Not that long ago, K.P. Ambroziak wrote a guest post for Indies Unlimited entitled, ‘A New Gatekeeper Rising’. That post triggered an interesting discussion about reviews and gatekeepers, however it was the author’s comments about review numbers that really caught my attention. Apparently, BookBub will not accept books for [paid] promotion unless they have a certain number of reviews – i.e. have a track record of popularity with readers.
As Indies, we all know the importance of getting a goodly number of reviews for our books; nothing looks so unloved, and unread, as a book with only a few reviews, or, -shock horror- no reviews at all. Like it or not, Amazon has conditioned us to see reviews as ad hoc indicators of popularity, and being herd animals, we associate popularity with quality.
Whether popularity really does work that way is a moot question, and not one I’m brave enough to tackle here. Nonetheless, I think we can all accept that, as a marketing strategy, popularity begets sales. After all, Amazon doesn’t publish all those best-seller lists for nothing. Each list is a bright, shiny life-raft for customers drowning in the sheer volume of ‘things’ on offer at Amazon.
For us Indies, getting onto one of those life-rafts is tantamount to being given the keys to marketing heaven.
The question then is, how do we squirm our way out of the sea, and onto a life-raft? Is BookBub right? Are reviews the answer? Continue reading “Pitching to the New Gatekeepers, Part 1”
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You may have seen the “Vine Voice” tag on reviews around Amazon’s website, and wondered what it meant. Here to help us figure it out is Mystery Reviewer, who participates in the Vine Voice program. He has agreed to take a seat in the comfy chair while I ask him a few questions. (He thinks he’s safe because he doesn’t review many books, but just in case, he wishes to remain anonymous…)