Amazon is a pioneer in the customer review arena. Practically since the beginning, the site has had customers who purchased products and reviewed them. Over the years, they’ve cultivated their reviewers and refined a continually maintained list of “Top Customer Reviewers.” The list of top reviewers is updated once a day, and – according to Amazon – “showcase our best contributors at the moment.”
This is a good place to look for reviewers who have a proven track record, and presents you with a one-stop-shop to look at how (and what!) the reviewer reviews, and where their interest lays.
From Amazon:
- Review helpfulness plays an important part in determining rank. Writing thousands of reviews that customers don’t find helpful won’t move a reviewer up in the standings.
- The more recently a review is written, the greater its impact on rank. This way, as new customers share their experiences with Amazon’s ever-widening selection of products, they’ll have a chance to be recognized as top reviewers.
- We ensure that every customer’s vote counts. Stuffing the ballot box won’t affect rank. In fact, such votes won’t even be counted.
The Savvy Book Marketer has put up a blog post by Kathleen Gage about book promotion strategies. This is an area where many writers fail, as … well, they’re writers, not marketers.
CourseSmart has been working with publishers, educators and students since 2007 to integrate ebooks and digital content into college technology ecosystems, bringing digital course materials directly to faculty and student bodies.
I recently read a diatribe by an author about how great and wonderful DRM is. And how it saved the music industry. And how they believe they “added something unique to the market, and I believe I deserve to be paid for my work.” And how ebooks are in decline. And how “a lack of DRM decimated the music industry.”
The question was recently asked on a NaNoWriMo Facebook page, “Those of you with children, when do you squeeze in time to write?”