# Amazon Removing Arc Reviews (thread no. 2)



## baldricko (Mar 14, 2014)

Yesterday Amazon took down four reviews. This is the first time in three years Amazon has pulled my reviews to the best of my knowledge. I suppose it could be coincidence and they were pulled on the same day by the authors, but I think not. 

These were for Books 1 and 2 of my trilogy and were all posted during November. At least two of them were written by the same author. They were not verified, but many of my reviews are not. Two of them were for ARCs of May Day, a book I released a couple of weeks ago.

And here's the issue as I see it. 

I don't pay reviewers to review my books, and none of my reviewers are in any way related to me. I don't know these people. Aside from several blogs I forwarded my book two with a request email to read my book for an honest review, which I believe is legitimate under Amazon's own community guidelines.

I sent a request for information via Author Central and also KDP over 12 hours ago asking why these reviews were taken down. I have received no response. Zero. When I make an inquiry to Amazon I always receive a 'we will respond within 24 hours' email when I make a request. That's odd, isn't it.

EDIT: Swapped 'threat' for 'thread' in the Subject box. I never noticed that though it was kinda appropriate.


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## Guest (Dec 1, 2017)

I think one of the reviews for my books may have been taken down too, also an ARC review that went up recently from someone I don't know. In my case I can't be sure it was Amazon that removed it, but it's definitely gone. I'll be curious to see if any others go missing and hope you hear something from them soon.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

baldricko said:


> Yesterday Amazon took down four reviews. This is the first time in three years Amazon has pulled my reviews to the best of my knowledge. I suppose it could be coincidence and they were pulled on the same day by the authors, but I think not.
> 
> These were for Books 1 and 2 of my trilogy and were all posted during November. At least two of them were written by the same author. They were not verified, but many of my reviews are not. Two of them were for ARCs of May Day, a book I released a couple of weeks ago.
> 
> ...


Unfortunately, Amazon will never tell you why reviews were taken down. The only person who has the status to ask about a review being taken down is the reviewer.

One of mine disappeared yesterday, but it was on a book with enough reviews that I don't really know which one it was, so it may or may not be related to your issue.

It can be very frustrating. I find what Amazon does and does not take down equally annoying. However, it's best to take it in stride and move on. There is literally nothing to be done.


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## Guest (Dec 1, 2017)

I can say my review came from a Hidden Gems reviewer, not sure if that was the case with either of you or not.



> However, it's best to take it in stride and move on. There is literally nothing to be done.


Good advice.


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## R.U. Writing (Jul 18, 2015)

Glad to see this thread, but not glad it's happening. I had 2 reviews disappear in the last two days (they had been up for months). The reviews were also ARCs, these ones through Hidden Gems. I have no idea if they were good reviews or not, I just noticed my number of reviews dropping. These reviews came from total strangers. I sent an email to KDP early this morning, but haven't heard back yet.


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## lincolnjcole (Mar 15, 2016)

Yeah some reviews disappeared from Arc reviewers. Anymore, if someone likes your page on facebook and raves about your books that is cause for amazon to pull their reviews. 

Crazy thing is, for mega publishers they will pull negative reviews to make sure the rating stays high, and for indie authors they pull the ones that are too positive.


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## Saboth (May 6, 2017)

Yeah, I've lost two ARC reviews. Both 5 star. Amazon is fine leaving up the 2 and 3 star ARC reviews though...


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## Rachel W (Jun 19, 2017)

I have lost 3 reviews today as well - have just sent an email to Amazon before finding this thread.  They were all Hidden Gems reviews.


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## IntoTheAbyss (Mar 20, 2017)

Yeah I lost two also. Hidden Gems. Not a big deal to me. If it were a lot more I would be worried, definitely monitoring closely to see what happens.


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## KSRuff (Jul 14, 2016)

Yep. I lost a review for the first book in my series and for the last book in the series just last week. I've got too many reviews to figure out who it was or whether it was an ARC review or just a devoted fan who is active on my Facebook page. Possibly the same person who posted reviews for both? Who knows? It is frustrating. Fans can't post reviews if they follow you on Facebook. Your Beta Test Group can't post reviews. People who receive ARCs can't post reviews. People who win giveaways can't post reviews. Who knows if they delete reviews from people who follow your Pinterest Page, read your blog, receive your newsletter, or follow you on Goodreads? Makes you wonder just how wise it is to build a fan base and a street team.... if the Zon is going to hold it against you.

Kimberly


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## Guest (Dec 1, 2017)

I've lost 5 reviews this week, all from Hidden Gems.


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## MajesticMonkey (Sep 3, 2013)

tknite said:


> From what I'm hearing, it looks like Amazon is actually wiping out a number of reviewers entirely. Just deleting all their reviews, regardless of legitimacy. One person on FB told me a longtime reviewer of theirs had 1000+ reviews wiped. Years of reviews. Just poof. And they were all real reviews from a prolific reader.


This. Amazon is playing hardball.


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## 97251 (Jun 22, 2017)

I had a few reviews removed as well. I think they were the ones who mentioned "arc" in the text. 

I hadn't thought of that, but I do feel bummed for the readers who put in the time to read and the effort to write thoughtful reviews.


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

So now Arc readers can't post reviews? How frustrating.



deniseleitao said:


> I had a few reviews removed as well. I think they were the ones who mentioned "arc" in the text.
> 
> I hadn't thought of that, but I do feel bummed for the readers who put in the time to read and the effort to write thoughtful reviews.


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## Pamela (Oct 6, 2010)

I've lost 3 reviews in the last couple of days.  Amazon seems to be deleting arc reviews.  But why?  Maybe they're upset that we gave the books away for free?  Some were from Hidden Gems.  But I've lost reviews from regular reviewers as well in the past.


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## Kay7979 (Aug 20, 2016)

I lost five across three books.


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## Pandorra (Aug 22, 2017)

I haven't lost any that got through Amazon's Nazi's but I have a bunch that never got posted in the first place, they blocked almost everything.. sucks when I look and see obvious paid reviews on some books who have thousands of 5 stars you know are wrong then my few little stars get nailed for nothing!


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## Marseille France or Bust (Sep 25, 2012)

Has anyone contacted Hidden Gems to tell them about the review removals and see if they are offering authors an alternative?


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## TromboneAl (Mar 20, 2015)

Thanks for the reminder to copy them in case I want use a removed review elsewhere.

>The only person who has the status to ask about a review being taken down is the reviewer.
Does the reviewer get information from Amazon as to why the review was removed?


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

I'm going to play the devils advocate on this one.

I can understand Amazon pulling ARC reviews.

Let's face it, the only reason those are glowing reviews is because they are getting your book for free. If you all got 1 star reviews from your ARC teams you wouldnt have an ARC team, you do it because it gives you reviews fast and gives you glowing reviews to give people the false impression that people are impressed but in reality, are they? Or just keen to get your next one for free? ( of course a person may be quick to defend this by saying my writing is wonderful but if it is, why not just put it out there and wait until you get the real ones?)

Amazon sees this as GAMING the system, i agree it is. ( yes i know trad do it as well but still, its not a real review) A real one should come from someone who genuinely has paid for the book through amazon or through payment to kindle unlimited.

Okay thats me playing devils advocate. Fire away! LOL


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## Pandorra (Aug 22, 2017)

thevoiceofone said:


> I'm going to play the devils advocate on this one.
> 
> I can understand Amazon pulling ARC reviews.
> 
> ...


Problem is I do it the second way and they still cut them... I have no list, no ARCs etc..


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

Then why give us rules and wording on how they want us to do arcs? Why not say 'no arcs?'


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

thevoiceofone said:


> I'm going to play the devils advocate on this one.
> 
> I can understand Amazon pulling ARC reviews.
> 
> ...


The sad part about this is that services like Hidden Gems aren't like that. They don't know the author. Yeah, they get a free book, but they aren't ardent fans or anything like that. My HG reviews closely mirrored my organic ones in terms of rating, etc. Also, they can get free books without buttering up the author. By the way, I've never understood the reasoning about people giving a good review so an author will give them more free books. If they really don't like the author's writing, why would they want more of it, even for free.

So no, it isn't gaming the system, and it is consistent with Amazon's own review guidelines. If the reviews getting wiped out are from people all of whose reviews are being wiped, those individuals may have done something to provoke that.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

TromboneAl said:


> Thanks for the reminder to copy them in case I want use a removed review elsewhere.
> 
> >The only person who has the status to ask about a review being taken down is the reviewer.
> Does the reviewer get information from Amazon as to why the review was removed?


