How to get book reviews (legitimately)

August 10, 2026 · 3 min read

Reviews are the closest thing to a prerequisite for selling books online. A listing with a handful of reviews converts far better than one with none, and readers who will never read a single review still register the star rating in the half-second they spend deciding whether to click.

Which is exactly why an industry of paid reviews exists, and why Amazon polices it as aggressively as it does.

The rules, plainly

Amazon prohibits any review obtained in exchange for compensation. That includes money, gift cards, free products conditional on reviewing, and reciprocal arrangements between authors. It also prohibits reviews from anyone with a close personal or financial relationship to the author — family, business partners, and people you have paid.

Enforcement is largely automated, and it does not only remove the review. It can suspend the account, remove the listing, and withhold royalties, and appeals are slow and often unsuccessful.

What actually works

An advance reader team

The most reliable method. Assemble a group of readers before publication, send them the finished book, and let them post on launch day. A listing that appears with reviews already attached starts in a completely different position from one that appears bare.

Recruit them from your mailing list, from readers who wrote to you about a previous book, and from genre communities where you are an actual participant rather than a visitor with a link.

The back matter ask

A short, direct line at the end of the book, at the exact moment someone has just finished and feels something about it. Two sentences, no guilt, and a direct link.

This is consistently the highest-yield method per unit of effort and the most frequently omitted.

Book bloggers and reviewers

People who review books in your genre for their own audience. Read their submission guidelines and follow them exactly — the fastest route to being ignored is a generic pitch to someone who does not cover your category.

Expect a low response rate and a long lead time. Reviewers work months ahead, so approach them before publication, not after.

Library and reader platforms

Goodreads, StoryGraph and similar sites have their own review cultures and their own giveaway mechanics. Reviews there do not appear on Amazon, but they build the visible reception a book has, and they reach readers who choose books there rather than on a retailer.

Editorial reviews

Trade publications review self-published books, some through paid review services that are explicitly permitted because the fee buys consideration rather than a favourable verdict. They can be quoted in the Editorial Reviews section of your listing, which is separate from customer reviews.

They are expensive and they can be negative. Read what you are buying before buying it.

What to do about a bad review

Nothing. Do not reply, do not explain, do not have a friend defend you. Authors arguing with reviewers is a genre of internet content and it has never once ended well for the author.

You can report a review that breaks Amazon's guidelines — one that is abusive, discusses the wrong book, or is clearly not from a reader — and sometimes it is removed. A review that simply dislikes your book is not a violation, however unfair it feels.

A mix of ratings also reads as more trustworthy than uniform five stars, which readers have learned to discount. A book with nothing but perfect scores looks organised rather than loved.

How many is enough

There is no threshold that unlocks anything, despite persistent rumours about magic numbers. What changes is reader psychology: a listing goes from "nobody has read this" to "people have read this" somewhere in the low double figures, and that is the gap worth closing first.

After that, reviews accumulate roughly in proportion to sales, and the way to get more of them is to sell more books rather than to chase the reviews directly.