The Amazon Review Policy Elephant in the Room
An absolute must-read. I worry about this as a book reviewer; I reviewed books long before I sold AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE, and my reviews cannot be bought by anyone — not friends, not family, not *anyone*.
That said, Amazon is worried about people who cannot give unbiased opinions, and they’ve taken to purging reviews.
Like Jo Robinson, I’m not going to take down any reviews I’ve already written. That would be pointless.
But this new review policy has caused me to review far less frequently than before. at Amazon..and for good reason.
The whole Amazon review policy debacle that started a while ago is not going to go away, so we should probably make firm decisions as to the way forward as far as how we are each personally going to review books in the future. There’s a great post covering the whole subject very thoroughly on Anne R. Allen’s site right now – definitely a must read for anyone not a hundred percent sure about what is going on with this issue. I’ve posted on this briefly over at Lit World Interviews a while ago but it’s worth revisiting on a personal level. Anyone with published books on Amazon needs to take this seriously.
Firstly, we must accept that Amazon can, and does, remove books for sale on their site if they feel that the author has violated their terms of service. Many of us have over the years reviewed books…
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Barb Caffrey's Blog 
This news seems to worrying us all. So far I haven’t been able to inspire any reviews for my books, but I just posted a couple for people I’ve chatted with on Goodreads. It will be interesting to see whether those are flagged. Is a review on Goodreads equivalent to one on Amazon? Thanks for keeping this issue before us.
vanderso
November 25, 2015 at 8:10 am
You’re welcome, Virginia.
I don’t get many reviews, either, but I’m wondering if it’s because many of my readers are also writers. If Amazon is just striking down any other author’s review at random, no wonder my book can’t gain any traction!
Barb Caffrey
November 25, 2015 at 8:12 am