Amazon's Book Review Policy Punishes Authors, Rewards One-Star Bandits
Reviewing Books? No friends or family allowed!
Amazon wants unbiased reviews by people who don’t know you at all.
If you ask your fanbase, social media followers, email subscribers, or anybody you’ve ever spoken to online to review your books, Amazon will delete them.
I understand that reviewers must be objective.
Authors pressuring their buddies to five-star their books: that's tacky. But I'm a professional book reviewer,
and people do ask me to review their novels all the time, and most of the time, I respectfully take a look, post a nice review if I can do so honestly and if not, I pass over the book in silence. Unlike those 1- and 2-star Review bandits who prey upon Free Today books and sabotage them with short, devastating reviews, I am on a mission to support and encourage writers, not publicly humiliate them. "Those 5-star reviewers must have read some other novel," or they're smoking something, the critics sneer. And they get a free pass to pull down author rankings for complaints such as 'too much profanity--one star!" or "This book has an overtly Christian message--one star!"
@kaelci
did not ask me to buy her book or post a review, but Amazon doesn't care. My mistake was sharing in the review that I had emailed the author. Quoting from the Rejected Review:
I should do an Author Interview
and save Matthews’s comments for my own blog, but I’ll share them now because the world needs to know B.M. Matthews. She replied to me:
“I'm trying to be distinctly Australian in this. :) I usually repress it because most of my social life is lived online, and I discovered very quickly that no-one except another Australian really understands a thing an Australian says. Amazon took it as a Conflict of Interest -- a book reviewer dared to contact an author! Oh no! That violated Amazon's review policy!
Silly me!
I should have known this would be construed as Biased Book Reviewing. I should have anticipated this:
A book review that promotes a book! Oh no!
"Promotions and Commercial Solicitations"
In order to preserve the integrity of Community content, content and activities consisting of advertising, promotion, or solicitation (whether direct or indirect) is not allowed, including:
... posting content regarding your (or your relative's, close friend's, business associate's, or employer's) products or services.
Community Guidelines
Guidelines for Amazon.com Community participation.
Amazon.com wants your voice to be heard! The Amazon Community provides various features for engaging other users and sharing authentic feedback about products and services - positive or negative. These Community Guidelines help you use Community features, including Customer Reviews, blah blah blarg.
Right. That's why they include this disclaimer:
If your review is removed or rejected
because it does not comply with our guidelines concerning promotional content,
you may not resubmit a review on the same product,
even if the resubmitted review includes different content.
You can't read my review at Amazon (sorry, @kaelci!), but you can read it here: Half Past the Moonfall by B.M. Matthews: Rave Review from Keangaroo!
You might want to read this Derek Murphy article as well:
Why Amazon is deleting book reviews: understanding Amazon’s new review policy and how to get back deleted reviews
... Amazon will always do what’s best for its own business and survival, and authors need to be flexible and adaptable if we want to keep taking advantage of its platform. Although this sucks for authors, and the reviewers who spent time writing the reviews, it’s a reminder that authors need to take control of and be responsible for their own author platform, and develop reader relationships to handle crises like this one.
Amazon has been doing review purges for some time, but today was a massive glitch, with many authors seeing ALL of their reviews disappearing – both indie and traditionally published authors lost hundreds of reviews at once. Luckily, some of them have started being restored, but it’s still scary. It’s not exactly new since it’s been going on for awhile, but every “review-gate” affects more authors. In this article I’ll try to explain why reviews are being deleted and what you can do to fix it.
Making sure reviews are honest and trustworthy is important for Amazon’s business; so they delete reviews from friends, family members and anyone they think has a personal relationship with you. However a few days ago they made a big announcement: people will no longer be able to give a free or discounted product in exchange for reviews.
Lesson Learned.
If you have ever spoken to an author online, HIDE THE EVIDENCE before investing time writing a review for Amazon.
Buy it here: [Half Past the Moonfall by B.M. Matthews]https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MPZC8D7/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_bEHnCbTP8FHY8)
Yeah, I've been trying to tell folks how ruthless Amazon is. To me, their policy doesn't even make good business sense.
