Support for Indie Authors discussion

My little novella, The Excavations, has had a good response on Goodreads. It has 3 five star reviews on Amazon.co.uk. On Amazon.com, one 1 star review. This severely limits the marketing sites I have access to.

But I believe it would be breaking rules, and risking banishment, to ask GoodReads members, who have already given the book five stars on this site, to do the same on Amazon?

Given that Amazon owns GoodReads, it seems a pity that it pays GoodReads rankings so little attention?

You can ask people to post their reviews in both places. That’s okay. People in the UK cannot post on Amazon.com though. So for the ones that are on Amazon.co.uk, they can’t be added.

Thank you so much, Rosiland.

Yes, Amazon owns Goodreads, but they are actually very different animals. Goodreads is for readers to discuss books and recommend them to one another, so they criteria for reviewing is a bit more lax. Your Uncle Bernie is free to write whatever he wants about your book here, but it won't fly on Amazon. You can even review your own book here. Amazon takes reviews seriously for their own site. Goodreads, not so much.

As for contacting your readers? There are some readers here on Goodreads that do not take kindly to authors contacting them, for any reason. I do not know what the chances are of running into one, but I know they exist. I've seen plenty of threads about it on less Indie-friendly forums. So, contact if you must, but be aware you may not always get a kind response.

Darn! There goes my master plan🤩

A lot of people don't like an author contacting them unless it's giveaway or prize information here. They have too many books, too little time, and don't like to feel "solicited" on a website like this. I would say just write a reminder on your fan pages that Indie authors rely on your support. So share, love, review wherever you can.

I think that's the best way to do it. I seem to get more responses when I post something like that on my Facebook page.

A further little question: can anyone explain the delay between the notification: "Hey, you have some reviews! " And an actual review appearing?

Thank you, and god bless us all, each and every one.

If it's about Amazon reviews, they go through some kind of internal reviewing (possibly automated) after the user submits them. Maybe that might be the case?

If it's about GR, then I can only speculate. Maybe the notification appears when someone rates your book (which I can do with one tap from my Kindle) but they only write the review later (in my case, when I am on my PC because I just can't stand touchscreen for anything more than one sentence). If I finish reading a book in the evening of one day (which is when the rating appears) but don't go back on the computer, then I write the review the other day.

Thank you. It is about GoodReads. But it applies to star ratings and actual reviews. There's a notification, and then later (weeks) a review or rating ...

Since I am not published yet, I can only make guesses. Let's hope someone else knows.

As I understand it, you may cut-and-paste Goodreads reviews into the Editorial Reviews portion of the web page for book you're selling through Amazon. If your only intent is to increase your numbers of reviews, it won't count as a "starred" review. If your intent is to present some unsolicited insight/opinions to prospective readers, then this might be a way to accomplish that.

I’m with Tomas o the GR review delay... I’m notorious for giving a book a star rating on Goodreads, placing it in my “need to write review” shelf, and then coming back to it days (lets be honest... weeks / months) later to write a full review and post it out to my blog, Amazon, etc. The delay has never bothered me much since I’m one of the perpetuating culprits.

James wrote: "A further little question: can anyone explain the delay between the notification: "Hey, you have some reviews! " And an actual review appearing?

Thank you, and god bless us all, each and every one."

I'm been with Goodreads for some years and I know just how you feel, James. It is to teach us patience :)

I'm with Anna. The paper from my latest fortune cookie (that's now taped to my fridge) says, "Right now, you must be patient." I figured I'll just keep it there forever. It won't ever not apply...

I'm baffled by the ins and outs of the marketing side of indie publishing. No matter how much time I spend on this loathsome learning curve (across a dozen platforms) I never seem to get it right. But I do have a question someone might be willing to assist with. I see my review count going up on Amazon while no reviews are posted and no "star" counts shown as added to the individual "starred" categories on my Amazon page. Could this be some connection to my Goodreads audience after my Goodreads Giveaway?

Likely, Amazon is holding the reviews, as they view them as suspicious. So, they could represent reviews in a hold queue.

Might also be they are posted in something different, like Amazon.uk, or amazon.au, and not showing in the US reviews.

There are some pretty strict limits on what reviews will actually show up on your Amazon page, honestly. For a person to qualify to post a review on Amazon, they will have to have spent at least $50 on Amazon in the last 12 months. There's a chance they might have posted it to Amazon and didn't meet the requirements. Especially if they picked up your book on a free promotion. If all they buy on that account is free books, they wouldn't qualify to post reviews, ect.

One thing you can do (if you haven't already) is leave a note at the end of your book, asking readers to pretty please leave a rating and review on Amazon to help you gain traction.

I don't know that it's against the rules, but wouldn't message people directly if it was me, as I think most of them would probably be annoyed. A few might be kind. You never know, I guess.

Good luck!

William wrote: "I'm baffled by the ins and outs of the marketing side of indie publishing. No matter how much time I spend on this loathsome learning curve (across a dozen platforms) I never seem to get it right. ..."

It appears that Amazon are no longer displaying a breakdown of the number of ratings (except on mobile devices.) The only connection between Goodreads and Amazon ratings is the banner at the top on Amazon, which shows average rating and total number of Goodreads ratings. Lots of people with Goodreads accounts will review on both platforms though.

I am a promoter and reviewer and ALWAYS post on both Amazon. com Amazon. com.au and Goodreads and Bookbub.
Each review I complete gets posted on each site. Most of the authors I review for actually ask us if we are able to post on every side. Although with Amazon, you can not post a review unless you have spent over $50.00 on the purchase of books. I must say I think that's ridiculous, but unless they have changed their rules, this specific rule still applies.
I find it easier to automatically post my review on the 4 main sites. Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub, plus my own pages and groups. I hope this helps with the best way to get your reviews posted on different sites.

"Although with Amazon, you can not post a review unless you have spent over $50.00 on the purchase of books."

I don't consider this a big problem. Even if you buy e-books at around $4, that's one book a month to meet that point. It's not the most elegant solution to stop review manipulation via bot accounts with no purchase history, but I guess it works well enough.