The process is not automatic. The reviewer can ask. Unless Amazon is punishing the reviewer by wiping out all their reviews, the reviewer may not even notice.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Going Incognito said:


> Then why give us rules and wording on how they want us to do arcs? Why not say 'no arcs?'


That's a good question. I'm happy to work within a system if I know what it is. One of Amazon's biggest problems is that it either doesn't make clear rules or makes what look like clear rules and then enforces them unevenly.

Let's not forget Amazon itself gives out free books for Amazon imprint titles in hopes of getting reviews. (Some of those books have hundreds now.) I'm not sure if Amazon voices the hope or just implies it, but in the case of Kindle Select selections (published by Kindle Press, another Amazon imprint), the hope of a review is directly stated. Amazon gives all nominators free copies of the book, then gives any nominators who write a review more points on their leader board score (which doesn't really mean anything except to the hypercompetitive, but it is an incentive beyond just a free book--something we expressly can't do. I wouldn't want to, anyway, but it would be nice if Amazon led by example and did for its own imprints only what it allowed us to do.)


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## anotherpage (Apr 4, 2012)

Bill Hiatt said:


> So no, it isn't gaming the system, and it is consistent with Amazon's own review guidelines.


I would beg to disagree.

Here are Amazon's review guidelines. I don't see anywhere in there about ARC but i do see a lot about EDITORIAL reviews that are meant to go in the editorial section not in the review section.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/community-help/customer-review-guidelines-faqs-from-authors


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## 97251 (Jun 22, 2017)

Ok, I'm going to confess that all the best reviews remained. The removed reviews were short reviews, that didn't describe the book much. They were so inconsequential that I don't even remember them well.

The only short review that remained was a verified paperback purchase. (I can claim I have a 100% review rate on my paperback buyers, or... 1 our of 1 )

I don't really know what's going on.

By the way, giving away copies for reviews is not against their policies:



> Can I pay for someone to write a Customer Review for my book?
> No. *We don't allow any form of compensation for a Customer Review other than a free copy of the book provided upfront. If you offer a free advanced copy, it must be clear that you welcome all feedback, both positive and negative.* If we detect that a customer was paid to write a review, we'll remove it.


So it pretty clearly states that you can offer books for review as long as you don't require reviews to be glowing.


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## Going Incognito (Oct 13, 2013)

thevoiceofone said:


> I would beg to disagree.
> 
> Here are Amazon's review guidelines. I don't see anywhere in there about ARC but i do see a lot about EDITORIAL reviews that are meant to go in the editorial section not in the review section.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/gp/community-help/customer-review-guidelines-faqs-from-authors


It's right here, from your link:
4. Can I pay for someone to write a Customer Review for my book?
No. We don't allow any form of compensation for a Customer Review other than a free copy of the book provided upfront. If you offer a *free advanced copy*, it must be clear that you welcome all feedback, both positive and negative. If we detect that a customer was paid to write a review, we'll remove it.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

I'm going to add some tin foil theory to this thread. 

We know the algos for the top 100 charts have radically changed. We know books have been getting deranked temporarily for climbing too fast. And now we're seeing reviews get removed. 

I don't think zon is intentionally targetting run of the mill authors. I think they are going after the guys who are spending big bucks to work every lever on amazon.  

It just so happens that in going after the sharks, they're going to hit a lot of tiny fish in the process. 

They clearly don't like the way the store has been manipulated by indies, and they are taking action.  In the long run it will be for the best, but in the short run it will be messy.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

Bill Hiatt said:


> If they really don't like the author's writing, why would they want more of it, even for free.


The so-called "devil's advocates" always miss this point. If I don't like an author's writing, you'd have to pay me a high-end editor's salary to have anything to do with it. Even then I don't know how much I could take.

Who the hell has so much free time to read books they think are crap just because they're free? Devil's advocate, you there? What--is there a Readulus to keep Tantalus company in Tartarus? Poor dude's a compulsive reader trapped in an infinite library of bad books?


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## Guest (Dec 2, 2017)

> The sad part about this is that services like Hidden Gems aren't like that.


Yeah, exactly. One of my Hidden Gems reviews is a 2 star DNF. About as far from this as you can get >> "Let's face it, the only reason those are glowing reviews is because they are getting your book for free." And my Hidden Gems reviews overall are definitely not an echo chamber of 5 star raves because that's not what they do. There's a wide range of varying opinions and ratings.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

tknite said:


> Yes, yes, I know Amazon is going after the scammers by using blanket tactics and, naturally, innocent people will get caught in the crossfire. And that there's nothing I can do about it, because Amazon doesn't listen to indie authors, or, clearly, the impacted reviewers. Blah blah blah.


hehe yes, all of this. It's unfortunate, but that's the state of the industry. It's doubly ironic given everything in the industry pushes people toward places like HG... promo outlets want at least 5 reviews and zon arguably makes reviews the most important and prominent part of a product's page. So how are people supposed to get reviews if they don't use a review service?

I think zon are hammering these things though because some authors are abusing the hell out of them. If you have the money you can generate 100 reviews or more off HG if you wanted. It's skewing the entire zon store and making crap books look like they are super popular and loved books... which then leads to customers getting suckered into reading crap. Zon apparently has had enough of this.

It's all quite fakakta.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

tknite said:


> Honestly, I'm just struggling with the idea that you seem to think ARC reviewer = automatic liar. That...is demonstrably untrue.


You're reading way too much into what I wrote and jumping the shark  I'm just talking about this from zon's perspective. Most of the folks using HG to generate enough reviews to give their book a shot aren't an issue. Nor do I think zon is taking these actions because of those people. Which I think I stated. They aren't out for the little fish. They are out for the sharks and big spenders. And it's not just one variable they are going after... they are going after multiple.

Read the discussion we were having over in the page flip thread. The categories are going through a major shake up (I think) because of changes zon are implementing to change what books get visibility.

I'll also say, that while it is true that no review service can or should guarantee high ratings, realistically I see tons of books FILLED with HG reviews and they are all glowing. Then you see new ones trickle in that are not. Clearly zon feels these reviews are skewing the store and making crap books look good and impacting the customer experience. Less so with the small fish and moreso with the big sharks.

Whether its HG or street teams or incentivized reviews ... zon seems to feel that its leading to misrepresentation of the product and so are trying to curb it.

How i feel is utterly irrelevant. I have no power. I'm just putting forward why I think zon are taking the actions they are taking lately.

And sure, I would 100% agree with you that it's a double standard in terms of what they let indies do versus traditional publishers. But on the flip side of that, I really doubt the TP'ers have anywhere near the grey and black hatters that indies do. Some indies have pushed the envelope WAY too far with zon, and so it's not that surprising that they treat us like spoiled, immature, unethical, brats.

Again, not saying that's my view, merely that I suspect it's zon's.


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## Simply_Me (Mar 31, 2016)

For those of you who are wondering what's going on, the fact is that Amazon has been purging reviewers and their reviews for about two years. Trying to figure out the reason some reviewers started this list of the purge victims:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGreatAmazonPurge/

Some reviewers manipulate the system, but often the purge is random, and honest reviewers are purged. And when they ask why, they receive one of many form letters and no further communication with Amazon is helpful.

And when a reviewer is purged, his/her reviews are deleted and they lose their reviews privileges too.


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## Mylius Fox (Jun 2, 2014)

Seneca42 said:


> I think zon are hammering these things though because some authors are abusing the hell out of them. If you have the money you can generate 100 reviews or more off HG if you wanted. It's skewing the entire zon store and making crap books look like they are super popular and loved books... which then leads to customers getting suckered into reading crap. Zon apparently has had enough of this.


If Amazon was taking action against Hidden Gems under a line of reasoning similar to what you describe, why haven't they removed more than but a small percentage of HG-obtained reviews?

I think it makes more sense there was a problem with a small number of customer accounts who also happened to be doing reviews through Hidden Gems. I personally had one review disappear from my book, but there were close to twenty reviews that came from Hidden Gems. There definitely has to be something else in play, IMO.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

The first book in my current series is a year old, and the newest review is a month old. I noticed this week that the total number of reviews had dropped by one. No idea which one or why.

BTW, none of the reviews on the book were from ARCs.


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## D A Bale (Oct 20, 2016)

Lost three in the last week - and no, I don't blame Hidden Gems, though the majority of reviews thus far were obtained through that venue.  My problem is that Zon always goes after the five stars, even though they are legitimate.  When are they going to go after the one and two stars that are only there because they had a problem downloading the book or say they never ordered it (Zon issue)?


