Asking for reviews after launch, without breaking a rule
This is the other half of the review question. The advance campaign — copies sent out before release so something is waiting on launch day — is a separate job with separate rules, covered in Getting early reviews without breaking a rule. This guide is the months afterward, when the book is on sale and reviews arrive one at a time from people who paid for it.
Two things make those reviews worth chasing.
The first is a stranger. Somebody who has never heard of you is deciding whether to spend an evening on your book, and the only evidence available is what other readers said. A page with four reviews reads as a book nobody has read. A page with sixty reads as a book with an audience, and the content of the sixty matters less than their existence.
The second is the store itself. Reviews and ratings are among the signals feeding recommendations, category placement and the various "readers also enjoyed" mechanisms. How much weight they carry is the store's business and it changes, but the direction is not in doubt.
The first handful are the hard ones. Going from zero to ten takes longer than going from ten to a hundred, because a book with no reviews gives nobody the cover of agreeing with someone.
Where to ask, in order
At the back of the book. This is the best placement available to you and it costs nothing. The reader has just finished. They are at the emotional peak of their relationship with the book, holding the device or the page, and a single direct sentence converts better than anything you will ever email.
Two rules make it work. Put it immediately after the last line of the story, with nothing in between — no acknowledgments, no author biography, no advertisement for the next book. Anything you insert between the ending and the ask spends the goodwill you are about to draw on. And keep it to one or two sentences.
In the newsletter, to people who bought. Your list is the second-best place, because those people chose to hear from you. Ask once, in a normal paragraph in a normal issue, not as a campaign with a subject line about it. Then stop. See The newsletter, and what to give people for joining.
At an event. Anybody who bought a copy from your hands and enjoyed talking to you is more likely than anyone else to act on a request. Say it while you sign. More on the rest of that in Events, signings and selling books in person.
Everything below those three — social posts, cards in the package — produces a trickle rather than a plan.
What to say
One or two sentences. Specific about what you want. No guilt, no bargaining, nothing offered in return.
Something close to this works in all three places: Reviews are how readers find books like this one. If you have a minute, a line or two on the store where you bought it would help more than you would think.
The wording to avoid matters as much. Do not apologize, and do not explain how hard publishing is; that is a request for sympathy, not a review. Do not say "a five-star review" or "a positive review," which is a rule breach as well as bad manners. Do not promise anything in return.
In the Interior Formatter. Back matter is built from fields, so the review ask is a setting rather than a rewrite — type the line, and the page is rebuilt into the print PDF and the EPUB with the rest of the back matter, correctly paginated. Start a book → · about the Interior Formatter
Authors put this off assuming it means re-typesetting the book. It does not: the line lives in a field with the dedication and the author note, and costs a fresh export. The wider case for that page is in The back of the book is where your next sale is.
The rules that get authors in trouble
These are the ones that end with reviews stripped, a listing suspended, or an account closed. Exact policies and penalties differ by store and change, so read the review policy of every store you sell on. What follows is common to most of them.
You cannot offer anything in exchange for a review. Not money, not a gift card, not a free copy conditional on reviewing, not a giveaway entry, not a bonus chapter. The moment something of value depends on the review being written, it is compensated — prohibited nearly everywhere, and regulated in several countries.
You cannot ask for a positive review. Ask for an honest one. A request that specifies the verdict has conditioned the review and defeats the purpose of having it.
Family and close friends are usually barred. Stores link accounts by shared addresses, devices and payment methods, and they act on it. Reviews from people connected to you are the ones most likely to be detected and removed, and the removal can take honest reviews with it.
Review swaps between authors are against most stores' terms. "I will review yours if you review mine" is a trade, which makes both reviews compensated, and at scale it is easy to spot because the accounts point at each other.
Paid review services are the same thing with an invoice. Anyone selling you a number of reviews is breaking a store's rules on your behalf, and the consequence lands on your listing, not on theirs.
When a bad one arrives
Do nothing. Publicly, ever.
Do not reply, do not correct a factual error, do not forward it to your newsletter or your followers. A review is one reader talking to other readers, and you were not addressed. Any response you make becomes a bigger and more permanent thing than the review was.
The only useful private response is to read your one-star and three-star reviews once, months later, looking for the same complaint appearing repeatedly. One person disliking the pacing is taste. Nine people saying the middle drags is information for the next book.
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Promotion after launch week · More: Getting early reviews without breaking a rule · Goodreads, for authors who find it baffling · The back of the book is where your next sale is