True or April Fools’ joke? Amazon said to be deleting book reviews that authors write with promo in mind
I’ve just established an outpost on Amazon for promoting The Solomon Scandals.
The standard advice from book-marketing gurus, furthermore, is to review other writers’ titles on Amazon and along the way mention your own book in your signature line. I might do that.
But wait! Has Amazon started deleting reviews with such .sig lines, as a Canadian thriller writer reportedly says?
If so, this raises nasty questions about Amazon’s long-term trustworthiness in content-related areas—ranging from censorship to reliable long-term access to already-purchased e-books. Why, after all the hours of toil that authors have put in on the reviews, would Amazon be so dumb as to zap their work? Isn’t Amazon supposed to be an author’s friend? Given the incredible nature of the accusations against Amazon, I’m skeptical. An April Fools’ joke? Or actions by Amazon employees unfamiliar with official policy? You never know, though. Questions have arisen before about Amazon’s treatment of writer-created content.
Within Amazon’s participation guidelines, I see a ban against "use of the Service for commercial purposes such as advertising, promotion, or solicitation." But if, to identify yourself, you mention your own Amazon-sold book, are you really in violation of the guidelines? Why the supposed crackdown—after all these years of allowing identification? I’m writing an Amazon PR guy to check about the reports. Is this the same outfit that backed off from default text-to-speech for the Kindle II, because it didn’t want to upset content providers? I can’t think of a better way to enrage authors and savvy publishers than to zap the writers’ reviews posted in good faith. Moreover, Amazon will be depriving readers of relevant information in many cases.
Legitimate or not, here is a copy of the supposed accusations, about which I heard from a thoroughly reputable source:
I am bcc’ing this to ALL my author friends because I really want you to have this information before Amazon deletes all your reviews.
A week ago I found that all 85 of the reviews I’ve written for other books had been deleted. It has been a very difficult and stressful week dealing with Amazon. They are not very accessible and I was given at least 3 different reasons for why my reviews had been deleted. After numerous emails, this is what it’s come down to:
Their final ruling: "Please know that our participation guidelines don’t allow customers to promote their own titles in their reviews." If you sign your review with anything other than your name, your reviews could be deleted.
If any of you are in the habit of signing your reviews with something like "…, author of Whale Song", which has been common practice for years, Amazon has deemed this as "inappropriate" and will be deleting them. It seems they’re on a campaign to go through reviews posted. They recently made changes to the Amazon Connect program and all our blogs were temporarily gone too. Most are back up.
They also will delete your reviews if you have added the book link (that they supply) and directed it to your own book title’s Amazon page. Many authors have used that in their signature line. It can lead to deletion and suspension, according to Amazon’s latest email.
I argued the fact that thousands of authors sign their reviews like this, and that it’s common practice in our industry. I was told by my last publisher to sign my reviews like this; he even wanted us to include the ISBN, which I only did a couple of times then stopped. It made no difference to Amazon that this is what my publisher wanted me to do; they aren’t accepting signatures with titles.
Amazon is starting to take note of such practices and you’ll get no notice; they’ll just pull all the reviews you have written. That’s what they did with me, even though many of my older reviews were signed with just my name.
So to clarify, according to Amazon, when posting a review, you are not allowed to have a signature of anything more than your name, and NO links to or mention of your books whatsoever in the review or sig line.
I am giving you the heads-up now so you can go in and edit your reviews if you choose. That’s what I’d do, to be honest, because fighting with Amazon is not easy. There is no one who will talk to you by phone, and waiting for their response is not easy.
This rule also applies to any comments you leave on a book review. Amazon does not want authors to mention their own books anywhere on the review pages.
I haven’t heard from Amazon.ca yet, but I expect this will be funneled over to all the Amazons, so I’ll be working on editing my reviews there next week.
Please forward this on to all authors you know and any writing organizations or associations you belong to.