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

D A Bale said:


> Lost three in the last week - and no, I don't blame Hidden Gems, though the majority of reviews thus far were obtained through that venue. My problem is that Zon always goes after the five stars, even though they are legitimate. When are they going to go after the one and two stars that are only there because they had a problem downloading the book or say they never ordered it (Zon issue)?


Amen. Zon seems to have no problem with reviews that violate their own stated guidelines, as long as they're negative enough. Amazon should care about review quality, not just about authors gaming the system. Anyway, let's not forget that there is some manipulation through aiming one-star reviews at the competition, though it's been a while since I've heard of anyone being targeted.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

It's the cold reality. Many have warned for years about ARCs. ARCs developed from fanship are invariably skewed toward positive. If an ARC reviewer gives an author 1 star they are very unlikely to be asked a second time.

I'm not saying all are this way but there are quite a few. Amazon also has noticed that authors are doing de facto review swaps which violate TOS.


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## baldricko (Mar 14, 2014)

ParkerAvrile said:


> Are they FB or Goodreads friends? Edited-- Oh, now I see they were Hidden Gems. Yes, looks like I lost 4 or 5 Hidden Gems Reviews. The books in question had 52 or 53 reviews, now they have 50 each. Can't see that it matters. Both books were already BookBub'd so the purpose in having so many reviews (for my genre) has already been served. It does seem odd that Amazon would go into the past and randomly remove reviews but maybe there's something about those specific reviewers we don't know.


Looks like you are responding to the wrong post. That's me in the original post at the top you are quoting but you are clearly responding to someone else. No you don't "see they were Hidden Gems" because I never said that.

As I said in that post, I don't have reviews from anyone I have any kind of relationship with. That rules out FB and Goodreads friends.


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## Megan Crewe (Oct 8, 2015)

Amazon is definitely cracking down harder than usual this week. I've lost maybe ten reviews across my various books, when I've never noticed any disappearing before (and I haven't newly connected any social media accounts or anything). 

None of these were from Hidden Gems, as I've never used their service. I'm pretty sure I've lost at least one off even my APub books.


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## robert eggleton (Feb 4, 2013)

I've accepted and sent friend requests on Facebook, but always after the review was posted and I've not actually know any of the people (book bloggers) before they read or posted about my novel on their blogs. Should I stop this practice? I would hate to unfriend someone because Amazon doesn't research relationships very well.


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## Queen Mab (Sep 9, 2011)

I lost one Hidden Gems review too. Hopefully that's it!


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## HiddenGems (Aug 19, 2015)

Hey everyone!
A few people sent me emails about this thread, so I just got caught up, although I was already aware of the issue as a couple of our authors and reviewers contacted me about it yesterday and I have been reading some other author boards on the issue.

But rather than respond to everyone individually, I'll try to just cover everything in one go here as most of the points are re-iterated a few times in different ways by different people.

Essentially - I don't have much more info than you guys do about what's happening, which means it's all just speculation on my part as well. As much as I'd love to have some personal relationship with Amazon where they call me up with problems instead of banhammering everyone they think has violated their secret rules, I don't.

But since I deal with so many ARCs and so many readers a month, and have been reading some other threads along with this one, I can try and summarize what I *think* is going on here. I apologize in advance as this post may be a bit lengthy so that I can cover everything all in one go, but let me know if I've missed anything.

*What's Happening?*
Here's what we think is going on. Amazon has identified a number of reviewers that they feel have violated some rule, and they've removed ALL of their reviews. Not just ARC reviews, not just the ones that were in violation, but all reviews they've ever done for any product whether purchased or not. I've identified 3 of our readers that this has happened to specifically, and that's been the case with them all. Each one has had every review removed - their profile pages are completely blank and every review link they have sent us for every book in the past is now broken.

I've also been in contact with one of these reviewers, as she emailed me to tell me what happened and how she can no longer write reviews on Amazon and feels terrible about letting down the authors that were kind enough to send her free books - not just from us, but from the authors directly because she's part of several direct author arc teams. She's been in contact with Amazon, but so far has gotten no response. I suggested that she email the [email protected] email address directly, as that tends to get more visibility and response, and she has done that as well now, but still no word. She has no idea why she was banned. As far as she knows, she follows all the rules. Her reviews are all legit. She's a speed reader that reads many books a week, and relies on ARC programs because she can't possibly afford to buy the number of books she can read. So yes, she had a LOT of reviews on her Amazon profile. Hundreds. But according to her they were all legit and now they are all gone and she's prevented from reviewing anything else - purchased or not.

*How Many Are Affected?*
This one is hard to say since the problem affects authors everywhere, whether they use our review service, someone else's, their own ARC teams, or no review service at all. I've seen all of those cases mention having reviews removed.

From what we've seen, most people affected have had a relatively small number of reviews go missing. Usually less than 10, but lots of authors are affected and if you add up all those missing reviews, the problem looks bad but perhaps it just seems worse than it really is. Not from the sense of how much it sucks to have your reviews go missing, but in how widespread the issue is - allow me to explain.

If you look at how many authors are saying they have books missing reviews and then go and add up all the reviews across all of those books and authors, you can come up with a pretty large and alarming number that may seem like this is a big catastrophe in the making - however, that's a bit misleading.

The key point is that Amazon is removing ALL reviews by specific reviewers.

So for example, if 1 reviewer that has reviewed 100 books has all of their reviews blown away, that reverberates across 100 different books - potentially across 100 different authors. So depending on how you look at it, is that 100 problems, or 1 problem? It's really just one problem that affected 100 people.

For example, the reviewer that contacted me had read hundreds of books across many different arc teams, and had all of them removed. Of the 3 authors that emailed me directly yesterday about missing reviews, I found that one reviewer had reviewed all 3 of them. Of the 2 other reviewers I identified, both of those had reviewed 2 of the 3 books as well. So a single problem is shared by many, making the issue look a bit more widespread than it is.

Again, that's not to say there isn't a problem but just that because of the overlap, it may not be affecting as many reviewers as it looks like at first.

*Why Is Amazon Removing These Reviews?*
We're moving into pure rumor and speculation territory here, because as has been pointed out in this thread, no one really knows why Amazon does anything, ever. Their rules are intentionally obscure and not uniformly enforced. But there have been a few guesses that I'd like to weigh in on (with the caveat that my opinion on these guesses are also just guesses, I have no more facts than anyone else).

*Theory 1:* _Amazon is targeting ARC reviewers, or people that write that they are voluntarily reviewing free copies, and so we should all stop saying that._

I think I read something about this in this thread, but I admit that this is a point that has been emailed to me by various authors a few times in the last month, so it could be that I'm just thinking of those cases. I did see it on another board yesterday as well, though, so I thought I'd bring it up here since it's something that I disagree with.

First, while a small number of HG reviews have been removed, the vast majority haven't, and most of the HG reviews do contain a line about voluntarily reviewing a free copy. If that line was the problem, an algorithm could swoop up and remove all of those reviews very quickly and easily - and Amazon is the king of doing things through algorithms. But, more importantly, unless I'm misinterpreting things, they still require that reviewers disclose getting a free copy in their About Promotional Content page.

_"Anyone may submit content to their followers in exchange for compensation as long as it is clearly and conspicuously disclosed (e.g., "I was paid for this post", "I received this product for free in exchange for this post")."_

Even the FTC requires that sort of disclosure, although I'm no US legal expert so I can't say whether it applies here for sure or not, but from their page regarding endorsements:

_"The point is to give readers the essential information. A simple disclosure like "Company X gave me this product to try . . . ." _

*Theory 2:* _Amazon is targeting fake reviewers that are leaving 5-star reviews on books that don't deserve it, or are not really reading the books, etc._

All I can do is re-iterate that to the best of my knowledge, none of our reviewers are fake. There is no incentive, beyond getting a free book, to leave reviews at all. We do not penalize reviewers for leaving low star rating reviews, and the author is not in control of who gets to read their books. All the author does is provide the details of their book, and we send that out to our readers in order for them to make an informed decision about whether they want to sign up. From that pool, we randomly choose the readers that those books go out to until we get to the desired number of reviewers (if that many even sign up).

As has been stated in this thread, plenty of HG authors have gotten non-5-star reviews from reviewers of our service. It's hard to say at this point whether the reviewers that were removed were 5-star heavy or not though, since all of their reviews have been removed and all we're left with our the broken links. But there are still plenty of 5-star reviews left on books that came from ARCs that weren't removed, so it's unlikely this is the (sole) reason for removal. I've also seen authors state that non 5-star reviews have been removed.

