How I Sold at Least One Book by Responding to a Bad Review
Credit: streetwrk.com (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Bad reviews represent opportunity. On Tuesday, I received an email that illustrated this clearly.
The message was from someone that bought my book. But they almost didn’t. They said that they were going to buy my book, until they saw this review on Amazon. After they read that it was “outdated,” they decided not to buy the book.
Until they saw my reply to the review. Because of my reply, they went ahead and bought it, telling me that it looks great.
The review was written more than a year ago. Just like my reply. But reviews can live forever. I’ve heard plenty of people say that you should not respond to reviews of your book posted by Amazon. But if you know how to respond calmly and kindly, I think that’s bad advice.
It would have been easy to ignore that review. It has 0 helpful votes. This might lead you to think it’s not an influential review. But that’s the trap people fall into. If I had simply dismissed that review and decided not to reply, this person would have never picked up my book. They wouldn’t have emailed me, and I never would have known.
Participation constitutes agreement to our User Guidelines. I want to keep the environment work-friendly. Please no advertising (posting links to your site or any site you are affiliated with, unless it was requested, even if you feel it is related), inflammatory or disrespectful remarks (including personal attacks of fellow commenters) or profanity.
If you are not sure if a comment would be appropriate, have a product to pitch or are wondering why a comment was deleted, please contact me directly. I'm happy to help, and I appreciate you keeping all of this in mind. Thank you for reading and commenting.