Support for Indie Authors discussion

So, I don't have many reviews, but I put my new book out through a promotion site and got 4 reviews! Yay... but amazon removed one. I've no idea why. It was my 5 star review. And So, I"m wondering... is there anything I can do? All of those reviews were 'I give you a book for an honest review' situation, but the 5 star was taken away. I only had 4 reviews! ... well 3 now, so, this hurts me.

(note, I don't know any reviewers personally)

Is there anything I can do?

I noticed that one of my reviews was removed this morning as well. But Amazon has been doing a few wonky things (showing my book as unavailable for a while even when it was), so I'm hoping this is yet another glitch or error. Have you contacted them about it?

I did... hoping it gets to the right people because there wasn't a direct contact link about this problem. So, maybe they will put it back. I hope so. If you play the game correctly, shouldn't the refs treat you right? You know? Ugh.

Nat wrote: "I did... hoping it gets to the right people because there wasn't a direct contact link about this problem. So, maybe they will put it back. I hope so. If you play the game correctly, shouldn't the ..."

You would think so... Yet here we are. Good luck! I hope it gets resolved for both of us shortly :)

Yes, good luck to us!

Amazon is known to be trigger-happy with 'shooting' potentially suspicious reviews. Especially if the reviewer is GR friend or there was already a review going the other way around. If it was any of those cases, don't expect it being restored.

I don't know the reviewer at all and I don't even think she's an author. So, I've no idea what amazon was thinking.

That has got to suck big time given how hard it is to get reviews. I hope you get your good review back and soon. Good luck.

Nat wrote: "So, I don't have many reviews, but I put my new book out through a promotion site and got 4 reviews! Yay... but amazon removed one. I've no idea why. It was my 5 star review. And So, I"m wondering...."

The same thing happened to me two days ago. I plan to email them about it. I's so hard to get reviews and I used Booksprout to get mine. I can't understand why they took one away. So now I evenly have 6 positive and 6 negative where before it was 7/6.

It does. How else do we get reviews on brand new books other than through giveaways. I see books that have a 50 new reviews, all 4 or 5 stars on books the second day they come out and I have no idea how they do it. And I wonder why my review was deemed bad when theirs were okay.

It's always possible, too, that the reviewer removed the review. I'm not saying this is what happened, but sometimes we're too quick to blame Amazon for vanishing reviews. Contact them about it and see what you can find out.

Dwayne, I hadn't even thought of that. But it's a good point. I might just contact her, just to get to the bottom of it, though I don't want to stress her out if she legitimately removed them.

I would probably wait a while, if I contacted her at all. She may have removed it as she wanted to rewrite it. Maybe she felt she left out something significant. Contact Amazon first. If you don't know this person at all, I'd use caution in contacting her. You said she came to you through a site. Maybe get in touch with that site after Amazon.

Good reminder. I wasn't going to jump on her any time soon... and I have contacted Amazon. I'm just waiting for a response now. I'm was just wondering what do people do when this happens. I feel very beat down by this, which is silly, but it's still true.

As far as I can tell there is no rhyme or reason to how Amazon removes reviews. My first novel got one review when it came out nine years ago. About a year after that, I ran into someone who told me they had reviewed the book, but the review didn't show up on Amazon.

The review did eventually show up - about three years ago. So they had the review, but only put it up after five or six years. I can't think of any reasonable explanation for that. It's completely bizarre.

Usually Amazon won't reply to authors about why they removed reviews, but if you know the person who posted the review THEY can contact Amazon about why their review was removed.
Things about free or ARC's can be flagged sometimes, but not always, as well as if it is thought of as a bias review (friend or family) but there is no real rhyme or reason.
But from what I have heard the only person who can get that review back is the original poster.

I too saw at least one review disappear in two of the books that had the most reviews. The problem is that one of them had 65 and now 64, so it is impossible for me to know which one it was.

Nat wrote: "So, I don't have many reviews, but I put my new book out through a promotion site and got 4 reviews! Yay... but amazon removed one. I've no idea why. It was my 5 star review. And So, I"m wondering...."

