On Monday 25th July, book blogger Rosie Amber wrote a post encouraging readers and writers alike to post a short review on Amazon for any book they’ve read and enjoyed. She provides a link to a post that provides some excellent book review templates.

Following this up, Terry Tyler is starting an initiative along with other writer-bloggers including Rosie, Cathy from Between The Lines, Barb Taub, Shelley Wilson and Alison Williams. I’m pleased to be associated with these ladies through Rosie’s book review team and to have the chance to spread their book review message.

The idea is this: We declare August to be “Write an Amazon Review Month”. We invite everyone who hears about this initiative to use their Amazon account to post just one review on one book that they’ve read (feel free to carry on if you get in the swing!). You don’t even have to have read the book recently, it can be any book you’ve read, any time. The book does not have to have been purchased from Amazon, though if it is you get the ‘Verified Purchase’ tag on your review.

Remember, this isn’t the Times Literary Supplement, it’s Amazon, where ordinary people go to choose their next 99 cent Kindle book. No one expects you to write a thousand word, in-depth critique. I don’t know about you, but I’m more likely to read one short paragraph or a couple of lines saying what an average reader thought of a book, than a long-winded essay about the pros and cons of the various literary techniques used. Yes, those are welcome too (!), but no more so than a few words saying “I loved this book, I was up reading it until 3am”, or “I loved the characters, the dialogue was so realistic.”

Why should you write a review?

They help book buyers make decisions. Just as travellers check out Trip Advisor before deciding on a hotel, readers like to know what other people thought of a book before making a decision to buy and read.

If the book is by a self-published author, or published by an independent press, the writers have to do all their promotion and marketing themselves. Reviews from the reading public are an important and free helping hand.

The number of reviews on Amazon can help a book’s visibility. If you love a writer’s work and want others to do so, too, this is the best possible way of spreading the word.

Off we go, then! A few more pointers:

• If you need any help with writing your review, do click on Rosie’s post.
• A review can be short. Here’s an example of such a review for Disappearing in Plain Sight:
• You don’t have to put your name to the review. Your Amazon ‘handle’ can be anything you like.
• No writer expects all their reviews to be 5 stars or to say the book is the best thing ever written; there is a star guide on Rosie’s post that you can use to rate your reactions.

Spreading the word:

Would you like to tell the Twittersphere about your review? If so, tweet the link to it with the hashtag #AugustReviews – Terry Tyler will be doing one blog post a week featuring those links: An #AugustReviews Hall of Fame!

If you have a blog and would like to spread the word about #AugustReviews, please feel free to re-blog. Many thanks. We hope you will join the August review wave.