Reviews

Mike,

welcome to Kindleboards!!  I'm going to move this over to the Writer's Cafe as this is more a topic for authors. 

Geoffrey
Book Corner Moderator

Until you get fans that you badger to leave reviews, you'll get few from buyers. 100 sales is very good, compared to the average.

If it's selling well without reviews, maybe you don't need any. 

Reviews are hard to garner.  I've barely had any myself after a long while. 

There are times you start to wonder about paying for reviews, or begging friends and family for them just so the books dont look so empty and devoid of readers.

Its just a hard slog at times.

You really ought to be beating the bushes with the growing number of book bloggers who give honest reviews (but they're discriminating; they don't agree to review all books submitted by authors). Also, look up Top Amazon reviewers in your genre and query them. Otherwise, use social media to try to reach out to fans. There are threads in this forum that address how to go about doing all of this. Do notpay for any review. Several highly successful authors recently have been exposed for having paid shady operators to gin up scores of bogus reviews. Their names are now mud.

1 review per 100 or so reads is pretty typical.

Other than that, look for book bloggers that review your kind of book.

Try a Librarything giveaway?

Sometimes I wonder if we, as authors, don't put too much importance on reviews.  I am not convinced that the average reader/buyer is swayed one way or another.  Twice this last month I have had moments where someone has told me Amazon gave my book 5 stars.  I explain that Amazon hasn't given me anything.  The stars are an indication of average of all reviews.  I got the deer in the headlights look.  Then, another friend was looking for a book for her book club and she chose a book that had no 1 stars but eight 5 star ratings.  I looked at the reviews and am sure that they are from friends and family of author (What a great story Dora tells.  I am sure you all will enjoy it as much as I did, can't wait for another from this very talented new author).  Then I read the Look Inside.  Let's just say I will be curious what the other book clubbers think.

That being said, I am always pounding the pavement looking for reviews from blogger/reviewers in my genre.