Hi - Do you know the person who did the review? I wrote an Amazon review for a book and I received an email from Amazon telling me when my review was removed. They gave me two reasons - one, I included profanity (whoops) and two, I had a link (oversight on my part). I fixed the two issues, resubmitted and it was posted after a couple of days. Anyway, my guess is the review that Amazon removed that review for specific reasons - the review rules on Amazon are different than goodreads (for example, they don't remove reviews on goodreads because of profanity). If you don't know the person who posted the review, you can hope they received the Amazon email, fixed the issues, and repost it.

Scott wrote: "As far as I can tell there is no rhyme or reason to how Amazon removes reviews. My first novel got one review when it came out nine years ago. About a year after that, I ran into someone who told m..."

That almost sounds like a "glitch" in the system, right? I'm not a coder, but I do have a website and minimal dealing with database management, but I have to believe the description you described references an automated response. I can't imagine a human being reviewed a stack of reviews three years old and decided to hit a submit button. Maybe there was a database issue that when fixed (and sometimes, this can come down to lines of code) and when fixed, your review (and many others) were automatically posted? Just an idea. So many times, customers write in to me angry about the wrong material being in their account, and it amazes me they think a human being put the material into their account. They clicked on the wrong item - plain and simple. A human being needs to fix their error....but it's an automated website. And I suspect Amazon is the king of automation.

Nat wrote: "So, I don't have many reviews, but I put my new book out through a promotion site and got 4 reviews! Yay... but amazon removed one. I've no idea why. It was my 5 star review. And So, I"m wondering...."This has happened to me quite a few times. Amazon perceives that this reviewer is too closely connected with you to be impartial. For instance, if you're friends with that person on Goodreads or there's some other way that they've connected that person with you or your account.

I've heard of many instances where Amazon deletes Booksprout reviews. Probably the fact that Booksprout requires you to post that specific message if you get one of their ARCs makes it easy for their bots to go in and find those reviews. They tend to go after lots of the ARC sites.

I used Booksprout ARCs for my latest release as well, and got some reviews from it, but did so with the understanding that they might stay? Or might stay for a little while and vanish? I thought it would at least be worthwhile to get some feedback and probably they would stay up on GR. Not much you can ever do about Amazon.

Hey guys,

I commented in this thread abut ten thousand years ago about one of my reviews being removed. It turns out that it wasn't removed, rather it can only be seen under the specific Amazon wesbite the person posted the review under. In this case it was a Canadian reader who had posted the review to Amazon.ca, and therefore I was unable to see it on Amazon.com. Seems like a silly way to do things, but such is the nature of this machine.
Not sure if that helps anyone else here, but I figured I'd share.
Good luck getting (and keeping) your reviews going forward :)

I've heard that reviews posted on Amazon US can be seen worldwide but reviews on Amazon anywhere else (whichever country suffix you wish) can only be seen in that country.
"Consistency."
Meh.
Pity that did not come to me before...

Earlier this week I had a reader contact me via my website to say she tried to post a review but not only did her review get blocked her entire account got suspended and all her previous reviews removed on the basis that the one she was trying to post was 'bias' and that she'd possibly been paid to write it. I never heard of this person before she contacted me... I did see that she liked a post on my author facebook page but that hardly constitutes knowing someone! According to her she is a great user of kindle unlimited (several hundred books a year) and only sporadically reviews, so she was dumbfounded about the claims and of course queried it. She had since been able to get her account and ability to review reactivated and they said they would restore all her previous reviews but whatever she wrote for my book never appeared.
What has me very concerned is that since I heard from her there hasn't been a single review on my Amazon page. I was getting one at least every 2nd day and it was climbing to 2 a day when it just stopped dead. Been like that for several days now despite steady book sales and page reads. It may be entirely coincidental but it has me very concerned. Should I contact Amazon and ask if reviews for my book has been blocked? Surely they won't do that?

Yes, that is true all Reviews are not coming online. A friend of mine had posted a review for my book and it is over a week now but it has not yet appeared. Though other reviews are coming online and someone else I know posted one which came on immediately. Wonder how the system works....!

