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getting book reviews for your new book on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by get response. Are you a small business owner, professional blogger or marketing agency? Get response Can help you connect with your audience in a meaningful way to see how get response can help your business and get your first month free. Go to serve. No master dot com Backslash Get response. Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. The hardest part off launching a new book, The Hurdle that Stops 99% of authors, new authors, even experienced authors, independent authors had the same. While we all hit it, we can't get enough reviews to kick start the book books behave just like a high school fight. Two people start fighting, and no one cares until that first bit of a crowd shows up. It's the crowd that beings a bigger crowd. No one wants to read a book and Amazon with no reviews. No one wants to read a book, which is 12 or three reviews. If I see less than 10 reviews about a book, I don't even take it seriously unless the book is two or three days old. If a book is more than a week old, I need to see at least 10 or 20 reviews with Why pay any attention to it? And this is how the entire network works as your number reviews cross a certain thresholds the way people respect you will continue to rise and hit new levels when you break 20 reviews than its 50 than 100. When people see anything above 500 it's another level. Anything about 1000 really shows your top books on Amazon, So how can you become one of those people that gets reviews? Today's episode is not about longevity reviews this Saul about launch reviews how to get those 1st 20 to 30 reviews. Do you have a brand new book and you're hitting that wall. When I launched my very first book several years ago, I approached everyone that I knew. I message all my friends on Skype. I message everyone into on Facebook. I message people that I am business partners with people that I make tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars with in our relationship. I messaged 50 people that I have a deep relationship with, and I thought, I'm covered. This will do it. Three weeks later, I had three reviews. You really discover that it's way too much effort for people to do a review based on friendship or family relationship. None of my family members have ever left me a book review getting people to do all of this. It's way too hard. They have to buy your book. I read your book and then write a review. Most of those people, if you wrote the review for them and said, Hey, just upload this Amazon, they would. Now that's a big Amazon violation and get you into a lot of trouble, and you don't want to do that. It's too many pieces. People are glad to buy a book from you because of your friends. You could certainly get a few sales, but when you need more than that, friendship isn't the right lever. You need to find ways to get reviews that don't depend on friendship, because trying to get reviews that way leaves you disappointed, dissatisfied, and you won't have enough reviews to support your business. You end up with a real problem. Today. We're gonna cover nearly a dozen of my freshest ways of getting reviews. I'll tell you right now, if you implement thes, you're never gonna propagate movies ever again. The key before you start this process, have a book that's good. Have a book that's got everything spelled right. Have a book with a few mistakes as possible. Even when you send a book through editor two or three times. Sometimes there's still a couple misspellings. There's nothing you could D'oh! It's almost impossible to have a book with zero grammatical, zero different types of air, especially because we put things in there that we consider artistic. We want a sentence to look a certain way. Sometimes we're copying and pasting a piece of information or quote that has a misspelling or a typo, and we have no choice but to leave it in there because it's quote. Don't depend on family and friends because they're gonna break your heart. Instead, follow me with a couple of these methods. The first, in easiest method, is simply going thio Net galley. It's a service that allows you to post books that people download. And in exchange for Dal Inning, they're expected to leave reviews. Depending upon your Mitch, this could be really good service. It's not so great for nonfiction. I, mostly nonfiction writer. I know that a large percentage of my audience is nonfiction. In my experience with Net Galley, you end up with sometimes one or two reviews at the end of the month. The service costs around $30 a month, and usually you have six books up in a time, so you could join groups that are doing a net galley run. So someone has a Net galley account. Every month. They put together six books, one book of their own and five other people's books. Each person pays $30 to cover that 1 $80 month. See, So when I didn't get galley, I got a really good review and a really bad review for Serve No master cost $30. I paid $15 for bad review, and the guy who wrote the Bad review had the courtesy to copy and paste that review to nearly every form. He wrote the review and posted all over the place. And the weird thing is, he gave me low stars. And then you read the review and is like at first this