Each Friday, I visit Amazon.com to see how my book is doing. Amazon and Nielsen have a nifty application that can tell authors, roughly, how many books they sold over the past week. Some weeks the results are disappointing. Other weeks they are encouraging. Today, I learned that I sold four paperback copies of A Plot for Pridemore between February 23 and March 1. That’s a pretty encouraging week by my standards.
I also learned today that A Plot for Pridemore racked up its 23rd customer review on Amazon.com. So far, the reviewers have been amazingly kind. Twenty of them have rewarded the book with five stars, while three gave it four stars. Some of the reviewers are, of course, friends and relatives, but many are people I don’t know who managed to stumble across the book and read it cover-to-cover. I am humbled and amazed at how generous they have been to a first-time novelist. Here’s what one reader from Venice, Florida, wrote this week about A Plot for Pridemore:
I enjoyed the book very much. It started out on the slow side but got to the point where I couldn’t put it down. Stephen was very inventive to come up with this plot.
Customer reviews on Amazon.com are very important, I am told. Potential buyers look to these reviews to help them decide if they want to buy your book. Having a lot of reviews–even if they are not all positive reviews–shows that your book is generating “buzz.” That draws the attention of the Amazon people, who may decide to give your work preferential placement in their online bookstore, helping it stand out among the millions and millions of published and self-published books that are sold on Amazon.
There is a lot of content on the Internet about how to get more customer reviews, including stories about how some authors who have tried to bilk the system. It’s my understanding that you need at least 50 customer reviews for your book to get Amazon’s attention, but that might just one of those online rumors. At any rate, it’s a hot topic among newbie authors like me.
Which leads me to my plea: if you have an interest in purchasing and reading my book. I would love it if you would take a few minutes to review it on Amazon. The process is simple and easy. Even if you find that A Plot for Pridemore is not exactly your cup of tea, I would still greatly appreciate any feedback you could provide in the form of a customer review.
If you enjoy reading fiction at all, however, I’m willing to bet that you will like A Plot for Pridemore. After all, the customer reviews have given it an average of five stars on Amazon.
Stephen Roth is the author of the humorous novel, A Plot for Pridemore.
Be sure to “like” his author fan page at https://www.facebook.com/StephenRothWriter
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