Thanks for popping by for a quick chat. I'm hoping by now, we all know what a gift it is for an author to receive a book review on Amazon. Last year, Amazon changed the rules about reviews on their site, and along with that, they have also added another layer to the review process. Have you noticed the "Amazon Verified Purchase" tag on some of your reviews? This will only appear if you purchased the item or book via Amazon AND paid a price available to most Amazon shoppers. Let's go a step further. The Amazon non-verified reviews don't always show up when someone is shopping for a product or book. The verified reviews show up first and sometimes there are enough verified reviews that ONLY verified reviews show in the list for a book or product.
I still absolutely love receiving a signed physical copy of a book written by a friend. I love reading that physical book and feeling the pages between my fingers. I love that most of those books are lovingly delivered by hand with a smile and an opportunity to enjoy a cup of coffee. What I don't enjoy is the fact that Amazon won't acknowledge my review of that physical gift...so...I just want to explain why my gift back to my author friends is a purchase of an additional copy of their book. It's always fabulous when my second copy can be purchased as a Kindle version (sometimes for just 99 cents), but sometimes I'll buy a second physical copy and gift it to someone else.
Once I've purchased the book off Amazon, I can THEN go ahead and write my review, publish it to the Amazon site, and it will be counted as a verified review. It's an extra step, but it feels like the only right thing to do. I understand that Amazon is trying to stop some of the paid reviews and the fact that some of those reviews may be biased. But...it hardly seems fair to any author that even a single review is overlooked or counted as less than equal to others.
Now you know why I own two copies of many of my favorite books.
How do you help your author friends promote their books?
Have you had any Amazon reviews simply "disappear" for one reason or another?
Please leave your comments and thoughts after reading this post. We love hearing from you!
Hugs,
~Crystal
You can find Crystal riding unicorns, taking the ordinary and giving it a little extra (making it extraordinary), blogging and reviewing books, baby carriers, cloth diapers, and all sorts of other stuff here, and at her personal blog dedicated to turning life's lemons into lemonade!
3 comments:
You are very nice to buy the book at Amazon too. I think it is ridiculous that Amazon takes some reviews away and decides which are legit and which are not. They are controlling a lot. :(
It's frustrated for authors, small book retailers, etc...and I'm not sure customers care where the item was purchased, as long as the reviews are legitimate. The FTC still says reviewers need to disclose that items were free or at a reduced price. I'm not sure Amazon cares about customer approval, but I'm considering cancelling my Prime membership just because of what I feel are unfair business practices.
Frustrating...sorry
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