book is terrible, but then I realize it's really good. He was motivated me to change how I approach business and how I approach my life, and I'm making some changes in my business because I read this book, but I still don't think it's good. What can you do when you do a book about changing your life? The person says I'm changing my life because of the book, but I still don't like it. I achieve the results, and the guy from the galley still wrote a very harsh review that appears all over the place. He wrote it in like 20 different websites. Now that upset because having a bad review that turns out to be a good review is really good for business when you have a two star review and anyone who reads it sees it's actually a good review. That's great. Net Galley is a great service, though. If you're doing fiction, science fiction, romance. There's just a lot more people who are interested in those platforms, so it's easier, much easier to get a lot of reviews. You'll get a lot more bang for your buck. It's a great place to start the first thing to consider. Now, when you're wondering, where can I find someone running it in the galley promotion? Where can I find a group of people to join? You could go to k boards dot com K stands for Kendall keyboards dot com, and I'll mention them a few places throughout this episode. That's where a lot of independent others hang out. And that's where I found the last night. Got a motion I joined. Very simple. Now, speaking of forms for every type of book you want to write for every niche for every topic, there are forms that fitted. If you write romance novels systems, very strong woman. Stella forms same thing for science fiction. Whenever your topic is go out and find the people that are on forms for your topic for your category. We've talked about this in the research phase. You used the same forums and get reviews several different ways. The first way is you can simply put a signature on your profile, and every time you post a message, it allows people to visit a link or PM. You ask for free copy of your book, easy and very passive. And then you're just an active person posting on the boards a lot. Over time, you'll start to get a lot of really great reviews. This system is very casual because you're asking people, but you do have to post a lot, so people see your form threats. Many of these forms also like you to post a thread in a commercial section on advertising section, where you can say I have a new book. I'd love to give away copies to members of this form. I like being a member of this foreman. I wrote a book for people. This form your respect level on the forum will determine how people respond. If you've been posting for a couple of weeks or a couple of months, you have a little bit of presence. When you now have a book, you're gonna get a much better response thing. If you join the forum, just ask for reviews. The third way is the Senate private message to people that are highly respected on the forum. You could see the people that write the best post or the most eloquent are the most active and just send a promise. It's say, I saw the way you post you aren't expert, and I would love to get your honest feedback on my new book before I really announce it to the world. I'd love for you to be an early reviewer on Early Reader because you know what you're talking about. Start off with a confident you're more likely to get the result you want. There's a great website called library thing dot com. They run a contest every single day you go there. It's kind of hidden. But if you log in the library thing dot com first you have to build up your library. Summer. Good dreams. You have to select 50 books that you like until you have your 50. You aren't allowed to run a contest, so that's step one. Once you've selected 50 books you like Go to the bottom right hand corner, blow everything hidden in the photo. It's as early reviewers. If you click on that and then click on members give away. You're allowed to run a little contest, and I usually run a contest for a week and give away copies and you'll get quite a number of reviewers. Actually, this way and again, different genres get different response rates. That's why we have so many different methods. The great thing about library thing is they're reviewers are very, very serious about what they do. You'll get the most eloquent, Most high quality was honest reviews from people. And very rarely do you get negative reviews from library things. Usually someone library thing who hates your book will email you. Someone from library thing felt that serve no Master was a four star book about a five star book, and she e mailed me to say, Do you want me to post my review on Amazon or just everywhere else? Because I know a four star review can sometimes turn your sails. It's very professional, and she gave me a lot of great feedback that we turn servant master into a better book. But at the end of the day, I didn't really want a painful four star review to be my first review, so I just told her, posted everywhere else, still totally findable anywhere else. And then, if I want, I could use the best parts. As an editorial review, I mentioned K boards before. It's always worth going to K boards and doing a search for review. The great thing about this platform is this. Authors. We're very, very active on