*Theory 3:* _Amazon is using social media to tie reviewers to authors and determining that they have a previous relationship and thus invalidating their reviews._

This is the prevailing theory on one of the other author boards I'm on. Honestly, I have no idea if it's true or not. There are plenty of ways Amazon could be doing this - they own Goodreads, they have close relationships with FB so could be sharing data, etc, etc - so I don't think it's impossible. It is incredibly hard to prove though, and so I really don't know.

I actually asked that one reviewer whether she was friends with any authors on FB. She said she was part of FB ARC teams, and she was fans of author pages, but she didn't think she was "friends" with any authors that she'd written reviews for on their personal pages. Not a definitive answer, so take it as you will.

*Next Steps*

So where do we go from here?

It's hard to say if or what should be done at this point without giving it more time to see if Amazon continues to remove reviewers, or this was a one-time thing where they identified some criteria and removed everyone that matched it. Amazon has always removed individual reviewers, as a couple people have pointed out, so I don't expect that to stop completely, but this bigger one-time cull is out of the ordinary. I think all we can do is wait and see how things move forward from here.

I've always run Hidden Gems to work within the rules of ARCs as I understand them, and as far as I know I'm still doing that. And while these issues have affected more than just HG readers and authors, HG will always be hit hardest by issues like this because so many ARCs come through our service. HG typically ARCs over 100 books a month, across thousands of reviewers, so issues will likely always visibly affect us more than someone running their own ARC team or a service that just ARCs a few titles a month. But as far as I know, Amazon isn't targeting HG authors or readers in any way. We're just getting swept up in it like everyone else.

That being said, I would LOVE to have a contact at Amazon that I could work with that was reasonable and had some authority. They could tell me all the rules that I needed to follow to run an ARC program that they agreed with, and I would happily follow them in exchange for peace of mind that our authors and reviewers would be left alone. Unfortunately, I don't have such a contact. If anyone else does, or if any Amazon exec is reading this and wants to contact me - please do. Of course, that still wouldn't insulate HG from all problems - a reader or author that is breaking the rules on their own would still suffer the consequences of that action whether they worked with us or not, but at least we'd know that nothing we were doing specifically was ever at issue.

Anyway - sorry for writing a book of my own here, but there was a lot to cover. Feel free to agree or disagree with any of my points - as I said, I don't have any special insight so most of this is simply speculative opinion and I'm always happy to discuss or change my mind if new facts or ideas are presented.


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## thesmallprint (May 25, 2012)

I've long suspected it's just a matter of time before Amazon bans ARCs.


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## IntoTheAbyss (Mar 20, 2017)

To be honest, I don't think it's arc reviewers that are being targeted. As people mentioned, some of their reviews that have disappeared and they have never used ARCs or anything. I think Amazon is probably just sweeping through accounts that may be suspect because of how many reviews that account does. The accounts are probably mainly legitimate accounts and are fine, but Amazon's AI flagged them for some reason.


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## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

When I started out with e-books (in the 1990') the vast majority of reviewers would not review a published book at all. They wouldn't review most Indie books, but when they did, most wanted ARC's.

If an ARC reviewer writes a good review because they want to read the next book, well then, I think that's a sure bet they meant the good review. If I don't like a book, I don't want to read its sequel either.

Trashing the reviews, the work, of people is unconscionable. Authors build their ARC base out of people who want to read their books just as the big corporations do. A good marketing list is one where the people on the list are known to want the product and to buy more of it. That's the same for an ARC list.

If you want to say the system is gamed, it's gamed in favor of the large corporations, not the Indie authors.

A real review is not defined by the reviewer buying the book; a real review is defined by the skill and knowledge of literature of the reviewer. A real reviewer has a very good vocabulary; recognizes literary references; can understand complex sentences; can catch subtleties; can recognize poetic and other literary devices; is familiar with the literary idea of voice; has knowledge of history and is willing to look up historical details to verify them; can place the story in the context of the canon and of contemporary issues; etc., etc. If the reviewer bought the book and can say little else than: "I like this book. It has many twists and turns." Well, sorry, not a real review. So Amazon trashing thousands of reviews because they are ARC's is out of keeping with book business and grossly unfair to the reviewers and the Indie authors.



thevoiceofone said:


> I'm going to play the devils advocate on this one.
> 
> I can understand Amazon pulling ARC reviews.
> 
> ...


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## baldricko (Mar 14, 2014)

CynthiaClay said:


> When I started out with e-books (in the 1990') the vast majority of reviewers would not review a published book at all. They wouldn't review most Indie books, but when they did, most wanted ARC's.
> 
> If an ARC reviewer writes a good review because they want to read the next book, well then, I think that's a sure bet they meant the good review. If I don't like a book, I don't want to read its sequel either.
> 
> ...


Yes! 100% agree.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Amazon is the one that told me to get an arc group. So I don’t think they were  opposed. Now there is so much abuse that I think they are cracking down. With the usual hammer that is catching some legit folks as well.  

When I gave people free ARCs, I got the same early review average that I do now, and that I did pre arc. It’s the same passionate early readers. Most of them will like it because they are passionate early readers of your stuff. Some will be disappointed and say so.

You can’t require a review in exchange any more, so there’s not as much point in arc groups anyway.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

thevoiceofone said:


> Amazon sees this as GAMING the system, i agree it is. ( yes i know trad do it as well but still, its not a real review) A real one should come from someone who genuinely has paid for the book through amazon or through payment to kindle unlimited.


That's kind of where I'm sitting on this one. I just took a look at GoodReads top reviewers lists and found a few that have posted hundreds of reviews in the last week. In just one week's time. I don't care how prolific you are as a reader, you can't read 500+ books in a week AND write proper reviews for them. And these are reviewers that are claiming to be ARC readers. I'm doubting that these types of reviewers even cracked the books they reviewed. If that's the case, those reviewers should be smacked down and their reviews removed.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

{Gone}


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## Bob Stewart (Mar 19, 2014)

I'll take a stab at an explanation for the recent spate of deletions: Amazon tweaked the algorithm that searches for bogus reviews.

If you look at this page someone else linked to above: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGreatAmazonPurge/

...You can see that for most weeks, only few have been deleted. But every once in a while, the number approaches 100. Which means 1% of the top 10,000 reviewers were deleted in one week.

So my guess is that they tweak the algorithm to catch more culprits, get a lot of complaints they are deleting legitimate reviews, then ratchet it back, or re-tweak it.

I sincerely doubt it's anything as complicated as linking people to their friends on Facebook. It probably has more to do with the frequency and/or nature of the reviews, i.e., a pattern on Amazon itself.


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## Annette_g (Nov 27, 2012)

I've just had a look at reviews I have written and I think all of mine are still there. Some were so long ago I can't remember all of them.

As for reviewers who post a few or more reviews around the same time, that may be that they have written the review a while ago but only got around to posting it later, along with others for that same week. It doesn't mean they have read all the books or reviewed them on the same day/week.


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## 97251 (Jun 22, 2017)

dgcasey said:


> That's kind of where I'm sitting on this one. I just took a look at GoodReads top reviewers lists and found a few that have posted hundreds of reviews in the last week. In just one week's time. I don't care how prolific you are as a reader, you can't read 500+ books in a week AND write proper reviews for them. And these are reviewers that are claiming to be ARC readers. I'm doubting that these types of reviewers even cracked the books they reviewed. If that's the case, those reviewers should be smacked down and their reviews removed.


I'm gonna say that it really might be the case. From the reviews I had removed, they were mostly short reviews from readers who might or might not have read the book. I'm not saying they didn't read it, I'm saying that from the review it's not really clear that they read it. It might be just that they don't like to write much.

It could also be that some readers request more ARCS then they can possibly read and decide to review even the DNF just so they aren't penalized in the arc teams or HG. I'm not saying it's the case. I'm saying it's a possibility. So if some reviewers are leaving reviews on more books than an average fast reader, it could be that Amazon is deleting the reviews. Of course, some super voracious speed readers might be getting caught up in that, which is super unfair.

I don't think the problem is the star rating. The reviews I had removed were mostly 4 stars and my average rating went up.

Also, every single long, detailed, insightful review remained.

Sill, I have only one book out with very few reviews, so I'm looking at very few examples. The only upside is that I sort of keep track of reviews enough that I noticed how many were missing, and the type of reviews that were missing.


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## 98368 (Sep 4, 2017)

CynthiaClay said:


> When I started out with e-books (in the 1990') the vast majority of reviewers would not review a published book at all. They wouldn't review most Indie books, but when they did, most wanted ARC's.
> 
> If an ARC reviewer writes a good review because they want to read the next book, well then, I think that's a sure bet they meant the good review. If I don't like a book, I don't want to read its sequel either.
> 
> ...


