Overview of the Review Process & Launch Week

Dear lovely ART ladies… (ART being Advanced Review Team 😊)

Thanks for coming over. (I’ll post the link to this page in the FB Group also, so you can easily access the link to come back to this page again if you need it).

This week is Action Week, so please read this through to get a sense of what’s happening. But also, please don’t worry if it feels like you don’t remember what’s going to be happening when, as I will also message you step by step as we go through the week.

✅ Your only Action Point today is to decide which type of review you want to leave – Verified or Unverified (see below).

As I mentioned, only a couple of days ago, I thought the process would simply be, “download the book, write a review, done.” But I’ve since discovered some important nuances.

I’m really hoping to get as close to the target of 50 reviews the first two weeks, and I’m so grateful for your help. Reviews are the lifeblood for getting books noticed. But I’ve now learnt that there’s a significant difference between “Verified” and “Unverified” Reviews.

Verified reviews weigh more than Unverified reviews. With a Verified Review, Amazon will show your review on Amazon.com also. This is crucial to be able to reach readers other than in the UK.

But it does mean you have to buy the book for 78p, as Amazon then sees this as a real purchase and will tag your review as “verified”. If you’re good to do a Verified Review, which would be amazing, you’ll need to wait until Full Launch Day please (see Timeline below).

Unverified reviews count too and are equally as precious to me. The big difference is that only people who shop on amazon.co.uk will get to see it. And because Amazon gives this a lower rank, it means that it gives lower priority to the visiibility of the book. To leave an Unverified review, you’ll need to “buy” the book when its price is at £0.00, which will be for 4 days from Soft Launch Day (see Timeline below). After that, the price goes up to 78p for a few weeks.

✅ Please decide whether you would like to leave a Verified or Unverified Review.

There have been some shenanigans going on over on Amazon, such that Amazon has been taking down reviews that it deems to be “suspicious.” 😳

It’s thought that this relates to Amazon figuring that some people have been leaving a review, even though they haven’t read the book, and deems these to be dishonest reviews.

You’ve already read the book in advance. But Amazon doesn’t know that. So we need to emulate you reading the book for Amazon, after you’ve downloaded it. To do this, once you’ve downloaded the book, please “read” the book again by flicking through it on your Kindle. You don’t have to go through the entire book, a little more than half is good. It’s not known exactly how much is “enough” but it has been noticed by many that at least half appears to be enough for Amazon to approve and show the review.

Now, you’re ready to post your review! 🙌

It can be a bit of a hunt to locate where to leave a review, so I will message you with a direct link on Messenger when the book goes live. The review link will go directly to the review page for the book.

If you need help, here’s a video you can watch on how to leave a review – it starts at 4:51 minutes, and I’ve cued it to start at that point:

By the way, Amazon only allows customers who have spent at least £40 on Amazon in the last 12 months to post a review, so if you are unable to leave one, please private message me and we’ll find a different avenue for your review.

Please direct message me to let me know when you’ve posted your review and the name you used for the review. I will be reading every single review. You helping me with this and leaving a review means a lot to me and I want to know your thoughts. ❤️