By getting the word out about your book, hopefully people will then talk and write about it. This largely will occur when reviews of your title begin to appear. Such reviews might run on blogs about your genre or subject matter (hence the importance of sending such media a press release to make them aware of your book), on the Amazon.com or Goodreads pages for your book, or even in published periodicals.

Potential readers often base their decision to buy a book on the reviews. For most, it’s a far more important factor than the price. And the more reviews you have on your page, the better the odds that a potential reader will purchase your book.

Some writers unfortunately fear reviews. After all, your book is your baby, and no one wants someone criticizing their infant, especially in public. Remember, though, that negative reviews aren’t necessarily bad for you. Just because one person doesn’t like something about your book doesn’t mean another reader won’t like it either – indeed, some readers may not want what the negative reviewer claims was missing from the book and so actually are more inclined to make a purchase in spite of it. Further, if bad reviews appear alongside good ones, a potential reader is more likely to believe that the positive reviews are genuine. If only good reviews of your book appear in your Amazon.com page, then potential readers may believe you’re stacking the reviews in your favor.

Another advantage of reviews is that they tend to increase traffic from social media sites to your website or an online page where your sell your book. If the reviewer posts his review to Facebook or Tweets it, then that’s just one more place that someone will learn about your book; if it’s of interest to them, they’ll go to your site to find out more.

Finally, reviews increase the “stickiness” of your page at Amazon.con or Goodreads; that is, the more reviews there are about your book, the more time a potential reader will spend on your page. And the longer they spend at your site, the more likely they are to buy the book – or at least to remember the title and make a purchase at another time.