Thank you for saying this. I totally agree.

Is Amazon trying to stop indie authors from using ARC services? It's okay if the big boys do it, but not indies. What's the difference?

And if anyone here thinks that reviewers who write reviews for the NYT Book Review or Kirkus or PW, for example, aren't biased in some way, think again. Everyone with an opinion is biased in some way.

If Amazon is trying to (further) discourage, confuse, and flummox indie authors, they're doing a grand job of it.

Finally, I don't get the often-cited idea that a lot of false good reviews cause readers to buy books that they then return, causing a problem for Amazon. Why don't I get this? Because Amazon has the Look Inside feature, where anyone who's going to buy an ebook can read the first 10% of the book--or have it downloaded in a sample to their Kindle or Kindle app--for_ free _and decide for themselves. Or am I the only person who does this? Even if a book has 2,000 4- and 5-star reviews and was published by one of the Big 5 and is supposedly the greatest thing since _The Great Gatsby_, if I read the sample and don't like it or am not interested, I don't buy the book!


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

RTW said:


> Is Amazon trying to stop indie authors from using ARC services? It's okay if the big boys do it, but not indies. What's the difference?


It's not about ARCs. Amazon explicitly permits ARCs, under certain conditions. This is a small number of reviewers who have hit some invisible tripwire at Amazon and got zapped for it. They don't know why, so nobody knows except Amazon, and they're not telling.


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## Seneca42 (Dec 11, 2016)

I'm surprised no one has yet mentioned that amazon likely has the ability to decipher how much of a book someone has read. The kindle likely records that info and sends it back to the all mighty zon. 

So if an account has reviews for books that the kindle says they haven't read, voila, grounds for nuking. 

Now, the obvious issue with this is that the book may have been attained in a different format than mobi, or read on something other than the kindle app. But that's a nuance zon may not really care about. If you're leaving a review on amazon, then from their perspective you should have read an amazon book (ie. the actual mobi file on the kindle reader).


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

CynthiaClay said:


> When I started out with e-books (in the 1990') the vast majority of reviewers would not review a published book at all. They wouldn't review most Indie books, but when they did, most wanted ARC's.
> 
> If an ARC reviewer writes a good review because they want to read the next book, well then, I think that's a sure bet they meant the good review. If I don't like a book, I don't want to read its sequel either.
> 
> ...


Totally disagree.

A "real" review is whatever someone wants to say. I don't care about any of the things you care about for reviewers and I doubt many readers do either.


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## 98368 (Sep 4, 2017)

Herefortheride said:


> Totally disagree.
> 
> A "real" review is whatever someone wants to say. I don't care about any of the things you care about for reviewers and I doubt many readers do either.


OK. I have to take back my full-out agreement stated earlier. I admit to having skimmed the paragraph in the initial post I quoted regarding "real" reviews. But I do stand by my statement that everyone with an opinion has a bias. It's an _opinion_, not a fact.

When I'm looking at reviews for products, I tend to discount certain reviews, for example, reviews that say things like "I didn't like it" or "Loved it." And it's impossible to know what motivated any reviewer--the reviewer may not even know. People's preferences vary dramatically. One person's Best Book I Ever Read is another person's Worst Book I Ever Read. Which is why it's great that you can actually read part of the book on Look Inside--then you can decide for yourself. Or doesn't anyone really do this? I mean, back in Ye Olden Dayes, when I was at a bookstore, even if the book was hyped and praised to the stratosphere, if I opened it up and read some of it here and there and didn't like it, I didn't buy it. Why would I?

Unlike other products on Amazon, products you can't touch or try on and so you're dependent on the experiences of other customers, you _can_ try on a book, which, to me, makes reviews somewhat irrelevant.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

RTW said:


> OK. I have to take back my full-out agreement stated earlier. I admit to having skimmed the paragraph in the initial post I quoted regarding "real" reviews. But I do stand by my statement that everyone with an opinion has a bias. It's an _opinion_, not a fact.
> 
> When I'm looking at reviews for products, I tend to discount certain reviews, for example, reviews that say things like "I didn't like it" or "Loved it." And it's impossible to know what motivated any reviewer--the reviewer may not even know. People's preferences vary dramatically. One person's Best Book I Ever Read is another person's Worst Book I Ever Read. Which is why it's great that you can actually read part of the book on Look Inside--then you can decide for yourself. Or doesn't anyone really do this? I mean, back in Ye Olden Dayes, when I was at a bookstore, even if the book was hyped and praised to the stratosphere, if I opened it up and read some of it here and there and didn't like it, I didn't buy it. Why would I?
> 
> Unlike other products on Amazon, products you can't touch or try on and so you're dependent on the experiences of other customers, you _can_ try on a book, which, to me, makes reviews somewhat irrelevant.


Many of us have been burned by books that have a great look inside and fall off a cliff shortly after. If there is something particularly scathing or egregious I want to know. My time is too valuable to read half way through a broken book.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

CynthiaClay said:


> A real review is not defined by the reviewer buying the book; a real review is defined by the skill and knowledge of literature of the reviewer. A real reviewer has a very good vocabulary; recognizes literary references; can understand complex sentences; can catch subtleties; can recognize poetic and other literary devices; is familiar with the literary idea of voice; has knowledge of history and is willing to look up historical details to verify them; can place the story in the context of the canon and of contemporary issues; etc., etc. If the reviewer bought the book and can say little else than: "I like this book. It has many twists and turns." Well, sorry, not a real review. So Amazon trashing thousands of reviews because they are ARC's is out of keeping with book business and grossly unfair to the reviewers and the Indie authors.


I believe you're setting too high a bar for reviews. A lot of very articulate people who may even have all the knowledge you suggest often leave short reviews as a quick thumbs up or thumbs down. While as a reader I think it's nice when reviewers are more specific, a reviewer, as others have noted, is entitled to respond briefly.

Part of the problem is that when we hear _review_, many of us still visualize reviews by book critics. Those would more closely correspond to the pattern you're suggesting. Perhaps the customer reviews should be called customer comments, as someone suggested long ago.

That said, I agree with your point that trashing legit ARCs while leaving alone dubious reviews just because the author paid for the book is questionable. It sounds as if that's not what's happening here, though.


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## ImaWriter (Aug 12, 2015)

CynthiaClay said:


> A real review is not defined by the reviewer buying the book; a real review is defined by the skill and knowledge of literature of the reviewer. A real reviewer has a very good vocabulary; recognizes literary references; can understand complex sentences; can catch subtleties; can recognize poetic and other literary devices; is familiar with the literary idea of voice; has knowledge of history and is willing to look up historical details to verify them; can place the story in the context of the canon and of contemporary issues; etc., etc. If the reviewer bought the book and can say little else than: "I like this book. It has many twists and turns." Well, sorry, not a real review. So Amazon trashing thousands of reviews because they are ARC's is out of keeping with book business and grossly unfair to the reviewers and the Indie authors.


I'm sorry, but I disagree. Well, I agree to the extent that if YOU are the one writing the review, you clearly have an idea what a real review is for YOU. But you don't get to stipulate if what I, or anyone else, writes is a real review or not.

Say someone with a grade five reading level reads one of my books. There will most certainly be vocabulary they don't understand, but they're reading my book for the genre, not for the vocabulary. So despite the fact there were lots of words that made them go "huh", they really loved my book. Now they get an email from Amazon, begging for a review. Well, they loved my book, and they're willing to share that. Their review consists of "I loved this book! I think it's one of the best books I've ever read, and I can't wait for the next in the series." They don't know what a literary device is, nor do they care to. So they most certainly won't be waxing poetical over my use/overuse/non-use of them.They don't know lots of words, and they are not a writer. Even if they do know lots of words, not everyone is capable of stringing them together intelligibly and cohesively. As far as they are concerned--because they are not in the business of writing reviews, nor are they obsessively waiting for reviews and/or reading the reviews they've gained--this is a valid review. They don not need to launch into something that equates with a thesis for it to be a valid review. And for me to turn around and nullify their feelings--what as far as they are concerned is a valid review--is just rude.


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## Harriet Schultz (Jan 3, 2012)

I must be living under a rock. Never heard of Hidden Gems.


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## 98368 (Sep 4, 2017)

Herefortheride said:


> Many of us have been burned by books that have a great look inside and fall off a cliff shortly after. If there is something particularly scathing or egregious I want to know. My time is too valuable to read half way through a broken book.


