But also, sometimes you have a great book that just needs some more visibility, and the # 1 common practice for the past decade has been to try and drive a lot of sales in a short period of time to boost your sales rank so that you're at the top of your category for awhile,
thus reaching new readers.
Beyond giving
readers a way to judge your work, reviews provide two things: 1) wherever the reviews are (blogs, Goodreads, Library Thing, etc.), they provide social proof that your book is worth the time of a
new reader, and 2) reviews on Amazon feed the algorithms that give your books more visibility, and
thus more
reach to
new readers.