Amazon started as a bookstore and still generates billions of dollars from selling books every year. Even after diversifying into other items, selling books is still very lucrative for the site. And since books are still very popular on Amazon, it’s a great place for authors to make a name for themselves.
One of the best ways to gain a reputation as an author is to get book reviews and reader comments on Amazon. Getting lots of reviews is a great sign that people care enough about your books to write their experiences with it. But how do you get lots of reviews on Amazon?
A good way to learn how is to see which books get the most reviews. Let’s take a look at Amazon’s most-reviewed books and how Amazon book reviews influence your profile as an author.
Do Amazon Book Reviews Matter?
Amazon book reviews matter. They have a lot of power in building an author’s reputation and making a book easier to find on Amazon listings for potential readers. If you have a good reputation as an author and your book is easy to find, that means your book is more likely to succeed.
How Amazon Reviews Impact Your Book
Amazon reviews, customer feedback, and star ratings impact your book greatly. Most Amazon bestsellers have hundreds, if not thousands, of reviews, showing that readers care enough to write about those books. Let’s take a look at how Amazon reviews can impact your books:
- Builds credibility: Would you rather buy a book with no reviews or one with a hundred reviews? Positive book reviews are endorsements and can convince potential readers to give the book a shot.
- Improves visibility: The Amazon algorithm likes books with lots of reviews and tends to elevate top-reviewed books in listings. Books with more reviews are more likely to appear in recommendations, search results, and “Also Bought” sections.
- Generates feedback: Reviews aren’t just about numbers and ratings. As an author, you can read these reviews and learn from what reviewers have to say, good or bad. By engaging with reviews, you can get a better feel of your audience to help your next books resonate even more with them.
Top-Reviewed Books on Amazon
As simple as it sounds, answering the question, “What is the most-reviewed book on Amazon?” is tough. Since books rise to prominence and fade into the background every now and then, the answer changes from time to time, and that’s not even considering that different Amazon regions can have different top-reviewed books.
But let’s lock on a specific list that can give you a good idea of which books have the most reviews on Amazon. Specifically, we’re taking a look at Business Insider’s 2019 article about the most-reviewed books on Amazon of all time. Let’s check out the top ten most-reviewed books from that list:
- “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins
- “Orphan Train” by Christina Baker Kline
- “Divergent” by Veronica Roth
- “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr
- “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn
- “Beneath a Scarlet Sky” by Mark Sullivan
- “The Fault in Our Stars” by John Green
- “The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics” by Daniel James Brown
- “Fifty Shades of Grey: Book One of the Fifty Shades Trilogy” by E L James
- “The Husband’s Secret” by Liane Moriarty
What’s interesting from this top ten list is that over half of the books listed here have been adapted into film or TV projects or are in the process of being adapted for screen at the time of the article’s publication. It’s reasonable to think that because of that, these books became some of the most-reviewed books on Amazon of all time.
The popularity of their adaptation or the hype surrounding the future adaptation drove people to read these books and leave reviews, which resulted in them being some of the most popular books on Amazon.
How to Get Lots of Reviews on Your Book
Even if you don’t have the hype of a movie or TV adaptation behind your book, there are things you can do to gain more reviews. Let’s take a look at some tried-and-true tactics to get more book reviews on Amazon:
Use Author’s Notes
One of the simplest ways to get book reviews is to use the author’s notes. Add a reminder at the end of your book requesting readers to write about what they felt about it in an Amazon review. Since they just finished reading and the book is still fresh in their mind, it’s a great time to ask what they thought of the book.
Ask for Reviews on Social Media and Newsletters
If you’ve already cultivated a community or an online presence as an author, you can make a post or send emails to remind your audience to leave reviews sometime after your book releases.
Offer Advance Copies
To build hype around your book, you can send out advance copies to influencers, readers, and other members of your target audience. Amazon doesn’t allow sellers to bribe reviewers through incentives and gifts, so take care not to provide anything more than free copies of your upcoming book. Then you should also remind them to leave honest reviews because asking them to “leave good reviews” can be taken as an attempt at review manipulation that breaches Amazon’s review policy.
Reach Out to Book Reviewers and Bloggers
Reputable book bloggers and reviewers often hold a lot of sway in the book community. Similar to the previous tip, consider offering free copies of your book in exchange for honest Amazon reviews.
Remember to explicitly ask for honest reviews and don’t push them to post a dedicated blog article or review on their platforms. If they like the book and have enough time on their schedule, there’s a good chance they’ll do that on their own.
Conclusion
Amazon book reviews are important because they improve your book’s visibility and build your reputation as an author. While many of the most-reviewed books on Amazon are highly popular because of movie or TV adaptations, you don’t necessarily need the hype of screen adaptations (although that might help) to get reviews.
Use the tools available to you to garner reviews on Amazon. Write author’s notes, ask for reviews on social media platforms, offer advance copies, and reach out to book influencers. Getting a lot of Amazon reviews on your books might be hard work, but the visibility and reputation boost will be worth it.
Book reviews, good or bad, are useful. However, negative feedback that’s fake or manipulated can only hurt your author’s profile. If you’re facing a problem with fake reviews, TraceFuse is here to help. Our AI-powered tools will seek out and remove those reputation-damaging fake reviews within days.
