If you want to market your book well online, you need to have reviews – and not just any reviews, you want well-written ones. That’s where a book review template comes in. It can let your reviewers know exactly what information you want them to write.
Now I’m not telling you to put words in your reviewers’ mouths. We still want all reviews of your books to be honest and authentic ones. I’m saying to give reviewers a book review template with what sorts of information to include.
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For example:
- Why they picked the book up
- What they got out of it
- Would they recommend it to someone else?
Having a simple book review template for your reviewers can make all the difference when it comes time to write those reviews.
Today we will talk about why reviews are so important, what kinds of reviews you want to be getting, and how to draft a book review template that will be truly successful for you.
Why Book Reviews Are So Important
If you’re scrolling through Amazon looking for a new book or product, you probably aren’t going to click on one that doesn’t have any reviews. Heck, you probably won’t click on it even if it has ten reviews!
Amazon KDP and the Amazon marketplace are FULL of products, and you need yours to stand out from the pack. You need people to know your book means business, and having a lot of reviews helps you to do that.
You are much more likely to view a book favorably if it has a hundred reviews. But how do you get those reviews?
How to Get Book Reviews
Before you can make use of your book review template, you have to find people who will review your book. How do you do that?
Well, that’s something we teach you in detail in our AAA program (Author Advantage Accelerator). And what it comes down to is building a large launch team before you launch your book.
A launch team is a group of people who will leave you an honest review of your book in exchange for a free advanced reader copy (ARC). This is usually in eBook form, so you can just send them a downloadable link instead of worrying about the printing and shipping costs of physical books.
You may have to get creative when building your launch team, as there might not be 100 people you can think of off the top of your head to live your book review template to.
Fear not! There are plenty of people out there who would love to leave a review in exchange for a free copy of your book. You just might not know them personally yet.
Of course, you can try people in your professional network – they are often a great place to start. We recommend not starting with family and friends as it might be more difficult for them to leave a critical review if warranted.
Next, you can look for people in your social media network. I’m sure you have some on your author channels, or even some loose acquaintances in your personal network who would be happy to leave a review.
Last, but certainly not least, you can reach out to book bloggers and BookTokers who are seasoned at leaving reviews for books. They will leave you some of the most thoughtful reviews, whether you give them a book review template or not!
Book Reviews Made Easy
If you sign up for our Author Accelerator Elite program, it comes with a guaranteed 100 Amazon reviews right off the bat. That’s all the reviews you need spoken for – we do all the hard work for you!
The program comes with a lot more than just guaranteed book reviews too, you will get full support in the writing, book marketing, and launch of your book, so the whole self-publishing process runs as smoothly as possible.
But that being said, we’re back to the original topic of conversation. You want those reviews to be thorough and thoughtful, so that’s where having a book review template for your launch team comes in.
The Only Book Review Template You Need
Now let’s discuss your book review template. This is what you can hand out to people in your launch team so they know precisely how to review your book.
Your book review template should include:
- Why you picked up the book
- What you got out of the book
- What the book covers well
- Who the book is geared towards
- If you would recommend this book
- What your favorite parts of the book were
- How the book made you feel
Here are just some of the book reviews Chandler Bolt got for his book Published.: The Proven Path From Blank Page To 10,000 Copies Sold using a book review template:
As you can see, the reviewer discussed what they liked about the book, how it made them feel, and who the book is written for.
In this book review, the writer answered what the book covered well, who the book is for, and some insights about using the book for authors.
Last but certainly not least, this review covers almost everything, so they really used the book review template well. The reviewer talked about why to buy the book, what they learned, why the book is so helpful, who the book is for, and some of their favorite parts about the book. It’s a stellar book review, and with a book review template, you can recreate something like this too!
How to Leverage Your Book Reviews
Once your book reviews start rolling in, you want to use them to your advantage. And there are a number of ways you can do this.
You can start by putting some book reviews up on your author website. You can also type out some of the favorite reviews in the product description section on your Amazon page so you can be sure that potential readers will see them.
You can put a snippet of one of your book reviews in your author bio, and you can even put some book reviews in your author media kit.
There are so many ways you can leverage your book reviews once you have them, so don’t just let them sit there!
It’s Time to Get Those Book Reviews!
You don’t want to go through all the trouble of writing and self-publishing a book only to have it flop on launch day. So it’s time to start racking up all your book reviews now!
If you need help coming up with your launch team, putting together a book review template for your story, or marketing your book in any way, the team at selfpublishing.com is here to help.
Plus, if you sign up for our Author Accelerator Elite program, we’ll get you set up with your first 100 book reviews guaranteed!