THIS Is The Review Alternative You Have Been Looking For (Amazon KDP Review Guide)

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Are reviews really that important as everybody tells you? Did you ever ask yourself this question? I did, but I still bought the notion that it's important to have a lot of reviews. But is it really necessary to have 20, 30, or 50 reviews before you start ads? I mean, is it natural for a book that just got published before it gets any marketing at all to have that many reviews? First, people need to buy the book before they can review it, right?

[00:00:30]So, it doesn't really make sense. So, I want to to talk in this video about about reviews, how to get reviews, if reviews are really that important as we think, and how we can still make money with Amazon KDP and scale and build a sustainable honest Amazon KDP business by thinking differently about reviews.

[00:00:49]My name is Andrea Bernhardt. I started Amazon KDP over 2 years ago, around 2 years and 4 months ago now, I think. I published over 55 books in those 2 years. I've earned over 600,000 US dollars. Best month was 123,000 US dollars in one single month. And of course, as all of us are, um we are focused on reviews. We have multiple methods to generate reviews, but I was I don't know if fortunate is the right word, but I had this a different situation than most publishers start internationally because I started in the German market. I'm from Austria, so my native language is German. So, it made sense for me to first create German books. In the German market, most people don't know that, but it's okay to start the Amazon ads with one review. And the book can perform really, really well. I had books that had less than five reviews and made 2, 3,000 US dollars a month. As I said, with with less than five reviews. Um and that's just normal there, and that's common knowledge there. So, publishers don't really care to push to more than maybe 10 reviews. I know a lot of publishers only push to one review, so they want one review, start ads, everything else is organic.

[00:02:01]And that works really well. And it doesn't work, we need to be honest here, it doesn't work that well in the US market. But why?

[00:02:10]Are Americans just different than Germans or what's the reason behind that? Why does a book with one review in Germany sells, potentially could sell like crazy, and meanwhile a book in the US with one review has to a hard time.

[00:02:25]Why is that? One reason why that is, KDP self-publishers, I'm generalizing here, of course, but let's say 80% or 90%, they use unnatural methods to get reviews and flood the entire market with reviews that are not real. And if everybody does it, you also need to do it because else you can't really compete. And it's just a really bad situation for all of us. And the biggest issues are all of these review sites and services who let you review other people's books and then they review your book. And that's definitely against Amazon's terms of service, definitely a gray area that nobody really knows if it's against the terms of service or not. But what we know is that it's not in the interest of Amazon, that it's not in the interest of the readers because it's not real reviews, it's not real people reading it, it's other self-publishers who only got the book to write a review so they can get the review for their own book and make money. So it's just unnatural, it's not good for the readers, and it's also not good for self-publishers.

[00:03:38]Because now we are flooded, as I said, but most self-publishers now think that they need 30 reviews before they start the ads, before they start promoting the book. Because all other publishers have like 100 to 5 600 reviews or over 1,000 reviews and that's just as I said a really bad situation. So, even though it's not definitely against the terms of service, it's bad for all of us, for the readers and for Amazon. If it isn't in no one's interest, why do we do it? For the short-term interest for us self-publishers. But, if you think longer than 2 years ahead, that's still negative. As I said, it destroys the entire market like that. Most people will now comment and and complain every other publisher does it. So, we need to do it as I said, we need to do the same if you want to catch up. But, that's not true.

[00:04:29]I have one video, maybe I can pop it up somewhere here where I have an example how you can sell really well with less than 10 reviews on the US market, not necessarily on the German market as I said, but really also on the US market.

[00:04:40]So, I have multiple books that do really well with few reviews on the US market, but it's harder.

[00:04:47]It's really harder and that's the issue because self-publishers don't want to call all of them out, but a lot of self-publishers want to be fast, which is good, but they want to be fast and don't really care about their book by being fast. And that's a big issue. I have also made another video about that where I just ranted for I don't know 15-20 minutes about that most publishers don't care about the readers. But, if you start caring about the readers and how good the quality of the book is. If you create a great product, then you will get reviews. Even if you in the beginning, you just get one sale per day for example because you only have two reviews and the ads don't work that well because you only have two reviews. But, you get sales and even if it takes longer, more people get the book, more people read the book and if it's an amazing book, they will review it. That's why reviews exist for real customers to give their opinion.

