Wahh! I Don’t Want to Lose All My Amazon Reviews

A guest post from Carolyn Howard-Johnson

Amazon Book Reviews

QUESTION:
Do you lose your Amazon reviews when you publish a second edition of your book?

ANSWER:
You can get Amazon to post reviews from the first edition to the second through Author Connect, and you can get Amazon to put a referral widget from the first edition to the second.

They tend to move this widget around, but it’s always been near the top of the first edition buy page (though not as prominent as I’d like to see it!).

You can see what it looks like on this page for the first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter—just click here.

Scroll down just a bit to see it.

It isn’t as flashy as I’d like it to be!

But please don’t buy the first edition!

The second edition is expanded, updated and, if I do say so, lots prettier!

Do know that Amazon transfers all of the reviews; you can’t pick and choose.

So if something in the first edition has been criticized and you fixed it in the second edition, they won’t discard that earlier review.

A recourse is to use the comment feature that is found at the end of each review to dispute the claim—maybe with a thank you to the reviewer for helping you correct that in the second edition.

There are some other ways to help fix the problem listed in the newest of the #HowToDoItFrugally Series of books for writers, How to Get Great Book Reviews Frugally and Ethically.

Just an extra here: If you just update your old edition rather than publish a new one, you may be losing more marketing opportunities than you ever dreamed of.

Of course, a second edition should have something new about the cover (like the words second edition) or a whole new cover and at least 10% new content).

About Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The multi award-winning second edition of The Frugal Editor; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers.

The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers.

She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques.

Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews free.

She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor.