot? Okay, let’s do some quick math:

If a book has a profit of $3 per sale, and is selling 15 copies per day, then that’s $45 per day.

Okay, I know that’s not going to make you rich, but think about this: At $45 per day, times 30 days, is $1,350 per month… Residual…

…As in, you publish the book once and get paid over and over again.

Increase the price or increase the sales and your profits go up.

Look, I can’t tell you how many copies you will sell, but if you do what I’m about to suggest, and you do it once a month, in a year you can have 12 residual revenue streams from 12 books.

Multiply 12 times $1,350 and see what that is per month.

Now do I have your interest?

Okay, back to your research…

You’re going to find these books in your subniche that are ranking under 20,000 and you’re going to read the reviews – especially the five star and one star reviews.

Make a list of everything people love about each book, and everything they hate.

For example, the list of things people love might be:

Great motivation, made me want to start losing the fat immediately
Liked the diet examples
Enjoyed the tips, especially the ones about exercise

And things people didn’t like might be:

Not enough sample exercises
Not enough resources – where are we supposed to find the things the author recommended?
Too many typos – should have edited it better.

Write down all of that.

Now then, you’re going to keep what the customers liked, and improve what they didn’t like.

NO PLAGIARIZING, by the way.

You’re going to write your own book – or outsource it – with specific instructions on what to include.

That’s right – you don’t even need to write it yourself. Just give your instructions on what to include and how to write it to an outsourcer and let them handle it for you.

Your book will contain everything people love about the other books, and everything improved about what they didn’t like about the other books.

Do this and there is no reason for people to give you negative reviews, which is important.

As you know, Amazon reviews are HUGELY important.

Your book will eventually get more sales than the books it is modeled on as you get more and more positive reviews.

Meaning your income should surpass that of your competitor’s books.

Now then, rinse and repeat for your next book, and the next, and…

WAIT! Two more things…

First Impressions Count

First: Your book cover must be so mesmerizing that it STOPS Amazon customers in their tracks.

Everyone is busy. They’re skimming. They’re in a hurry. And there are hundreds of books in your category.

If your cover doesn’t stand out, and I mean STAND OUT – then the battle is lost.

You can have the greatest book ever written, but if the cover stinks then you will get few sales.

Here’s what to do: Find a great Kindle cover designer on Fiverr. You might need to pay more than $5 – it’s worth it.

Ask them to make your title(s) BIG and BOLD.

Remember, on Kindle a lot of people are looking at titles on their smart phones. If the titles are small, they can’t read them.

Ask for high resolution graphics, because people associate higher resolution with higher quality.

Second Thing:

Get Some Reviews

Now, when I say reviews, I mean REAL reviews.

Some people might tell you to get fake reviews from Fiverr or review exchange groups, but don’t do it.

Amazon has gotten smart about these things and they are cracking down.

Instead, ask your friends, family, acquaintances and so forth for real, legitimate reviews.

Also, place an email opt-in page with a nice freebie at the beginning and end of your book. This will build you an email list of readers.

ASK your readers (politely) for reviews.

What About Promotion?

Good question. Here’s how to do a killer promotion that gets your book ranking high on Kindle:

So far you’ve got a great book, a captivating cover, genuine reviews – you’re already ahead of 98% of the other books on Kindle.

The only thing left for you to do is shoot your rankings up on Amazon.

Here’s what you do…

Enroll In KDP Select

Promote your book on as many promotion sites as you can find. There are all kinds of Facebook groups dedicated to free Kindle books.

Set your book on a free promotion through KDP Select.

Your goal is to get your book downloaded like crazy in spikes, because this is what catches Amazon’s attention and gets your book ranking higher.

Also, if you have a series of books (HINT HINT) then link all of your books together. As soon as one KDP Select promotion is over, set the second book on promotion and so forth. This will cross-promote your books and your sales should see a compound effect.

Continue the above, along with building your lists (remember you’re placing an offer to get on your list inside your books.) Whenever you publish a new book, let your list know. Let them download it for free during the KDP Select promotion, and ask them to leave reviews.

Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat…

If you really want to scale this, you’ll hire someone to act as project manager and you’ll start publishing multiple books per week, outsourcing everything.

Yes, this is a six, or maybe seven figure business if you stick with it.

And you thought we were just going to talk about writing a single Kindle book…

…okay, if you only want to do ONE book for now, make it a great one and tie it in with something else you’re doing.

For example, if you’re a coach or consultant or provide services, let your book be your ambassador and show the world that YOU are the expert.

It makes for a much better and more effective business card than a little slip of paper with your name and phone number on it.

The sky’s the limit, so have fun and become a best-selling author THIS month before you put it off any longer.