I guess I have to say that I've been "burned" by books from favorite authors, books that had an enormous number of fabulous reviews, and books that seemed promising. As well as books recommended by good friends whose opinions I value. I've been "burned" by books I loved right up until the last few pages, then I wanted to throw the book against the wall--and some of these were books that other people thought were genius, including the parts of the book I despised. I guess my only point is that reviews are personal and subjective. But perhaps I didn't make that clear before.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

I'm starting to think this is related to all those hacked Amazon accounts that are being used to post fake reviews on different products, so Amazon set up some kind of a bot to detect certain words, the number of reviews and how often they're posted so they could remove those, and as always with Amazon, innocent people are getting caught up in it.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Herefortheride said:


> Many of us have been burned by books that have a great look inside and fall off a cliff shortly after. If there is something particularly scathing or egregious I want to know. My time is too valuable to read half way through a broken book.


Even though most will say (and to an extent I agree) that this sort of viewpoint is subjective, I still get angry when I read rave reviews of a book and it turns out to be a crap shoot. For example, such was the case with a book touted to heaven and back, major editorial reviews, hundreds of stellar reviews...I should have known better. It's one of the worst books I've ever come across, with the most passive character in all of history. A movie (which I saw first) was made of this book and I fell in love. NOT the same story or even ending, which is okay, but I was so angry I went to Goodreads for REAL reviews and saw just what I thought. Many readers felt tricked in the same way. From now on, I'll make sure to read reviews on Goodreads first. UGH.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

ParkerAvrile said:


> That's my experience of Hidden Gems also. My reviewers overall are very picky & quality conscious, so reviews are all over the map, and I think it's a great service.
> 
> I do think it's only natural that people who like the book are more likely to review. It's just common sense. There is no value in telling someone NOT to read a book. That's the default. Most people are NOT going to read your book. You don't need to tell people NOT to read a book.


I think people who are passionate either way are more likely to leave a review. I've certainly left reviews to warn other readers away from books that did things like have no proper ending (just cut off in the middle of the story), or had the most boring middle ever imaginable, or had an ending where the main protagonist went backwards and lost all development and returned to the place she was at originally. That book I wanted to toss across the room and am still furious with. I find GREAT VALUE in telling people NOT to read these books or to proceed with caution.

The Look Inside can only do so much to inform you about the writing style. It can't say whether the rest of the book is good or not. I appreciate reviews that call out things that you won't see in the first 10%.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Harriet Schultz said:


> I must be living under a rock. Never heard of Hidden Gems.


It's a good service, but I didn't know about it until recently. It used to be romance books only, but now it has branched out into other genres.


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## baldricko (Mar 14, 2014)

CynthiaClay said:


> When I started out with e-books (in the 1990') the vast majority of reviewers would not review a published book at all. They wouldn't review most Indie books, but when they did, most wanted ARC's.
> 
> If an ARC reviewer writes a good review because they want to read the next book, well then, I think that's a sure bet they meant the good review. If I don't like a book, I don't want to read its sequel either.
> 
> ...


I am going to go back to this post. I believe we can measure what a good review should be from the best examples. How do we know what the best examples are (of anything) if all we have is a collection of examples? By extension, how do we improve ourselves as writers, if we don't have what we consider 'real' novels, novellas, short stories, poems, etc to measure ours by?

I don't believe Cynthia is saying we have the elite examples and the rest of us or any derivation of that at all. If she was I wouldn't be at all in agreement. But you can see from her post she is totally supportive of real reviews as apart from those who are not written by people who have read the work and that we are all aware of are damaging the reviewers on Amazon as a whole.

Let's, for arguments sake, call a book review written by someone who has read the work a genuine review (rather than say calling it a 'real' review). It might be only a couple of lines but they could be quite succinct or possibly the reviewer has little time but wants to contribute some stars and a few words, or the reviewer is simply not good at written English for a variety of reasons. It's still a genuine review--if the reviewer has read the book.

But... a reviewer who is familiar with writing reviews, is well read and most important of all, has read the book and takes the time to write a paragraph or two is going to give us far more information and thoughts to consider than someone who writes a couple of lines no matter how succinct they might be.

I lost four reviews in 24 hours. Two were for a book that I published in 2015! Not an ARC. One of the reviews was particularly informed. It was more than a few lines, and it was one of the better reviews I have received recently. Not five stars. Only four. But I learned from that reviewers feedback. Now it has been disappeared by the hammer.


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## baldricko (Mar 14, 2014)

Bob Stewart said:


> I'll take a stab at an explanation for the recent spate of deletions: Amazon tweaked the algorithm that searches for bogus reviews.
> 
> If you look at this page someone else linked to above: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGreatAmazonPurge/
> 
> ...


Totally concur with this. I believe algos as well as bots (yes bots too) are behind the onslaught of glitches we have seen in the past month or two from Amazon. Someone mentioned yesterday I think, and I did also a wee while ago that Amazon is likely testing a number of approaches that employ algos. I would call it an AI learning phase. Of course, AI is always learning, that's what AI does after all.

There is nothing nefarious in this approach per se. All corporations are motivated by profit, and in a flooded market the only way to profit is to cut costs. Most meetings in the boardroom revolve around this subject--at least that is how I see it. This is the logic behind the enterprise to begin with. The number one approach to increasing profit in a diminishing market is to cut costs. This is why we have seen our manufacturing move off shore to places where labor is cheap. An alternative or an addition to this strategy is to 'employ' more robots.

Hence the increasing reliance on algos, and the bots. Unfortunately for us or perhaps its fortunate, creativity is a human ability. Not one that can be built into AI. Of course, any decent SF writer can imagine a world where AI become creative. I must get back to novel writing...


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## D A Bale (Oct 20, 2016)

Harriet Schultz said:


> I must be living under a rock. Never heard of Hidden Gems.


I just used them for the first time last month and am very pleased with the crop of readers from their service. Just wish Zon would figure out what the heck they're doing.


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## Guest (Dec 4, 2017)

Well, today my disappeared Amazom review has returned. Has anyone else seen any of their reviews come back?


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## baldricko (Mar 14, 2014)

Yes, this is a little bit of good news!! That Amazon did respond to the backlash--which I am sure came as a surprise to whatever section it was that decided to select such a large and heavy hammer. 

I have two of my four disappeared reviews over two books back where they belonged. I hope this has been the case for most who were affected. As others pointed out you have to feel for the honest and dedicated reviewers who were slammed.


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## D A Bale (Oct 20, 2016)

One of mine returned!


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## VirginiaMcClain (Sep 24, 2014)

Kat M said:


> Well, today my disappeared Amazom review has returned. Has anyone else seen any of their reviews come back?


My deleted review appears to have returned also.


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## Kay7979 (Aug 20, 2016)

Mine are back now, too!


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

I only lost one, and it returned.

I have seen this happen before. Four years ago I had a book lose most of its reviews just as I was getting ready to apply for promos. I freaked, but the reviews all returned within a short time. Algo change, glitch, who knows?


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## D A Bale (Oct 20, 2016)

And now a second one has returned.  Will we see the third?  The mystery continues...


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## Megan Crewe (Oct 8, 2015)

Out of the books where I definitely knew exactly how many reviews I had (and therefore exactly how many I'd lost), I've gotten one back out of four so far.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2017)

Just going to make some general comments:

While I am not an Amazon fangirl, I will say that if Amazon is bulk purging reviews, they are doing so for the benefit of the Amazon ecosystem. Amazon is NOT YOUR FRIEND. They do not particularly care if YOU lose reviews. Reviews are for their benefit to move product. If they are bulk purging reviews, then there is something going on that has indicated to them that a critical mass of reviews have hurt the ecosystem and they need to purge the pool.

Yes, innocent people are going to get hurt. Amazon does not care. They will always, ALWAYS, do what is in their best interest first.

Indies created the review arms race. Sorry, but it is a simple fact. I have been saying it for a decade. It is contrary to human nature to leave positive reviews unless something is truly exceptional. Most of the industry data on customer service indicate that, on average, a person is 20x more likely to complain when things go wrong than to compliment when things go right. We assume that a book should be good, and therefore the average person does not leave reviews to say a book was good. Before the indie movement, the only books that had huge quantities of reviewers were the bestsellers, and those reviews were driven by fanboys and detractors.

Indies bought into the review "services" because they were tricked into believing that was how trade publishers got reviews. And then it was the "ARC" services which were never true "arcs" but just comp copies distributed for free to consumers who signed up to get free books. And then the book promo sites latched on to this and began to require X number of reviews with a Y star rating, which drove indies to do more and more to generate more and more reviews...which just moved the goal posts for the book promo sites to demand more reviews.

