Life isn’t easy for indie authors. Without name recognition or a dedicated marketing team behind them, indie authors have a steeper mountain to climb than authors backed by a traditional publishing house.

A Crowded Market for Indie Authors

It gets even harder when you consider the number of self-published books released every year. According to Bowker, ISBNs were issued for more than a million books (more than 870,000 print books and nearly 130,000 ebooks) in 2017. That number may actually be an underestimate when you consider Bowker does not provide ebook identifiers for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and that Amazon does not report the number of books published through their platform annually.

My point is that there is a lot of competition out there. How does an indie author cut through the noise? How do they find their audience? Outside of direct advertising and reaching out on social media, one of the most effective ways for an author to get exposure is to get book reviews. The more reviews, the better.

Indie Authors Need Your Book Reviews

Unfortunately, getting reviews is not always so easy. Amazon has rules about who can review a book and can erase reviews with a simple click of the keys. Just like that, your mom’s words of praise disappear into internet oblivion.

Book reviews are not only a measure of quality, they also influence marketing visibility. Amazon ranks your books not only on the volume of books sold/downloaded (i.e., your conversation rate) but on the number of reviews for each title, among other factors. Let’s say Amazon is not exactly transparent about their algorithm. That said, the lower your ranking (#1 is better than #100), the more sales you will have. The more sales you have, the better your ranking. The trick is getting this magical cycle started in the first place.

That’s when indie authors can come together. If every indie author read a book by another indie author and wrote a review, the impact on the writing community would be huge. Do that two or three times a year, wow! This is not to say anyone has to trade a review for a review (transactional reviews are frowned upon by Amazon). They can simply keep on reading books like they usually do but make a point to be more proactive in giving feedback. There is power in numbers, and when indie authors support their fellow writers, everyone benefits.

What Kind of Book Review Should You Give Indie Authors

No one likes to get negative reviews, and it is not only because of our egos. Bad reviews can hurt sales, especially if an author only has a handful of reviews to begin with. Fewer people are willing to take a risk on an unfamiliar author if they have only 1- or 2- star reviews.

With that in mind, I have heard some indie authors say that you should only post positive reviews or reviews that will skew the results to 3 stars or above. Sorry, fellow writers, but this does not sit well with me. Reviews should be honest and objective. While inflated reviews seemingly support the writer, they are misleading for the reader. Writers should succeed on merit, not pity. That’s what I want for myself at least.

I reserve 5-star reviews for my favorite books. These books are so entertaining and impactful I would read them over and over again. A 4-star review means I really enjoyed the book and would love to read more by the author. A 3-star review means it was good but didn’t knock my socks off. As for 1- and 2-star reviews, call me a softie but I rarely use them.

If a book isn’t to my taste, I may decline to review it. There’s no need to tear someone down for stylistic reasons. If I find factual errors in a work of non-fiction, I may call them out. If grammatical and formatting errors are so egregious that I can’t get past the first page though, I may feel obliged to say something — in private. Otherwise, I remember what my mother always taught me: If you have nothing nice to say, it’s better to say nothing at all.