[00:05:44]That's it. It's actually that simple. Do that and try to market the book. Maybe you just break even, so at least a few people buy it, but if you don't wait a month or two, you already have up to 10 reviews, maybe 20 reviews, organically, through real people, and then you can be more aggressive on the ads. And I know that is against everything you learn, against any launch strategy and that you learn. Normally, you need to on launch day have 30 reviews and go really aggressive into ads. And that works. It works really well. If you do it like that.

[00:06:16]But as I said, most people only are able to do this either if they have a brand, like I do it. So when I have a new launch of my brand, I actually get 30, 40, 50 reviews in the first 2 weeks. So I can launch really aggressively, but only books in my brand. And other people who got a new book without a brand, single book and want that to push aggressively, they all use these review sites because there is no I mean there are alternatives, also we'll talk about them. They are more expensive, they are way more work, and people don't want to put in the work and the money to get reviews. So they just get 30, 50, 100 reviews through these video services.

[00:06:58]And then, as I said, start Amazon ads immediately and push hard. So that's what you learn on YouTube, in courses and so on. Because it works. That's why you learn it, because it actually works.

[00:07:09]But it's not honest, it's not how you should do it, it's not ideal, it's not in the interest of all of us because it destroys everything slowly. It already did destroy everything. Like 3 years ago it started to destroy everything slowly, and now we are in a valley that already is completely destroyed.

[00:07:25]But we can rebuild it. And if you are a publisher that's not stressed, that is interested in quality, in honesty, in the reader's satisfaction, then just publish the book. Maybe find five test readers with a strategy like I recommended. You can, for example run Facebook ads, tell them they will get the book for free. And what you can do there to get the people to be interested in that offer, you can tell them, "Hey, I buy it for you. So you can send me your address or you can put it on your wish list and then I will buy your book and you will just receive it. And then you give me a personal feedback. No review, you just give me a personal feedback." And then after you receive the personal feedback from the person, you just let them know, "Hey, if you're open to it, what would help me and the book a lot would be a review, just so you know. Maybe with an image or a video of the book, it's completely up to you, but that would help me and the book a lot." And a lot of people actually do that. They first of course give you the personal feedback and if the feedback is good, amazing. If the feedback is bad, implement it of course to make the book better, but that way you get multiple people to give you feedback and a lot of them are also open to leave a review. And that way you get 5, 10, 15, 20 reviews quite easily. Of course you need to know Facebook ads, you need to learn it, but you can learn Facebook ads in 2 days. It's not magic, it's really simple. The ad creatives I create in 2 minutes in Canva or nowadays also with the eye. You upload it onto Facebook, you start the ads, you structure the ads, you watch two YouTube videos about how to set up a meta ad campaign or Facebook ad campaign.

[00:09:10]It's not really complicated and then you just need to nail the the messaging sequence with the people. One way you can reimburse them, so they buy the book, so you don't need their address because a lot of people don't want to give their address away. They get the book because they bought the book, you just reimburse them, so they really got the book for free and then they give you personal feedback. Or as what I just explained, you can just buy the book for them. If they're open to it, can give you the address and you would then order the book to their home. Um then they have the book and can can test read it and give you the feedback. And that works pretty well, especially if you only aim to have five to 10 reviews. 100 reviews with the method gets crazy expensive.

[00:09:52]That's why it's not really scalable, but you can do it for, as I said, to get traction for the book. And then everything else, if the book is a great product, if the cover is good, the positioning of the book, how well it speaks to the target audience, if everything else is really outstanding, but you have only five reviews, people will still buy the book because they want the book. If they see the cover and they think, "Okay, that's a great concept and the cover looks amazing.

[00:10:17]That's exactly what I'm looking for."

[00:10:19]they will buy the book, even if it has five reviews only. Even if it has one review, they will still buy it. Not all people do, of course. It's way easier to sell with more reviews.

[00:10:30]That's a fact, but still people will buy it. And then you scale to one book a day, maybe two books a day, maybe three books a day, and then you will get real customer reviews over the next weeks and month. And the more reviews you have, the better the conversion rate, and everything else will also improve. I I guess that's the natural way that it's intended to be. That's the fairest way, the most honest way, and that works.