April 5th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
I’m the “reputable source” quoted above. My struggle with Amazon was extremely stressful, which is why I am now blogging about it and discussing it publicly.
Today I heard from another author who found that many of her reviews were missing for the same reason, although they didn’t touch the reviews she’d written that were older than 2006.
To say that getting reviews back from Amazon is difficult is an understatement, but if this has happened, try to remain calm and keep emailing them respectfully asking for the reviews to be re-instated.
In their current review guidelines posted on Amazon, there is NO mention that authors can’t sign with “author of Whale Song”. There is NO mention that authors can’t use the convenient book link to link to their book in their signature.
For years we’ve been doing these things, and even though Amazon has reviewed about half these reviews before even posting them, they now state that this is “inappropriate”.
I highly recommend that all authors edit their existing reviews and sign only with your name. You do not want to have to deal with Amazon on this, as other authors can attest.
By the way, if you’d like to blog about my experience and you quote any of my letter above, feel free, but I ask that you please also include a credit of:
Cheryl Kaye Tardif, author and Book Marketing Coach, http://www.cherylktardif.com (with a live link)
Thank you.
April 5th, 2009 at 8:46 pm
This is a sign of a company that thinks it controls enough of the market to start dictating to the people that it generates profit from. In the early days in my opinion Amazon bent over backwards to encourage authors and smaller publishers to allow it to sell their works to the public.
Now that authors want Amazon more than amazon needs them, they have started to flex their corporate muscles to keep authors in line and on the back foot. Do they really care about signature ads.
I see it so often, when a company is a start up they beg for your business and then when they are almost in total control of the market they start to mistreat business partners, since you want them to sell your product now.
April 5th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I noticed precisely what you’re talking about. I read quite a few books and for relaxation watch DVDs. For about a year, I’ve been reviewing them on Amazon, often mentioning a book I’ve written on a related topic. It seemed to be a good trade. Amazon got a good review from a knowledgeable source, while I got some much needed exposure.
A few months ago, I noticed that in some cases, although my name and book title remained in the review, the Amazon link had been stripped out. It’s erratic. Some books are almost alway cut, others aren’t. And the last time I checked it seemed to be US-only.
To understand why this is happening, we should keep in mind that, like individuals, corporations have unique personalities. That’s not a controversial idea. Not long ago, I heard one of Adobe’s founders speak on its various mergers. Some mergers worked, he said, because the two corporate cultures were complimentary. Some did not.
To understand Amazon, it helps to look at a personality trait called Asperger’s Syndrome. Wikipedia’s description is as good as any:
“The lack of demonstrated empathy is possibly the most dysfunctional aspect of Asperger syndrome. Individuals with AS experience difficulties in basic elements of social interaction, which may include a failure to develop friendships or to seek shared enjoyments or achievements with others (for example, showing others objects of interest), a lack of social or emotional reciprocity, and impaired nonverbal behaviors in areas such as eye contact, facial expression, posture, and gesture.”
Note the parallels:
* “Difficulties in basic elements of social interactions.” Virtually every group involved in creating and distributing books is confused and troubled by Amazon’s behavior. The fuss over text-to-speech in the new Kindle, for instance, demonstrated that Amazon hadn’t even talked with major publishers about an important new feature that would affect their business.
* “Failure to develop friendships.” Most authors need Amazon to distribute their books. But the number who consider it a “friend” seems to be declining rapidly. David and my experiences with reviews is a good example. Why are they not only doing this, but doing it in such a sneaky, underhanded way?
* “Failure… to seek shared enjoyments or achievements with others.” Is there anyone doing business with Amazon who is happy with the relationship, who feels like they and Amazon are achieving something together?
* “Lack of social or emotional reciprocity.” Amazon is not only the 800-pound gorilla of book distribution, it seems to be blind and deaf to the pain it is inflicting on others, particularly small bookstores.
Is Amazon is suffering from Corporate Asperger’s Syndrome? It’s certainly something to consider.
[Posted with both discussions of this story.]