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.]

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.