Book Review Co-Op actually good

JP, reviews among peers is NOT against any Amazon TOS. They're encouraged. These are called Editorial Reviews and there's a section on every book's product page for them, put there by Amazon. Paying for reviews is frowned upon, unless it's with a reputable book reviewer like Kirkus. An author paying to join a group that reviews only the books written by the other authors in that group who also paid to join would be really close to the edge of the envelope. That said, I'd still not use it even if it wasn't frowned upon by the mighty Zon. The best reviews are organic and come over time as a result of sales.

Reviews are purely a matter of sales. The vast majority of readers don't review the books they read. On average about 1%, or one out of a hundred will review. New authors always put such high stock in getting reviews. If they put that energy into the one thing that will accomplish that end, they'd be far less stressed. That one thing is selling more books and the best way to do that is to write more books. No amount of review exchanges, begging readers, not even advertising the first book will produce as many sales as releasing a second book.

From start to finish, my first book took nearly thirty years to write. Once I got serious, it took four months. My second book is longer and took ten weeks to write and publish. In that ten weeks, book one sold 23 copies and had one review from a friend. After the second release, I sold over 100 of the first book in one week and got two new reviews. I currently have just over 1000 reviews and recently went over 100,000 sales, so that 1%  is consistent.

This is the same advice I always give new writers, struggling to gain readership. Pretend you never wrote that first book. Set it aside, ignore the sales dashboard, forget about advertising and reviews. Put every available minute and all your energy into writing the next book. Nothing sells a first book as well as a second one. Nothing.

Beautiful post, Wayne. My respect for you, sir, just went into overdrive. Thirty years? That's a lot of dues. Been at this game a little longer (since starting way back in '71), not that it makes much
difference. Does it get any easier? Some of it actually does. But you know what? It's a tightrope walk each time out, as am never certain if I'll be able to reach the other end, not even after all these years of scribbling and reading and scribbling and reading and learning. And that's what keeps me involved; the challenge is always there. It's just fascinating what we can do with words, the worlds we create, the entertainment (& hopefully some art) we, at times, are able to offer.

So many of us follow your informative posts religiously and accept them gracefully, for the time it takes and the work involved. Your success is hard-earned & more than well deserved. I feel this way toward Hugh H., Joe K., Russell Blake, as well as anyone else out there who has worked his/her tail off to get where they're at.

As far as Cin goes: the wonderful lady is a reader, as you mention, & this makes her input even more precious to so many of us. And besides, as all of us have witnessed by now, she has a heart of gold.

Continued success. 
K

Just to clear the air for everyone involved:

Amazon prohibits paid reviews. I don't think Amazon would consider this site a paid review site, as they are not "selling" reviews. If anything, you are paying for the privilege to WRITE reviews, as there is zero guarantee you will yourself get any reviews out of the program.

I'm not questioning the ethics of the site. There doesn't seem to be a quid pro quo going on. I'm questioning the usefulness of the site. It doesn't appear to be unethical. It just appears to be a huge waste of time for minimal reward.

Amazon's position on author reviews in general is a bit convoluted. Amazon does not oppose authors leaving reviews. They will explicitly tell you that. But they do prohibit anyone, including authors, reviewing their competition. Nobody wants a Coca Cola employee leaving reviews for Pepsi. From what I have seen, this is not a rule they actively pursue, but rather use it as a reason to get rid of problematic reviews when they are reported. This rule serves two purposes: two give them a legitimate reason to remove quid pro quo reviews (I'll give you five stars if you give me five stars) and to remove retaliatory or sabotage reviews (This guy's book is worst than mine. I'll leave a one star review to make my book look better).

So Amazon doesn't object to authors in the same genre leaving reviews, UNLESS they think there is something shady going on. In which case, this is the clause they will cite for removing the review.

My point was that the process is terribly time consuming. If I want five reviews, I HAVE to read and review five books. Well, sorry. I have a full time job, I run my own publishing company, and somewhere in there I would like to cram in some actual recreational reading. Having to spend days reading books I have no real interest in is not a good use of my time. It just isn't. Particularly when there is no guarantee I'll get anything in return. I really don't believe it a good use of ANY author's time. There are other more productive things you could be doing. The only way a service like this has a prayer of working is if it has a huge enough selection of books that people can find stuff they genuinely want to read anyway. Heck, I have a hard time sometimes finding books on Netgalley that I want to review, and they have hundreds of titles. I can go into my Vine account now and pick any book I want from over 600 titles. And most of the time I struggle with THAT to find something to read. If there was this monstrous selection of titles to browse, then I might feel differently.

I know. I know. That's why we need to...well...support the site and help build it up. Actually, no, I don't. If they want to give memberships away for free until such time as they build a reputation (which is what most of the successful companies have done in order to attract users), then I might be more inclined to experiment. But I see no reason to pay someone for the privilege of building their site up for them. Web hosting is not all that expensive. That is a very generic site with no complex coding needs. I pay $10 a month for my site, and that includes the domain name and email, and I know I'm on a more expensive plan than a lot of people around here. They can easily pay for the web hosting with the affiliate fees they will be making on the sales.

I agree with Wayne. Reviews are purely a matter of sales. Authors around here have it backwards. They think they have to get reviews in order to get sales. That sounds a little like cart before horse thinking.

Reviewing other authors, both good and bad reviews, is so entrenched in publishing it won't go away. Open any hard copy, the first several pages are reviews, from agents, publishers, newspeople, and yes, other authors. I agree that this site is within the bounds of ethics. But, just barely. I also agree that it doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. By the time you read five to qualify to have your book available and by the time someone actually buys it through the site's selection (which, by the way are probably affiliate linked), and then by the time someone reviews it, several weeks would have passed and had you been writing, you're be 20K words further along in the next book.

ARCs would fall into that category of shadiness. Unless, the receiver of the ARC bought the book, once released and then reviewed it. I don't solicit to send ARCs to anyone, outside of my beta reading team and editors. If someone offers, I'll gladly send them one. Most of us know that leaving a review on another author's book is a two way street. The group of Caribbean authors I mentioned, started cooping release notifications. This grew into sharing ARCs and has now morphed into character guest appearances in one another's books.

Reviews from authors work both ways. Let's say you look at a book on Amazon and are undecided, based on the blurb. You drop down to see what others have said about it and right there at the top are the Editorial Reviews. You see my review of the book and having read some of my work, this gives the book you're looking at instant credibility.

On the flip side, you just finished your favorite author's latest book and go to its product page to leave a review. When you scroll down, you see my review right there at the top, but you've never heard of me. I just gained stature, because I'm a writer and like the same books that you do.