there, so they're trying every service. They're trying every tool they're trying, every technique you can see all the time. New posts, discussing every review technique possible. So maybe you see a new company offering to help you get reviews. You go to K boards and see another authors. I tried it and find out if it's any good. This is very, very valuable, and we'll help you save time. And it will help you avoid losing money on techniques that don't work. You can also find people that are looking to do, review swaps, looking to read and review other people's books who have other vice in your genre. You can find a lot of great things on this platform, including editors and other types of designers. It's one of the best platforms out there. And Stephanie, my favorite forum for authors. Another source to just keep these rolling in is good. Reads dot com, Good reads, is just like library thing. It's a social network for people who love books. Good reads is a very strong and very large social network, and in fact, Amazon acquired the company because it's so successful. So now, like everything else, we use it on my Amazon. Good reads has forms where people discuss specific genres. You can become someone who posted these forms or groups and develops a little bit of a presence before you start asking for reviews. They're also groups for people who want to review books you can find just by typing and review groups, a bunch of groups where people want to review books in each different genre. Again, it's a little easier to get reviews for fiction. The nonfiction, which is why, as a non fiction author, I have so many, many different techniques, make sure you are very respectful of each group on good reads people in good reads, do not like when you break the rules. If you join a new group and throw in an inappropriate commercial post, you could really hurt your book. When you upset a bunch of people, they grab, review copy, and then they decide to write how you're someone who breaks the rules on good reads. So I would say, be very hesitant. And when in doubt, don't ask for reviews on good reads if you're sure you could do really, really well. But wait until you're sure before you take that action something interesting that I always keep my eyes on. Our new book, APS. Recently, about 10 or 15 different books social networks have begun growing on iTunes and the Google Play store. These new social networks all have different angles, but the key element is that each of them is built around people's love of books. If you dial into one of these new social networks that no other authors are using, yet no one has figured out yet because they're so new there, slowly developing you conjunction fast, though of a little bit of a presence on one of these social networks and start recruiting reviewers from people who love your genre anyway, you confined reviewers that other people are doing yet is going to be very powerful and very financially successful. You want to be the 1st 1 not the last one. And the reason I'm not giving you a big list of these new book after because they're changing all the time. I have about 15 that I'm experimenting with a little bit with an intern and an assistant, and I haven't made any final determinations. So right now they're still in that testing phase. But I'm seeing a lot of good and interesting things there. There's also new social networks developing all the time that are similar to library thing, good reads and worth checking out. If you are proactive, getting refuses very easy the challenge for getting reviews. It's getting reviews without working hard. That's what every author really wants to do. What we really want to do is just push a button and then boom our reviews or taking care of. I find getting reviews to be harder than writing the book, that editing the book than any other part of marketing because you have to be very proactive. It takes a lot of efforts. There are a lot of paint service is that will help you get reviews, and they run the spectrum. There are about five or 10 right now, and they change every few months. New ones open old wounds, close that stay on the up and up with Amazon's terms of service. They don't break any of the rules. And in order to do that, all they can do is offer people free copies of a book and then ask them to leave reviews. They can't force people to leave reviews, so you'll send out 100 free copies. If you're lucky, you'll get 40 or 50 reviews. If you get 100 book requests, most of the service is usually generate between 10 and 30 reviews, and they charge you at the end of the day, 10 to $15 per review. It's really expensive. It takes a really long time. My launch formula depends upon generate all of the necessary reviews in the 1st 2 weeks. Your book is live on Amazon, and the short of that time window is the better. If you get all of those reviews in one week, that's even better. Some of these service is I got email from one yesterday, said they're having a big promotion. Hey, 30% off to Spain, $100 instead of $140 pretend to 20 reviews and will run your book in 4 to 6 weeks. By the time the promotion is ready to run, it no longer matters. Either my book has been successful or it's not so. I don't really recommend going in that route because it takes a long time and 10 to $15 reviews quite expensive. They make no