AMAZON REVIEWS Guess how many books are published daily in America? Bowker announced the number recently: each day in the US up to 3,500 books are published - and these are only the ones with an ISBN. Most self-published e-books are not carrying a bar-code and an ISB number. The more reviews a book title has on Amazon or Kobo, iBooks, Barnes & Noble and other online retailers, the more visible your book becomes. Especially on Amazon, the more reviews your book has the more visible it becomes, thanks to their algorithm which is based among other points, on the number of reviews you get to your page. Journalist Lynne Cantwell wrote for IndiesUnlimited.com http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2015/04/16/amazon-cracks-down-on-all-fake-reviews/ …show more content…
“Fake reviews are a problem for any retailer that allows reviews of the products it sells – which is pretty much every e-retailer out there – and for every product imaginable, not just for books. Everybody who has a product for sale at Amazon is trying to get eyeballs on their product, and favorable reviews will push the product higher in the rankings.” Amazon’s Reviewer Rules: https://www.amazon.com/gp/community-help/customer-reviews-guidelines “We take the integrity of our reviews platform very seriously. If we determine that you have attempted to manipulate reviews or violated our guidelines in any other manner, we may immediately suspend or terminate your Amazon privileges, remove reviews, and delist related products. In addition, if we determine that an Amazon account has been used to engage in review manipulation, remittances and payments may be withheld or forfeited. Misconduct can also lead to legal action and civil and criminal penalties.” Here are a couple of examples of reviews that indie authors should pay close attention to (from Amazon): “A customer posts a review in exchange for $5 (targeting Fiver …show more content…
Before filing the complaint, Amazon – or their lawyers – posed as a review purchaser and contacted the “CEO and Marketing Specialist” of buyazonreviews.com. They not only promised to provide “as many five-star reviews as the purchaser wanted,” but to “slow-drip” them onto the product page so Amazon would have a tougher time figuring out that they were bogus. The review purchaser requested all 5-star reviews, except for one 4-star to make it look good. A GeekWire article points out that the review firm’s FAQ originally stated that the review purchaser could write their own reviews. After the GeekWire article was published, that offer was removed from their