Girls Don’t Want Chocolate, Girls Want Reviews for their Books on Amazon

If you’ve ever followed an author on social media, you’ve likely heard it said that the best way you can support an author you love is to leave a review.

It’s absolutely true.

There are a few reasons for this.

When you give a book stars, and especially if you drop a few sentences of review about your thoughts on a book, you are providing really great context for other readers considering the book, and whether or not the book is a good match for their tastes. Your review helps the right readers find the book in future!

But, something magical happens when you hit certain milestones in sheer quantity of reviews for a book, too.

Most importantly, Amazon, the book-selling machine of our era, factors the number of reviews into how it considers books for promotional opportunities. This include top ranking lists, also-read referrals, and newsletters.

We can’t know exactly how Amazon factors in reviews because their algorithm is proprietary. But we can observe. And from what we can observe, it’s widely accepted that reaching 50 reviews is an important milestone for books to be considered for these opportunities. More recently, I’ve started to hear reaching 100 reviews is an important milestone, too.

Which gives authors some good metrics to aims for.

But for readers, the bottom line is, we need you! We need your reviews!

Your review of a book does far more than tell the author you enjoyed the story. It’s a crucial way for Amazon and other online booksellers to measure a book’s reach, quality and traction in the market. And it helps other readers determine of a story is up their alley.

Your review has a lot of power for good!

So why not start right now? Whatever the last book you read from Amazon is, you can pass forward a little love and support by leaving a review!