guarantees because not allowed it would break their relationship with Amazon. So it's hope you spend all this money and you hope you get some reviews. It's some of the service's are larger and smaller, but at the end of the day, all the service's I know about end up costing you 10 to 15 review. Even that galley $30. I only got two reviews, and it cost me $15 for review. I thought I was gonna get, like, 30 or 40 review because everyone sings the praises of Net galley. But I think fiction does way, way, way better on there. One of my favorite ways to get reviews. It's by approaching Amazon's top reviewers. And in fact, I have a new book out, the sequel to serve No Master. I'm working on getting more views for now, and I'm about to today go through a spreadsheet of 1400 relevant reviewers. Here's my process. I look Att. 20 books that are similar to mine, and I go through all of their reviewers. Every single reviewer who has left their contact information in the profile wants something. About half of the reviews on Amazon have their email address in their profile, another half have and website. So you have an email address our website to contact people, not half the reviewers, but the split of people who live. Contact information's half email on half website. If you want to be really quick and easy, you just use people who have left their email address. But I like to do both, so I'll go to everyone's website and see how hard it is to contact them. Many of these people will have a contact form or their email address on their website. They want to be successful reviewers. Amazons platform rewards good reviewers If you're good enough reviewer, You could become a top 1000 a top 500 top 100 reviewer. You can even become what's called a fine voice, and when you're in these categories, you get more and more free stuff. If you're a fine voice, the stuff you get for free is awesome. You get televisions, PlayStations, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff couches, three D goggles, all sorts of cool, brand new technology just because they want your honest review because your reviews air so respected. So reviewers who take the job of Ewing seriously rise to the top. If you could get a review from someone in the top 1000 that's great. The higher the rating it is and even says it above their profile. For every review they leave, it'll say Fine voice or top 100 reviewer. That's cool. People respect those reviews. A review from one of those people is worth about 50 regular reviews. Because they're so respected. Amazon gives them really nice stuff, and they love getting free stuff. That's what these people love. Email them with a very simple template. Hey, my name is Jonathan. I'm a new author. I saw that you reviewed this book and I mentioned the book where I saw their review. I would have a new book out called This. I would love to have someone like you review it. Would you like me to send you a complimentary copy for every 10 to 20 you send out? You'll get one or two responses, so you might take you 20 to 1. Sometimes you send 10 out you get to. I can't give an exact amount. But so bad, right? 5 to 20% of the people will respond and asked for a copy. Now you will get a percentage. People ask for a physical copy. You have to make a decision. Do you want to spend two or $3 mailing a copy to this person? Or do you just want to do the people that will take a digital copy? That's the first question to ask yourself important question. It could take a while to generate these lists and could seem overwhelming. I use a piece of software crossed a couple $100 so I don't want to force you to do it quite yet until you've gone through three or four books it's not worth investing in that, but you can manually do it It takes to generate 100 names will probably take an hour to two hours of just opening new tabs with each person's review. A profile. Once you have this list of people, don't immediately email them. I want to take you this process very carefully. The next process is to go and look at each person's profile in detail so you can do this during the initial phase. Or you could do this once you have made your spreadsheet. Once you made your spreadsheet and your spreadsheet should have the person's name, their email address, the name of the book that they read and left a review for those three pieces of information we're gonna use later in a tool called a mail merge. When I look at someone's profile, what I look for is someone who only leaves positive reviews. Their reviewers who for product is three stars or worse, will email you and tell you. And then there's reviewers who delight and only leaving bad reviews. I always check the batteries because I don't get very many, but I recently got a new bad review uncertain. No master. And I thought, What's going on? It's pretty harsh review. I go and check the person's profile. They've never left a good review for anything. Okay, this tells me everything I know about the person. There's no point in messaging. Them are falling up. We're trying to improve the customer experience because they don't leave good reviews. They've never left a good review in the 10 years they've been an Amazon, look at people's profiles and get a feel for if they're a good person or jerk, jerks don't care if they're bad. Review puts you out of business. Good people will