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Book Publicity & Marketing Article by Online Book Publicist and Search Engine Marketing Expert

Amazon has gradually introduced a new controversial feature called Themes. This new section was first available on the Amazon mobile app. By now, it is available on all operating systems and devices. Themes allow you to see the most frequently used words in all customer reviews. If you wish to see where and how the word in question was used, click on the word to reveal its locations. This will provide you with easy access to the exact review including the term.

This system is pretty basic and is not supported by any form of intelligent algorithm. Therefore, it will also feature terms that may not be helpful or in some cases damaging to your product’s image. I will cover this issue later in this article.

Themes are located on all book pages of all book formats between section Customer Reviews featuring the star-rating results and Top Customer Reviews. Look for heading Read reviews that mention.

This cluster of words could be helpful to show readers the sub-genre of the title and the subject matters it covers. The effectiveness of this section will however, largely depend on the clarity and validity of the reviews submitted by “readers”. I am putting this word in parenthesis simply because not everyone who leaves reviews reads titles in its entirety or able to write superbly worded reviews.

Amazon’s intentions for rolling in this feature is to weed out professionally written / paid for reviews. I wonder if this is working to solve this issues. A thought comes to mind; What would I, as a publisher, do to assure that the words featured in Themes are correct and enticing MY TARGETED AUDIENCE. Yes of course. The solution is to buy even more professionally written, more over optimised reviews. This will bring us to a domain of Review Optimisation.

A few fast pointers to turn this fairly new feature into a selling and marketing tool.
- Never ever write your own reviews. I, as a publicist, can spot a self-review for miles. This will either elongate the purchase path of a title or even cut it short and before completion. Completing the purchase path and selling a copy should stay the main objective.
- Encourage your readers to write reviews. The sheer amount of reviews will assure the validity of your Themes.
- Be nice and buy the books of your colleagues and naturally leave reviews.

How to leave a review with Themes in mind.
- If the book is young adult, used the term teen or similar assuring the word being picked up will not be "adult". Naturally, having "adult" within the cluster might damage your colleagues reputation and throw off the potential buyer.
- Try to avoid using names of characters, since these words will take up precious screen real estate without ever becoming selling points within the cluster. Focus on the genre and sub-genres aka categories. This will help potential buyers in finding the right book.
- Try to avoid talking about the story line in detail. Review should be your opinion and impression of the book and not the book's description, already included on its Amazon page.

Basically, while writing your review, think of the words you use and try to think optimisation and possibilities of words being picked up by the Themes system.

Our company does not create reviews, please don’t contact us regarding, however, we do have 22 years of experience with SEO and SEM and would be happy to offer more pointers regarding writing and optimising book reviews. Use the contact form included in this page.