If you are giving away thousands of free copies to generate a hundred reviews, you ARE manipulating the system. It may not be malicious. You may not have even thought about it because "everybody does it." But it is muddying the waters by adding hundreds, if not thousands, of artificial data points.

The thing is, Amazon wants customer reviews to be CUSTOMERS. Because then it can feed that data into the algorithms and determine real human interest. When a critical mass of the reviews cease being from customers and instead are from people who got free copies, then the system breaks down. If 80% of the reviews are from customers, you can be fairly confident in your data. If only 30% of the reviews are from customers, your data becomes useless.

So if I am Amazon, I need to do what I can to preserve the integrity of the system because my data depends on it. I'm sure this is also why Amazon recently announced that Kindle book giveaways at Goodreads will come with a $119 price tag. They are tightening the noose on excessive non-customer reviews for their own protection.

Also keep in mind that you really don't know what is going on behind the scenes with some review services. Midwest Book Reviews never charged for their reviews, but there were incidents of some people who review for them doing "side jobs" where they sold reviews under their brand. There have been incidents of review services "padding" their results with sockpuppet accounts to meet guarantees that they made to authors, particularly at launch when they are more desperate to produce results. And, of course, since most of the review services don't actually vet reviewers beyond "verify your email address" it is entirely possible that the same person could register to get free books under multiple names and the review service would not even know(particularly with services that request "gifting" of books instead of sending files.)


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## CABarrett (Feb 23, 2017)

I think the current line of speculation about Amazon's motives is right on track, but their fake review problem is so much larger than books that I don't think indies or ARCs are the catalyst for this cleanup. I've been shopping for Christmas toys this week and nearly every product page I've seen on Amazon has had at least one clearly fake review (unverified purchase, odd wording that's either automated or not native English, overly generic praise of the product, and/or describing attributes that don't apply to the product). My guess is that they're at war with some massive black-hat review factories and this is the crossfire.


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## A past poster (Oct 23, 2013)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Just going to make some general comments:
> 
> While I am not an Amazon fangirl, I will say that if Amazon is bulk purging reviews, they are doing so for the benefit of the Amazon ecosystem. Amazon is NOT YOUR FRIEND. They do not particularly care if YOU lose reviews. Reviews are for their benefit to move product. If they are bulk purging reviews, then there is something going on that has indicated to them that a critical mass of reviews have hurt the ecosystem and they need to purge the pool.
> 
> ...


I agree with your comments. I think they are really insightful. But I question your assertion that giving away free copies for reviews is manipulating the system. Certainly, giving away free copies will generate more reviews, but why would these reviews be any less valid than reviews from purchasers? Why should a review stating that a book is filled with spelling and grammatical errors written by a reviewer who got the book free be any less valid and/or weighted than a review saying exactly the same thing written by a reviewer who paid for the book?


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Marian said:


> I agree with your comments. I think they are really insightful. But I question your assertion that giving away free copies for reviews is manipulating the system. Certainly, giving away free copies will generate more reviews, but why would these reviews be any less valid than reviews from purchasers? Why should a review stating that a book is filled with spelling and grammatical errors written by a reviewer who got the book free be any less valid and/or weighted than a review saying exactly the same thing written by a reviewer who paid for the book?


The difference is that the review sites and so-called ARC reviews trend toward positive by their nature. They are a service. I've known lots of authors who have used these services some of them write absolute drab but they are getting 20+ 5 star reviews.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

I've noticed a pattern here. Every time Amazon does anything, there are a group of people who run in and say "you're bad and dirty and deserve what happened to you". What kills me is in a case like this, Amazon didn't even go after ARC reviews, they deleted all reviews from a couple of reviewers and it looks like some of those reviewers already got their account back, yet there are still people taking time to condemn ARCs when it looks like they had nothing to do with anything. The same thing happened last month with marketing.

This notion that the only pure way to publish is to put your book up there and walk away is so strange. Though I guess with all the gaming of the system that's been going on, it's natural for some people to swing to the other extreme.


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## Mylius Fox (Jun 2, 2014)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> The thing is, Amazon wants customer reviews to be CUSTOMERS.


They also want them to be ARC reviewers.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2017)

Marian said:


> I agree with your comments. I think they are really insightful. But I question your assertion that giving away free copies for reviews is manipulating the system. Certainly, giving away free copies will generate more reviews, but why would these reviews be any less valid than reviews from purchasers? Why should a review stating that a book is filled with spelling and grammatical errors written by a reviewer who got the book free be any less valid and/or weighted than a review saying exactly the same thing written by a reviewer who paid for the book?


I did not say one was more valid than the other. I am actually all for giving away comp copies as a marketing tool to drive buzz. I said, from AMAZON's point of view, they want consumer data. Consumer data drives predictive algorithms to determine what people will buy. Some of these ARC sites are literally driving thousands upon thousands of data points into the "consumer data" that are not, in fact, consumers.

I work in consumer packaging. Our company does a LOT of consumer research. When you do consumer research, it is imperative that the data be as pure as possible. You have to account for variables that impact the data. If ABC Arc Service is sending five thousand data points into the system that otherwise would not be there, every month, it IS changing the information gathered.

Imagine you are a consumer researcher. WalMart hires you to perform on-site surveys of their customers to learn what type of products they should stock. You survey 500 consumers who came into the store, and learn that a huge percentage of them (20%) really think Walmart should stock ABC New Product. That would be a huge indication of interest in that product, right?

But what if I now added that, Vendor Y happens to be on site that day giving out free samples of ABC New Product. He didn't know you were doing the survey that day. He was just scheduled to be there that day. Do you think those free samples may have caused some of your respondents to give you the answer they did?

But what if I now added that Vendor Y KNEW there was a chance WalMart would be doing some sort of consumer survey. So they sent flyers to all of the neighborhood churches telling everyone that, on a specific day, they could get a free sample of ABC New Product. And that, when he gave people the free sample, he told them "And if you like it, make sure to tell WalMart!"

Oh, and 200 of your 500 respondents were only in the store that day BECAUSE of the promotion. And the majority of them recommended that the product be stocked.

Do you see now how this can muddy the waters? The vendor didn't do anything inherently wrong. He's promoting his product. And he asked people that, if they liked it, tell Walmart. But from WalMart's point of view, they paid you a lot of money to get them accurate data on customer interests, and now that money was wasted because of a lot of corrupt data.

Amazon and its vendors are always at cross-purposes. Vendors want Amazon algorithms to advantage them. Amazon wants the algorithms to reflect organic product interest. Unfortunately, as Amazon owns the playground, they get the final say on the rules.


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## Amanda M. Lee (Jun 3, 2014)

Marian said:


> Certainly, giving away free copies will generate more reviews, but why would these reviews be any less valid than reviews from purchasers?


Let's be honest. People put together ARC teams because they want positive reviews. If someone on the ARC team gives negative reviews, is the author going to keep them on the team? I'm going to guess not. There might be a random few out there who will, but the sheer bulk of authors will cut that individual. ARCS are engineered to gain positive reviews, not negative. If people want to keep their places on ARC teams, they know they have to give positive reviews in exchange for it. That's why I believe Amazon will have no choice but to eventually make reviews "verified purchases" or "verified borrow" only and all others will be culled. Like everything else, people are abusing the system. If they wouldn't abuse it, then it wouldn't happen. People always abuse the system, though. They can't seem to help themselves.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Let's be honest. People put together ARC teams because they want positive reviews. If someone on the ARC team gives negative reviews, is the author going to keep them on the team? I'm going to guess not. There might be a random few out there who will, but the sheer bulk of authors will cut that individual. ARCS are engineered to gain positive reviews, not negative. If people want to keep their places on ARC teams, they know they have to give positive reviews in exchange for it. That's why I believe Amazon will have no choice but to eventually make reviews "verified purchases" or "verified borrow" only and all others will be culled. Like everything else, people are abusing the system. If they wouldn't abuse it, then it wouldn't happen. People always abuse the system, though. They can't seem to help themselves.


^^This.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> While I am not an Amazon fangirl, I will say that if Amazon is bulk purging reviews, they are doing so for the benefit of the Amazon ecosystem. Amazon is NOT YOUR FRIEND. They do not particularly care if YOU lose reviews. Reviews are for their benefit to move product. If they are bulk purging reviews, then there is something going on that has indicated to them that a critical mass of reviews have hurt the ecosystem and they need to purge the pool.


That assumes that everything that happens is a carefully planned, rational move on Amazon's part. It's hard to tell, though. Some of what happens is the result of glitches. At the very least, the fact that some of the reviews that disappeared reappeared in a couple of days suggests at the very least that Amazon might not have intended exactly the result it got.

