Getting Book Reviews: Go to Your Extended Network

Reviews matter more than feedback on your writing by a factor of a billion. Squared. We can talk about feedback later, because, like I said, reviews are more important. Since this isn’t directly Resistance related I’ll be brief and vague.

Most of us have a personal network of about 150 people (look up Dunbar’s Number.) These are our strong (or relatively strong) connections.

Beyond that, we have a network of those people’s 150-person network, or approximately 22,500 weak connections.

Weak connections are fine, those people you ping once a year to say hey. That’s where virtually all the business connections and good stuff lives. The strong ties, folks you see all the time, already know your situation, perhaps share it, so if they had an answer, you’d already know it.

The good stuff, in this case, comes from the weak ties, friends of friends.

When you’re looking for reviews you’ll be tapping into your extended network: friends of friends, down to the third generation, down to the fourth generation, down to the tenth generation.

Rule of thumb: ask for 10X the number of reviews you want and be pleasantly surprised instead of unpleasantly bummed.

4 thoughts on “Getting Book Reviews: Go to Your Extended Network

  1. Always reach out. For the most part people are helpful. They realize what’s at stake are more than willing to help. Writers are a good bunch. If you succeed we succeed.

  2. I understand how important reviews are. Everyone wants and appreciate a pat on their back for anything they’ve worked had to accomplish. I’m guilty of not giving reviews of books I’ve enjoyed , or not. I feel resistance about how to write a review, that it will sound stupid compared to the ones from prominent sources.. But on the other and, probably a simple line or two on what I liked would suffice. Then I have to get over the hurdle [for me] of navigating Amazon to find where to write the review. (Technologically ‘handicapped’.)

  3. Anytime you’re on the page of something you’ve bought, press the Control Key (CTRL) and the letter F and then type ‘review’ and it’ll help you find where to leave a review on that page.

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