Reviews: keys to Kindle sales, part one.

There is a lot that goes into driving sales for a KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) product. You need a good product, sure. A good Cover, one that signals the genre of the book, is a big thing. The 'Blurb for the book also matters a lot; it needs to get the site-viewer to be willing to turn a page in the Look Inside or just impulse buy. But that all presumes that a possible buyer even got to your Storefront page...

To get those eyes on your product, you need... NEED... things that drive the Amazon SEO to prompt people to go look.

Sales feed sales, of course. You get to the 1st page of a listing for a genre or classification, you get recommended a lot. For the rest of us, though, you'll need the other drivers to kick in first. By far, the most important seems to be "10+ Reviews, several of which with high Stars count". 5-Stars are golden; a couple of those really matter a lot.

You can't, without sock puppetry evils, make those happen, and sock puppets or surrogates will be noticed unless you are very very sly about them. But you can use your initial Marketing push to Friends, Family, and Favors-owed to make a pitch to all those buyers to Review.

Do it. The reward for getting those Reviews up in the first week are matchless.

If those happen, even a few, it is more likely that the spot- or impulse-buyers that come along will post Reviews too. That virtuous circle is one of the best things that can happen for your book.

So encourage Reviews. Lots of them if you can. Live with any that are less than optimal; learn from anyone who spikes your work; cherish the 5-Star wonders. They really help.