give you the advice you need to fix your book. Sometimes a bad review Ah person's gonna write about. We will email you and say, You have to fix your grandma this book. I'm gonna have to give you a bad review. It's not okay. They give you a chance to fix, and you have a choice to make you get a fix or you could not do it, and that's really valuable to so much better to get the chance to fix it. So go through these lists. I only message people that do 90% 5 star reviews enough I look for you were the only leave positive refuse because I want the odds in my favor. I'm not gonna send a free copy my book to someone who might just give me a three star review. I'm not paying someone to give me a bad review. That's insane. This is your chance to a little bit. Ensure that you either get that good review or that they e mail you and tell you why build up a spread sheet of people that you like. The reviews, like the quality there is like the way they leave reviews. And then you can use a tool called a male Mertz. You have a spreadsheet and automatically send each of them an email, and we'll fill in those different names. Hey, name. This is so And so I have a new book called This I saw that you read, and it's another thing from the spreadsheet. So pulls out whichever book there from the spreadsheet. I would love to have you do that and I would love have you read my book So I have my little temple. It's pretty simple. Would you like a complimentary copy of my new book is the title, and then the whole rest of the email is very simply, I saw you read a book similar mind. Have a new book out. I would love to get feedback from someone who's smart is you, and it's good reviewing this type of book and understands the genre. If you would like a commoner copy just replied to this email, Tell me what format works best for you. The reason I do this instead of just sending them a PdF copy of my book is that I would much rather pay 99 cents and gift them a copy of the book for 99 cents so that when they do leave a review, it's a verified review, and it's more valuable, much, much, much more valuable to use this format. Plus, when you send books with e mails to a new person when sent an email with your book attached or with a link to your book, oftentimes those end up in the spammer trash folder. E mails from a stranger should not come with an attachment or with a link, and professional reviewers also have email account. That's just for their Amazon review profile. So they treat that email address as a business address. That's just four getting requests for free stuff, so you don't have to worry about being annoying. But you do want to keep it very simple and short. You don't need to write 75 paragraphs. They know what's going on because your team of them from Amazon, they are used to getting his office. Most people get several of these a week and top reviewers, probably hundreds. That's one of the best methods. It's time intensive, but the results really, really pay off. Another way to get a few more reviews is to find bloggers who like your topic, message them by podcast people message Emmett. I'd love to give a free copy book. I'd love to do an interview with you. I would love to do something where I get your feedback, obviously, what you're talking about. I love your expertise and same thing for Facebook groups. There's Facebook groups for other authors to connect with each other, and there's Facebook groups around every different topic. Find the best groups the form for people that are in your niche readers in your space romance readers, science fiction, readers, nonfiction readers, big business readers, whatever find where they congregate and then approached the head of the Facebook group and said, Love to run a contest to your group and give away free copies of my book. When you think, would that be okay? They run the contest, and then the people who win You just asked to leave a review once they've read it. You get that great feedback if you take these action steps. If you follow these paths, you will never have to complain about hardest to get reviews. You'll never have to email me saying You can't get enough reviews for your book. If you really influence all 15 of these and can't get enough for views, you have a serious problem. It's nearly impossible to do all of these methods. They're so time intensive it would take. It would take two or three weeks, actually, do all of these. I can't imagine someone working eight hours a day grinding interviews, not being with the Generate 20 reviews really easily, and in fact, if you just spent one full workday on this, you should get 10 or 20 reviews set up on the very first day your book is launched and most of these techniques you can also use pre lunch before your book has ever launched. You could tell people it's coming out and start generating reviews that way. I'm very excited. Follow this method, generate reviews, and you could turn your book into a best seller. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. Head over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free copy of Jonathan's best seller, Serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listening to this episode of the serve. No master podcast To find out how I can get a free copy of my new book, Head Over to serve no master dot com back slash podcasts right now