[00:10:56]It's not really aggressive scaling, but if you do it with multiple books, you can still scale quite quite well. When I speak with very advanced publishers, the reason why they don't scale are reviews because they have the money for book production. They can just hire 10 ghost writers at the same time. I know people who did that and then had more ghosts at the same time. They can just have 10 ghost writers, pay all of them $1,000 per book. They have the money to do that. So book production is an issue for them. For them, the issue is getting honest reviews. So that's why they don't scale because they they never get past a certain review. But, if you focus on maybe one book a month that has really high quality, if you are on the level where you can, of course, produce one book a month with high quality. If you're a beginner, then it normally takes longer, obviously.

[00:11:48]But, if you're in the level where you maybe you create four books a month currently, and they're all just mediocre, then slow down. Maybe switch from four books a month to one book a month, focus all your time on this one book, and make it 10 times better than all the books I'm currently publishing.

[00:12:05]And then, try only to get five reviews or 10 reviews on that book. And then, if you did everything else correctly, that means the positioning, especially the positioning, but also the book cover, then it should start selling well. And over time, build up the review count.

[00:12:20]And that's the solution. It's uncomfortable, or it's not ideal in terms of performance and maximum output in the beginning, but it works. It works really well. And that's how I would recommend to person who really is concerned about review services, review sites, or just wants to do it in the most honest way. If you want to scale, it always makes sense to build a brand.

[00:12:43]As soon as you have a brand with an email list, for example, you already have a group of test readers. Just send an email, "Hey, do you want the book for free? Give you the real paperback. You can test read and give me a feedback."

[00:12:56]And then, you have suddenly a hundred people who want your book for free. And just maybe select 50 of them, send them the book, and then out of those 50, 40 give you the feedback, and you then just let them know that the review would help you. And out of those 40 people, maybe 25 or 30 leave a review just on their own. And that's that's really easy. That's a small email list that will end up being those results. If you have 500 emails and you have that in less than a year, most likely less than half a year, that's the ideal situation. So, from all of my brands, it's reviews are solved. The only issue is always a new book brand.

[00:13:42]But for a new book brand, as I said, my attempt would be to just publish the first book, get test readers through different methods, for example, meta ads, get up to five to 10 reviews, and then start organic method, as I explained in the entirety of this video. I think that's the way we are heading. Think it makes way more sense, the future of it.

[00:14:05]And I know it's it's hard in niches where there are huge competitors to compete with them. With five reviews, it's hard. It's impossible technically, but you don't want to beat those books after half a year.

[00:14:21]Maybe you can be one of those books after two years when you got so many organic reviews, you can keep up with them. I think most publishers underestimate how many reviews you get if the book is good.

[00:14:34]If you also have review call to actions in the book where you just ask them, "Hey, maybe never thought of it, a review would help me. So, just so you know."

[00:14:42]But if you if you do everything there correctly, then you get way more reviews than you think organically.

[00:14:49]If the book is good. But but these are all the conditions that most publishers don't meet. That's why they use the review services. But it works, as I explained. I know multiple people who make a lot of money with books that started with five reviews.

[00:15:03]Not only in the German market, but especially also in the English market, which most English publishers don't believe, because they don't want to say got brainwashed. But like the the standard opinion of KDP community internationally, at least on YouTube, thinks that you need a lot of reviews. And I think that's false. It helps definitely to have more reviews, but I think it's not necessary.

[00:15:29]We're switching in direction where all of these review services are are dying out. These test readers it's the only thing I do and would recommend to other people to test and then everything else organically through customers who came through Amazon. If you like this video, you can also follow the channel and yes, I have one video in particular I mentioned it in the middle of this video where I show how I get a lot of sales with only one book with only nine reviews. Think it was nine.

[00:16:01]Um of course now it has way more organically, but it's already had what was it? 5 or 4,000 BSR um with nine reviews. So that's was a great success. If you want to watch this video, feel free to do so. It should be here somewhere. And also likes this video, subscribe to the channel and I would be happy to see you maybe in our free school, maybe inside Publisher Rocket or just in the next video.