Publish My Book on Amazon | How to Get Reviews for Your Book

About this video

Note: summarized from the Arabic caption track. Dale Roberts explains book reviews and how to get them within Amazon’s terms of service, working through four questions Amazon itself has answered. Reviews matter, he says, because they provide third-party social proof: readers are hesitant to buy a book with no reviews when competing books in the niche have them. On when Amazon removes reviews, he lists violations of Amazon’s community guidelines, cases where two titles were incorrectly linked so reviews from one book appear on a different book, and reviews that simply disappear — in that last case Amazon advises the reader, not the author, to contact community-help@amazon.com to ask why. On free or discounted copies, he says you may give them to readers but with no conditions and no exchange: you cannot require a review in return, and you cannot offer incentives, giving examples of an author who offered Tiffany jewelry and of offering a $5 Amazon gift card for a review, both prohibited as attempts to influence the reader. On reviews by friends and family, he quotes Amazon’s position that merely being a friend or a social media follower will not cause a review to be removed, but he says he is skeptical, speculating about Goodreads (which Amazon owns) and its social logins blurring the separation between authors and reviewers. On updated books, he quotes Amazon that earlier reviews will not be removed just because the book changed, unless they violate community guidelines, even if the changes make the old review content irrelevant, and he notes from his own experience that content updates do not always reach every customer’s device. The video also carries a sponsor segment for the North Street Book Prize via Winning Writers, with prizes he states of up to $5,000 for a grand prize and $12,500 across categories.

Key takeaways

• Reviews are social proof that makes buyers more confident; a book with no reviews competes at a disadvantage against reviewed books in the same niche
• You may give readers free or discounted copies, but never with conditions: requiring a review in exchange is prohibited
• Never offer incentives for reviews — no gift cards, prizes, or gifts — because Amazon treats them as influencing the reviewer
• Amazon says reviews are removed for community-guideline violations or incorrect title linking, and a reader whose review vanished should contact community-help@amazon.com
• Amazon will not remove reviews of earlier editions of an updated book unless they violate guidelines, even if the update makes those reviews irrelevant

Episode details: published June 15, 2020 · 7:43 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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