Emily wrote: "Should I contact Amazon and ask if reviews for my book has been blocked? Surely they won't do that?"

You've gotten a lot of reviews in a short time and nearly all of them are five stars. It's possible Amazon is reviewing them and trying to determine if they are legit or not. Some of the reviews do contain phrasing that often shows up in fake reviews. If you're not gaming the system, relax and get some writing done.

It's possible your reviews have simply slowed down. You have a ton of reviews in a short period of time. Most of us do not see that many reviews on one book in a year. Be thankful for what you have and don't let the tapering off of reviews get to you.

Shailja wrote: "Yes, that is true all Reviews are not coming online. A friend of mine had posted a review for my book and it is over a week now but it has not yet appeared."

Amazon has been clear for some time that they're not crazy about us letting friends and family review our books. Your customers aren't concerned if your friends like your books or not, as there's going to be a bias there. They want to know what other customers think.

Hi. I have 3 reviews on Amazon for my book from 3 people who purchased the book on Amazon. I hear it takes days before the review shows up. If someone purchases the book elsewhere, can they write a review on Amazon? Also Kindle keeps track of how many pages a reader reads so if someone bought the ebook but never read it, would they discard a review from them? It is frustrating.

I thought only verified purchase can make reviews on Amazon. Wondering whether unverified purchases can make reviews too. If not, can those unverified purchase reviews be removed?

To be honest, I don't really know anymore who can and cannot leave reviews. A few years ago, pretty much anyone could review a book on Amazon. Thanks to people gaming the system, they've made it harder and harder. I have heard you have to have a purchase through Amazon and I've heard you have to have spent at least fifty dollars at Amazon. I don't know if that's still the case. It may have gotten tougher. I can't blame Amazon for making it tougher. I really can't. They want solid, honest reviews and many authors have tried sneaking in fake reviews, so Amazon has to keep tightening things up.

@Dwayne Thanks for the reply.
No I'm not gaming the system. I had no online presence to speak off before I set myself up to promote my book so no connections with potential readers, not even a book club - and certainly no way to influencing strangers who read my book via Kindle Unlimited. I'm a brand new author so I wasn't aware of the average review rate for new books, or that mine was doing as well as you say. I will take the advice, be happy it is going well, and get on with writing. I just had a moment of panic thinking weird things were happening with my reviews being blocked and not knowing what to do about it.

An update on the blocked review - it came through this morning after being cleared by Amazon. It is my understanding it took considerable effort/persistence by the person who initially posted the review to make that happen. I don't know if I would have been as persistent if I was in her shoes so I'm very grateful she kept at it.

Dwayne wrote: "To be honest, I don't really know anymore who can and cannot leave reviews. A few years ago, pretty much anyone could review a book on Amazon. Thanks to people gaming the system, they've made it ha..."

Thank you for your comments. I believe a rigorous policy can be essential to keep the reviews valid and genuine. However, distinguishing between real and fake reviews can be challenging.

As a new public author, I am also confused and disappointed some opportunist people on the Internet approaching authors to provide paid reviews. They are trying to make this a business trying to take advantage of the authors' vulnerabilities.

As authors, we need to focus on our writing and producing quality content. I personally don't care whether my books reviewed or not on the sales sites as the perceptual weighting is too low. Anyone can say anything even for the best art of work in the world. That's fine for me. Even though we do our best effort, we cannot change people's perception then why should we concern?

However, one crucial consideration for Amazon to improve this situation, in my humble opinion, is to remove the stars and allow only qualitative comments on the value of the book. These stars confuse the consumers and the stars don't necessarily reflect the reality most of the times. For example, I noticed some people provide 2 or 3 stars and praise the book. Some give 4 or 5 stars they criticise the book. This is a real dilemma which Amazon or other service providers need to consider as stars are subjective and problematic for evaluating the quality of books.

