In an earlier article I discussed in detail why authors need Amazon reviews. With thousands of new books, both indie and traditionally published, hitting the market every month, authors need to do everything humanly possible to convince customers to buy their book instead of someone else’s, and one of the most obvious ways to do this is to get Amazon reviews, and lots of them.

Here’s the rub: getting Amazon reviews is HARD. Most people don’t think to write reviews of books or indeed any other product they buy – unless, perhaps, they really hated a product, in which case they may jump at the chance to tell their world how bad it is! It’s easy to get dejected as an author when you check your listing and see no new reviews popping up, but the truth is that even if readers are buying your book and loving it to bits, the vast majority still won’t think to write you a review. We all have busy lives and your readers are no different.  Writing a review takes time, and the reviewer doesn’t get anything out of it, so why would they bother?

Well, some will bother – if you give them a little nudge.

You need to be proactive and encourage your audience to review your book, and you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do so.

One way to make reviewing on Amazon easier for your readers is to set up a universal link for your book. ‘Oh no,’ I hear you cry, ‘not yet another technical thing I need to get my head round! The learning curve of a modern author is never-ending!’

Yes, it certainly does feel like that sometimes, but thankfully universal links are very simple to understand and set up.

So, what is a universal link? It’s a hyperlink that will take your reader directly to your listing on the Amazon website in their country. So if you are a UK author and you post your universal link on Twitter, for example, an American would be taken to your book on Amazon.com, not Amazon.co.uk. It saves you the headache of posting a list of country-specific Amazon links each time, and it saves the end-user the hassle of navigating to the right Amazon site to buy or review your book.

In short, it’s simple, it’s brilliant and whoever came up the idea deserves a pint.

Here’s how you set up a universal link in three easy steps:

  1. Go to a universal book link site. There are several out there (google ’em), but the one I use is booklinker.
  2. You then need to register with the site. It’s a free service, no catches.

3. Once registered, go ahead and created your first universal link. Go to your Amazon listing and copy the URL (here’s mine, for example: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sarahs-Shadow-Nick-Jones/dp/0993079490), then paste it into the window on the booklinker site. Hit ‘Create Universal Link’ and you’ll then get to pick the suffix of your link. Using my book as an example again, I went with https://mybook.to/SarahsShadow.

That’s it! You now have a shiny new URL that you can post on your website, social media, blogs etc. Booklinker claim that “over 90% of surveyed users report an increase in sales” after using universal links, so start using yours today!

I hope you found this article useful. If you have any questions or if I missed anything pertinent, let me know in the comments below!

[UPDATE] It’s worth pointing out that you can also create a universal link for your Amazon author page. Here’s mine: author.to/NickJones