Super Book Blast: How to Get Good Reviews on Amazon (Giveaway)

Today I have the pleasure of featuring a new book by a Theo Rogers on my site.  As a writer, I recognize the importance of the internet company giant, Amazon.  So this book looks like it might have some sound strategies on how to make the most of your product's time on Amazon with Good Reviews.  So why not check it out?  I even get to feature an excerpt from it. Sound advice.  Oh, and before I forget,  Mr. Rogers is giving away a  $100 Amazon Gift Card! :D 
                                 Becki




Blurb:
How To Get Good Reviews On Amazon is a simple, no-nonsense guide that teaches exactly what it says it does. Based on both psychological science and thousands of hours of conversation with some of Amazon’s top reviewers, it takes you behind the scenes into the reviewing subculture that has grown up on Amazon’s website. It gives you a deep, insider’s knowledge of how the top reviewers think and operate. It not only shows you what to do: it takes you inside the reviewers’ heads so that you can see for yourself both how these techniques work and why they’re so effective.

Lessons include:

· A simple, four-part formula for writing emails that get your work reviewed.

· Three things never to say when communicating with reviewers!

· How to pick reviewers who are more likely to give you a good review.

· How to reduce the chance that a reviewer you contact will post a bad review – even if it turns out they don’t like your work!

· How people get caught out when receiving reviews from friends and family.


This book teaches an honest, straightforward approach that works. It works because it’s not based gimmicks or tricks but on a real understanding of how Amazon reviewers operate: most of all on what they expect from authors and other sellers. If you want to know how to talk to Amazon reviewers in a way that will make them respect you as a professional and see you as the kind of seller they actually want to help, this is the book for you.



Excerpt

One of the most fundamental ideas in this booklet is that there’s a definite reviewing subculture that has grown up on Amazon’s website. Like any culture, it has its own particular values and mores: its own ideas about what’s right and what’s wrong. When we come to the issue of shill reviews, we collide headlong with the values of the reviewing culture. As you might expect, most reviewers see shills – and the sellers who use them – as very, very wrong.

Because this section is all about values, I think it’s important to stress that I’m writing here as your guide to Amazon’s reviewing subculture. I’m not writing as a missionary on its behalf.

Simply put, I believe that your journey through the Amazon Jungle will be smoother, easier, and more successful if along the way you’re respectful of the values of the natives who dwell there. For that reason, I’m going to lay out for you some of the more commonly held tenants: the basic beliefs that most of the natives would hold to. It’s not for me to tell you whether you should embrace these values to the core of your being and make them your own. I’m just telling you that as a matter of pure pragmatism, you are going to make trouble for yourself if you ignore them.   


 About the Author:


Theo Rogers combines years of coalface experience on Amazon's website with formal training and qualifications in a range of business and social science disciplines. He's spent literally thousands of hours talking with Amazon reviewers, getting inside their heads, and learning what makes them tick. He's spent almost as many hours observing the carnage that so often takes place on Amazon's forums. In the process he's developed a deep insider's knowledge of the reviewing subculture that's grown up on Amazon's website.

He's also seen a lot of authors and other would-be sellers make the same mistakes in their dealings with that subculture - over and over again.

As a result of his experiences, Theo has come to believe that yes, there is a simple formula that works: a way of dealing with reviewers that's honest, powerful, and extremely effective at winning reviewers over, getting them on your side, and making them actually want to help you.



Find Theo on the web:

Friday Treats {3} - Hello Kitty Cake



So this past weekend we celebrated by middle daughter's birthday.  She is a total Hello Kitty nut, so Mom being tight on money at the time, decided to create one from scratch.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  Below are a few pictures of  the completed results.  Enjoy.




Ingredients: 
  • 2 white cake mixes, prepared per package directions
  • 2 containers of cream cheese frosting
  • food coloring, red, blue and green
  • cookie cutters: triangle shaped, circle shaped, and heart shaped
  • circle 8 inch pan and small cake pan (6 x 10)
  • toothpicks

Directions: 
  1. Bake cakes per directions. I added red food die to cake mix to make the cake pink. (two circle cakes and one rectangle cake. Let cool.)
  2. Assemble layer cake with circle cakes with frosting between layers and on sides, but not on top until after you score the face of the cake in step 3.
  3. Use the cookie cutters to make the ears ( 4 layers cut with the triangle cookie cutter), the bow (4 layers cut with the heart cookie cutters), eyes (2 circle cutter) out of the rectangle cake.  Use the circle cookie cutter for the nose and eyes to dig a small wells in the top of the cake for nose and eyes. 
  4. Then using the hearts as a template, cut around them and cut the top layer away once you've taken the bow off, creating a well for the bow.  The scoop frosting in to use as glue for when you add the pieces.
  5. Now it's time to  assemble the ears. 2 layers per ear with frosting between.  Then coat the sides and press them up against the circle cake in the approriate places.  
  6. Now it's time to put the bow on.  (Word to the wise here, you are going to need another piece of cake under the bow where it hangs over. This is easy. Just cut the corner off the sheet cake and place it under the overhang.)  This is where I use toothpicks to hold the bow in place. 
  7. Next place the eyes and nose cutouts in their wells.  
  8. Once this is all done it's time to finish frosting the bow (with pink - which is just a small bit of red food coloring in the cream cheese frosting.)  Then frost the nose yellow or orange.  Finally mix all you left over colored frosting to make a dark gray frosting for the eyes and whiskers.  I used a toothpick to draw them on. 
While this isn't the most professional looking cake out there, it did please my daughter. 


©Becki Gylberte All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental. No portion of this work may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.