Amazon’s Review Policy is Creepy and Bad for Authors

Independent author and blogger Imy Santiago bought an ebook , read it , and put up a review on Amazon . Then things bulge to go wrong , harmonize to her late web log post , which has put Amazon in the crosshairs of another round of criticism from authors and referee .

At last , Santiago received an electronic mail from an Amazon employee named Harm J. , who said , “ We can not post your Customer Review for ( book title deleted by Santiago ) by ( author name deleted by Santiago ) to the Amazon web site because your account bodily function indicates that you make love the generator . ” She brand the full text of the email on her blog .

Santiago replied that she interacted with several generator through social medium , but did n’t know any of them personally . Santiago is an source as well as a lector , and the autonomous publishing community is a relatively modest one , so such connexion are common , and they run to be fairly neutral .

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The reply she received from Amazon looks very much like a physical body letter , allot to the screenshot she mail . It begins , “ We removed your Customer Reviews because you know the author personally . ”

Who Knows Who?

Amazon’sReview Guidelinessay only that “ family members or close friends of the person , grouping , or society selling on Amazon may not write Customer Reviews for those special items . ”

It says nothing about casual acquaintances , social medium connection , or any of the other myriad of associations that exist in between live someone and being a close Quaker . In a lengthy response tofrequently asked questionsabout its Review Guidelines , Amazon dilate only a little : “ If you have a direct or collateral fiscal interest group in a product , or comprehend to have a close personal relationship with its source or artist , we ’ll likely absent your follow-up , ” it says .

Of course , nothing in the Guidelines or FAQ observe how Amazon determines who recognise who . Like most twenty-first hundred retailer , the society conglomerate a passel of info about its customer , which most shoppers seem uncoerced to accept , since it usually only leads to point advertising and item recommendation . This may be the first tangible consequence of the privacy we ’ve knuckle under to on-line merchant for the interest of contraption : now they can check your connection and bar your ware reviews .

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So how does Amazon determine who an source ’s supporter are ? In theory , the company could be wait for things like similar last names or residential information on report , or watch for pattern in review activity , like a back - and - forth interchange of reviews between two authors . Amazon may also be able to look for contact and interaction on social media accounts that user have connected to their Amazon accounting , or they may be doing something else entirely . So far , they refuse to talk about it .

“ Due to the proprietary nature of our business , we do not provide detailed information on how we set that accounts are related , ” Amazon ’s review moderator told Santiago in that last email , helpfully adding another data link to the company ’s Review Guidelines .

That privateness is promote motion among authors and reader . “ Where is the ‘ oh , you know the author , your thought are no longer valid ’ argument ? Are fan who attend events and meet me ineligible?”asked writer Seanan McGuire on Twitter , add together that she often interacts with rooter on societal media and at normal . “ Do I need to forefend friendly Twitter banter or at - con selfies with bloggers to keep them from ‘ experience ’ me and thus being lug ? ”

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Skewing the Math

Amazon is clearly trying to keep its review objective by weeding out recap from friends and family who may be more interested in patronage the author than in being honest about the quality of the leger . On the other hired hand , its coming may not be fair to author , who rely heavily on reexamination to make sale on Amazon and through other on-line booksellers .

For one thing , independent authors – those who ego - publish or who are published by smaller , autonomous publishing house – ordinarily rely on blog and societal media for much of their selling . Banning reviews from social spiritualist contacts — if that ’s Amazon ’s method — could leave these generator up the proverbial creek , sans totter .

Even for authors whose work is published by one of the big publication houses , with all their clout and dispersion , social mass medium matters and reviews are crucial to online sales . The tangible problem is that not all bastard reviews are electropositive :

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Also , jazz how review - policing is always against delusive positives . I , and everyone else I know , have had path more false negatives .

— Seanan McGuire ( @seananmcguire)July 3 , 2015

If it ’s safe to presume that there ’s an approximate proportion between bogus positivistic reviews and bogus negative ones , weed out only the false positive degree could leave author much more vulnerable to false negatives . “ Yeah , you may save an innocent reader from clicking a 4 - star book that ’s really a 3 , but you ’re keeping them from click the 3 that should really , in a balanced economy , be a 4.5 , ” McGuire excuse .

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Whatever method acting Amazon is using , it may be a new development . That FAQ is undated , but distinction , “ We recently improved our detection of promotional review which leave in the removal of reexamination , both novel and one-time . While our enforcement has improved , our guidelines have not deepen . ”

It sound like the latest example of policies that show that Amazon is n’t very interested in working fairly with the producers who actually make the products in its on-line marketplace . sooner this calendar week , The Guardian report that independent authors in Amazon ’s KDP Select program couldreceive as little as $ .006for each page borrowers in reality read . And that , of class , comes in the wake of the troupe ’s drawn - out dispute with publisher Hachette .

We ’ve strain out to Amazon for comment , but they have n’t respond as of the prison term of publication .

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