Visions of a Dark Horizon

Book reviews on major websites like Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble are so important to authors, especially new and indie authors who don’t have a big marketing engine working for them. Leaving a review is really easy, but I’ve heard from a few people that they’re just not sure how to do it, so here’s a quick and easy guide if you want to leave reviews for books you’ve loved.

I’ll start with Goodreads, because it’s incredibly popular with readers, and it’s free – if you love books, you should definitely have a Goodreads account!

1. When logged into Goodreads, search for the book you want to review and click on it.
2. On the left side of the page, there will be five stars, and it will say ‘rate this book’ – click on the star of your choice (five, right?), and it will give you a link to write a review. Click on that.
3. Write the review. It doesn’t have to be much – you can say anything from ‘I really liked this book’ to a detailed review of what you loved about it, your favorite characters, anything. As an author, I can tell you that reading a review of my book that details what the reader loved about it, yeah… that’s the good stuff right there!

And that’s it – three easy steps and you have made an author’s day!! For Amazon or Barnes & Noble, the process is essentially the same – find the book and click on stars to rate it, then write your review. It is that written review that is key for a lot of the book rankings and for improving discoverability. 50 reviews is considered the ‘magic number’ that boosts consumer confidence and can unlock other benefits for a book as well.