HOW AMAZON’ S TEAM OF OLD-SCHOOL BOOK REVIEWERS INFLUENCES WHAT WE READ INFORMATION FROM A SEATTLE TIMES ARTICLE BY ANGEL GONZALES
Have you ever wondered how much influence the reviews on Amazon have on the sales of your books? Of course you have, and nothing is more frustrating than trying to get them. You see books with thousands of reviews and although your sales are okay, it’ s like pulling the proverbial“ hen’ s teeth” to get reviews. Worse yet, something has flagged my account, and they will NEVER accept one of my reviews even though they keep sending me requests to review books I’ ve read. Go figure.
Angel Gonzales writes:“ In a company driven by engineers and run by algorithms and metrics, Amazon’ s small group of book editors is an anomaly of sorts. But through the Amazon Book Review and other methods, it’ s trying to build Amazon’ s presence and influence in the world of literary culture.”
He goes on to say that Amazon’ s small team of literary types read books, write about them and rank them according to quality. The question most authors would ask, particularly self-published authors who are growing in numbers every day, is“ How do I get them to review my book?”
These editors produce Amazon Book Review, an online offering similar to literary supplements newspapers have been putting out for more than a century. They also put together frequent lists of recommendations prominently displayed on Amazon’ s bookstore.
According to Gonzales, apparently, the book-editor team focuses on traditional publishing versus the fire hose of self-published Kindle works Amazon has enabled.
A literary agent who didn’ t want to be identified certainly thinks their picks have an impact on sales or can put a book on the radar of other literati although it is hard to measure.
While there is no hard and fast answer about grabbing the attention of this team of editors, some suggestions would be to work your tail off to get reviews because with many, many positive reviews your book is more likely to be noticed. No guarantees, but there is an old adage that the squeaky wheel gets the oil.
Several papers covered this topic, but if you want to read the full article by Angel Gonzales, just click here.
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JULY-AUGUST 2016