Mehmet wrote: "These stars confuse the consumers and the stars don't necessarily reflect the reality most of the times. For example, I noticed some people provide 2 or 3 stars and praise the book. Some give 4 or 5 stars they criticise the book. This is a real dilemma which Amazon or other service providers need to consider as stars are subjective and problematic for evaluating the quality of books."

Well, in some cases, it might not even be contradictive: if the plot is good and the book fails in aspects not related to it (such as grammar or formatting), I'd probably give a rating purely based on the plot, then point out those issues (such as the case where you say people criticize while giving 4* or 5*).
Similarly, if the plot has promise but is executed poorly, someone might think that giving words of encouragement with the lower rating is good for the author.

Mehmet wrote: "However, one crucial consideration for Amazon to improve this situation, in my humble opinion, is to remove the stars and allow only qualitative comments on the value of the book. These stars confuse the consumers and the stars don't necessarily reflect the reality most of the times. "

Well, what is the reality of a book? There really is none. A book is nothing but a bunch of pieces of paper or electronic "pages" with a lot of funny little symbols all over it. We writers put those funny little symbols all over and the reader interprets them. Every reader is going to interpret those words differently from what we intended. I might write, "A girl is holding an apple". That put an image in your mind. Is it the image I see? Likely not. What color is her hair? What is she wearing? Is the apple a real piece of fruit? Is it wax? Is it rotten? Has she taken a bite? Is she handing it to you? How old is the girl? Where is she standing?

For everything we write, there will be bunches of things the reader will insert out of their own imagination. Readers will bring in their own world ideas and their own personal experiences and mingle it with our words.

The story they read will not, in their minds, resemble the story we've written except at the very basest of levels.

The review will be based mostly on how our book made them feel. Our goal is, of course, to control the feelings of the reader, but we won't always meet our goal. Every reader is different.

One reviewer might give a favorable review because our main character reminded her of her favorite uncle. Another might give an unfavorable review simply because we misspelled five words and he's a stickler for proper spelling.

Reviews, like star ratings, are not held to any specific criteria and only speak to the experience of the reviewer. If Amazon was to give serious consideration to getting rid of the star system because readers don't all use the system the same way, they might as well do away with reviews, too.

I agree with Mehmet that Amazon's star rating system isn't very helpful, particularly to readers. What counts is the qualitative analysis of the book. If I see a review that posts 5 stars but with commentary along the lines of, great book, highly recommended, I'm 90% sure it's written by a friend of the author. The only reviews that really count, for me, are those where the reviewer actually engages with the content by providing a balanced analysis of pros and cons. If Amazon was to remove the star system, it might reduce abuses of the review system. And that, ultimately, would benefit authors who are honestly trying to do good work, which is the majority, I believe.

If you received and ARC book, you can leave a review on Amazon by saying that is what it is. You do have to have spent at least $50 on Amazon to leave a review, so if you bought the book elsewhere and don't use Amazon, you can't leave a review. If people are known friends and family, they shouldn't even try to leave a review because Amazon will pull it. If someone is leaving tons of reviews they will become suspect and might be banned and all their reviews pulled.

As far as I know, If you buy a book, unless you are reading it in MOBI format, they can't tell how many pages you read of a book. I have reviews hardcovers and paperback that I have bought off Amazon.

As to how a person reviews, it depends on that person. I will admit that if I read a book riddled with typos, poorly constructed sentences, lousy editing and other things that pull me out of the story, it will show and I will say why. I'm not nit-picky over a few typos and a few other mistakes, but when it's almost every page and glaring (like the couple making love in the kitchen and the next sentence are in bed all in the same paragraph...bad) If the story doesn't hold my interest, if affects my rating.

The stars aren't that important, you need to read the actual review.

Dwayne wrote: "To be honest, I don't really know anymore who can and cannot leave reviews. A few years ago, pretty much anyone could review a book on Amazon. Thanks to people gaming the system, they've made it ha..."

I have heard also that you have to have spent at least $50 on Amazon (I don't blame them for proof of being a customer), but many of the books I review I read from the library. Hardly any of my reviews are from purchases. I think it is getting tougher for any of them to show up. It is easier to leave reviews on GR, which is where I leave most of mine.