As we learned years ago with the Seed machinima-trailer competition. Oooooh, don't wanna go there.... the only reason Amazon has my loyalty or my business at all is User Friendly - as is Facebook - but I should go underground and suffer any number of obstacles and challenges to get out from the grip of Amazon, Facebook, and all those secret surveillance services.
We definitely learned how Amazon can be, didn't we? School of hard knocks. I still fume every time I think about that contest.
Me too!
The long list of grievances against Amazon and unfair policies...why on earth am I still loyal to Amazon... user friendly for starters. We've had no other "Robber Baron" monoliths of industry to compete...
I'm re-thinking my choice to go on Amazon Select. At least it's only locked in for three months.
After this review debacle I've been investigating other platforms. Sure, they might not be as well-known as Amazon, but they are less flawed and more platforms can only be a good thing anyway. -- Have you heard anything about Gumroad? That was recently suggested to me and I added it to my possible-listings-list of April. At least then I can distribute to the amazingly large amount of people who don't use Kindle!
👀 😒 Also, I'm not entirely sure how set in stone those Amazon terms are. I see reviews all the time from people who evidently know the seller. "This review is based on a free copy received from the author before it was published." ... well obviously THEY were in contact with the author beforehand!! 👀
the amazingly large amount of people who don't use Kindle - I just might switch! If I can make sure the titles I bought will transfer to the new device.
This is the first time Amazon has done this to me, refusing to publish my review because I have (gasped!) emailed the author. That's' one reason I didn't take time to purge the review of any such clues. Still, I'm kicking myself for not having done so. But I beat myself up more routinely and more soundly than anyone else. My husband never needs to yell at me for some blunder, #1 because he's too cool to do that but equally #1 because he knows I'll always chastise myself more severely than anyone else. No, I've never heard of Gumroad. Sad to say, Amazon owns the lion's share of the market, but in putting out a new book, I would think it's better not to have it available ONLY on Amazone for the first few months. Then again, the 70% royalty. Then again, how many Amazon customers will buy our books anyway.... I'm glad you tested the waters here. You've given me second thoughts about going KDP with my NaNo November Madness novel. (Which I still need to revise. Urgently.)
I've found that a lot of people use the Kindle app on their phones/laptops/computers as well as the Kindle Reader Device thingee, but quite a few people are also interested in a PDF version. A lot of people don't realise that Kindle is an app as well as a device, which is the same camp I was in until recently. I'm glad I wasn't the only one who didn't realise! Feel less silly.
When the 3 months are up I'll still be on KDP, but not Select; will branch out. :) Select is only good for Kindle Unlimited and promotional periods, and so many people recommend it... but for a brand new no-name author... maybe not.
Also.
Don't beat yourself up!
It's not your fault Amazon are jerks. ;)
Your review was fantastic, and it's wonderful to see my story through the eyes of someone else! There's no way I could glow about my own words like that. I feel they were inferior compared to works I slave over, and that no one could possibly like the story because I didn't spend five years editing every sentence twenty million times.
You show me that I am wrong, and I appreciate you! 💕
You imastered the "fresh voice" and your comment (you didn't spend five years editing every sentence twenty million times) reminds me that too much editing can destroy the voice and momentum of a novel.
This is awful. Or just write better and honest reviews on Goodreads. I don't even look at Amazon reviews.
You're a smarter woman than I am!
I'm still grievously upset about my rejected review but Lesson Learned. Amazon used to be more lenient with me but not lately. They're watching who my friends are and heaven forbid I should write a favorable review promoting their novels. sigh
It's kind of creepy that they follow people to such an extent.
Yes!
In registering my new Kindle, I almost synced it to Facebook and Twitter, but that's how Amazon knows that book you're trying to review was written by a social media friend, and therefore you're not capable of an objective review, and how dare you promote the work of a "friend" - but hey, if you want to pull down a good author's rating because you don't like the theme of the book, go right ahead; Amazon stands by the one-star bandits who sabotage books for petty reasons, but heaven forbid authors who speak to each other via the internet be allowed to say good things about a book. -_-
Well, now I hate Amazon even more.
You and millions of other who hate Amazon (but don't renounce it) and Facebook haters (many have gone over to MeWe). There are Steemit haters too but I don't know where they've gone. I'm still steeming!
Me too. I've never heard of MeWe.