How to post book reviews on Amazon from Midwest Book Reviews

I frequently share posts from Jim Cox of Midwest Book Reviews. I felt this was interesting and worth your time. Book reviews are necessary to help your book.

Because of Amazon’s new policy prohibiting professional review resources like the Midwest Book Review from posting their own reviews, but leaving it up to authors and publishers to do so, I thought it would be useful to provide a general “how to” instruction guide for those who are not familiar with the process of posting reviews on the Amazon web site. The following was prepared by my web master:

Book Review Posting Guide for Amazon.com

1. To post a customer review on the Amazon web site at www.amazon.com, you first have to create an amazon.com account.

2. If you don’t have an amazon.com account, look at the top of amazon.com‘s home page where it says “Sign in to get personalized recommendations. New customer? Start here.” Click on the “Start here” link.

3. You will be prompted to enter an email address. Enter an email address that you will use reliably, and click on the circle in front of “No, I am a new customer” to fill it in with a dot. Then click on the button that prompts you to take the next step.

4. From here, amazon.com will spell out the necessary steps to finish creating your account. You’ll have to think of a password, ideally one with both letters and numbers, and you’ll also set the answers to some security questions. These are so a random person can’t sign into Amazon using your name and buy a ton of stuff on your credit card.

5. Amazon will walk you through the process with step-by-step instructions; the final step will be to go to your email account and click on the link in an automated email thatamazon.com has sent you.

6. Once you have created an account, you will have to use it to buy something before you can post reviews on amazon.com. This will most likely involve adding credit card information to your account, which is why the password and security questions are so important. I recommend buying a cheap digital download item if you want to start posting customer reviews right away.

7. Once you have created an account and bought something with it, you can go to almost any book displayed on amazon.com and click on the “create your own review” link to submit a review for that book.

8. Amazon itself has a lengthy Help section about customer reviews, displayed on its website at

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200791000

That authors and publishers can post book reviews by Midwest Book Review on Amazon seems to be going quite well. I know this because Amazon keeps sending me little emails when there are reader comments with respect to these posted reviews. The following is an example:

From: delivers@amazon.com
To: mwbookrevw@aol.com
Sent: 1/28/2012 12:45:04 P.M. Central Standard Time
Subj: New comment on your review of Tiffany by Design: An In-Depth Look at Tiffany Lamps (Schiffer Book for Designers & Collectors)

Greetings from Amazon.com Customer Discussions,

Because you requested to be notified when people commented on your review of “Tiffany by Design: An In-Depth Look at Tiffany Lamps (Schiffer Book for Designers & Collectors)”, we are sending you this e-mail.