I actually respect any desire Amazon may have to keep the review system clean. However, if that were really what Amazon was trying to do, it should also be purging the reviews that aren't about the product, that were posted to the wrong product, etc. Many of these violate the review guidelines. They stay up, anyway.



Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Indies created the review arms race. Sorry, but it is a simple fact. I have been saying it for a decade. It is contrary to human nature to leave positive reviews unless something is truly exceptional. Most of the industry data on customer service indicate that, on average, a person is 20x more likely to complain when things go wrong than to compliment when things go right. We assume that a book should be good, and therefore the average person does not leave reviews to say a book was good. Before the indie movement, the only books that had huge quantities of reviewers were the bestsellers, and those reviews were driven by fanboys and detractors.
> 
> Indies bought into the review "services" because they were tricked into believing that was how trade publishers got reviews. And then it was the "ARC" services which were never true "arcs" but just comp copies distributed for free to consumers who signed up to get free books. And then the book promo sites latched on to this and began to require X number of reviews with a Y star rating, which drove indies to do more and more to generate more and more reviews...which just moved the goal posts for the book promo sites to demand more reviews.
> 
> ...


Thousands of free copies? Wow, I guess I haven't been doing enough. 

I'm going to respectfully differ on the manipulation point. Buying reviews is manipulation. Encouraging impartial reviews isn't. When I tried the Hidden Gems service, for example, the ratings mirrored my organic reviews on the same book. I'm not sure why that data would be unreliable or artificial. If the reader's opinion is sincere, that should really be all that matters. Also, are we sure Amazon uses the reviews in its algorithms? I don't know, but I recall a number of people arguing that ratings had nothing to do with rankings, that ranking data came from sales, borrows, etc.

As far as the data being from customers is concerned, the $50 requirement seems to have been intended to address that.


Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> So if I am Amazon, I need to do what I can to preserve the integrity of the system because my data depends on it. I'm sure this is also why Amazon recently announced that Kindle book giveaways at Goodreads will come with a $119 price tag. They are tightening the noose on excessive non-customer reviews for their own protection.


I'm not sure Amazon is trying to strangle excessive non-customer reviews. I think it's more likely Amazon is trying to monetize something that used to be free. It certainly wouldn't be the first time...

If Amazon really wanted to preserve the integrity of the system and saw a potential threat in the same way you do, why not eliminate Goodreads giveaways? Charging a lot for them does what? Ensures that only indies with big budgets can corrupt the system? That doesn't exactly sound like the best way to preserve integrity. For that matter, why not eliminate Amazon giveaways (still currently free)?

Not so long ago, Amazon forbade giving away free products outside the Vine system--with the explicit exception of free books. Free books are also allowed in the review guidelines so long as they are acknowledged. Why not just prohibit the practice of giving out free books completely?

As I said somewhere else (maybe even in this thread, in which case I apologize for repeating myself), if Amazon really saw the kind of problem with reviews that you suggest, it should lead by example. Amazon has at times given away free copies of imprint books in large numbers, and it still does that in at least some cases. If it wants to show indies that the practice is wrong, then it needs to abandon it itself, not do it on a larger scale than most indies would ever dream of.

You're probably correct about indies starting the review arms race, but Amazon encourages it at every turn by making that star rating one of the most visible elements on the page and everywhere else (search results, even AMS ads), by allowing customers to filter search results by star ratings, etc.


Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Also keep in mind that you really don't know what is going on behind the scenes with some review services. Midwest Book Reviews never charged for their reviews, but there were incidents of some people who review for them doing "side jobs" where they sold reviews under their brand. There have been incidents of review services "padding" their results with sockpuppet accounts to meet guarantees that they made to authors, particularly at launch when they are more desperate to produce results. And, of course, since most of the review services don't actually vet reviewers beyond "verify your email address" it is entirely possible that the same person could register to get free books under multiple names and the review service would not even know(particularly with services that request "gifting" of books instead of sending files.)


You make very good points about review services, and I think indie authors should all look for potential red flags. Guaranteeing a specific number of reviews is an excellent example of something to avoid. I'm not sure, though, what the benefit to a reviewer would be to sign up under multiple email addresses when they could just as easily request all the books they wanted through one. (And, as I've also pointed out elsewhere, people are only going to go after books they're actually interested in reading.)

Though you aren't a fangirl, I think you may in this instance be giving Amazon more credit for rational policymaking than it deserves. If you were running KDP, policy would always be clear and logically applied. That isn't always so with Amazon, though. I wish it were.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

All I can tell you is, I set up an ARC team for Amazon and Audible at the urging of my KDP and Audible reps. They specifically told me that it was no different from what publishers do when I expressed concern. 

I no longer give any free ebook copies, but when I did, my review average didn't change. And yes I had negative ARC reviews. I write different things in different tones. Not everybody loves every book. Negative reviews give credibility to positive ones. It's all good. 

A popular author will get lots of positive reviews early because people who love her work will read the book as soon as they get it. 

Amazon now says specifically that you cannot require a review in exchange for a free book. They have changed it that much. Important if you do use ARCs. 

I lost reviews too. On books where I had zero ARCs, and on ones where I had a fair number of ARC reviews, in equal measure. One or two per book. I don't think this has to do with ARCs per se. More cracking down on certain reviewers I would say.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Amanda M. Lee said:


> Let's be honest. People put together ARC teams because they want positive reviews. If someone on the ARC team gives negative reviews, is the author going to keep them on the team? I'm going to guess not. There might be a random few out there who will, but the sheer bulk of authors will cut that individual. ARCS are engineered to gain positive reviews, not negative. If people want to keep their places on ARC teams, they know they have to give positive reviews in exchange for it. That's why I believe Amazon will have no choice but to eventually make reviews "verified purchases" or "verified borrow" only and all others will be culled. Like everything else, people are abusing the system. If they wouldn't abuse it, then it wouldn't happen. People always abuse the system, though. They can't seem to help themselves.


I think we need to distinguish authors' own ARC teams from ARC services.

As much as I am pro-ARC in general, I abandoned my own efforts to build an ARC team based on posts such as yours that I read in the past. I think it probably is true that some authors might manipulate the system.

ARC services, on the other hand, may encourage their members to review but don't necessarily demand positive reviews. The first time I used Hidden Gems, I went through and checked profiles after most of the reviews were posted to see if everything looked appropriate. Some of the reviewers did give most high ratings to books; others gave mostly low ratings. Others were in the middle or varied considerably. If HG was somehow pressuring its reviewers for positive reviews, it certainly wasn't evident from what they were producing.


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## Kay7979 (Aug 20, 2016)

Usedtoposthere said:


> All I can tell you is, I set up an ARC team for Amazon and Audible at the urging of my KDP and Audible reps. They specifically told me that it was no different from what publishers do when I expressed concern.


This was my thought, exactly. Publishers send out thousands of advance copies to get early buzz about a book and reviews, and no one faults them for doing so. Why should it be any different for Indie authors?


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## D A Bale (Oct 20, 2016)

While I appreciate the comments concerning organic versus ARC reviews, and that I've been around since the days of the paid reviews scandals, I must take issue with the concept that those of us who have tried an ARC service, particularly Hidden Gems, are somehow "gaming" the system.

I once was a small-time reviewer also and NEVER wrote a review I wouldn't stand by with the blood of my firstborn.  I wrote reviews that hit the gamut of the 5-star system - and paid a price on my freebie when thin-skinned authors took issue with my detailed analysis of their book(s) by siccing revenge reviewers that made it obvious they never did anything but download the book to garner a "verified purchase" tag.  Great.  Fine.  So the idea that reviewers will only leave praise-worthy reviews doesn't hold water in my book.  I've worked hard to find reviewers that are honest and have given my books the gamut of the 5-star system also.

However, keeping a team of reviewers over the long haul can be a challenge, especially if you write in multiple genres like I do.  After hearing positive comments here on KBoards and researching them, I decided to give Hidden Gems a try on one of my books.  They do not guarantee a specific number of reviews or a certain star rating - which as those of us who've been around a while know to steer clear of anyone making such claims (and if you didn't, now you do - run fast and far from those).  HG did the hard work and gathered up people who MIGHT be interested in reading my book.  They don't make guarantees, but they can make a fairly educated guess that you'll probably see a high percentage of those who signed up for your book leave a review (mine was around 70%).  After years of spending countless hours contacting and building ARC lists (only to have many stop reviewing in the meantime), I was HAPPY to pay someone to gather the bloggers/reviewers for me.  I guess I see this the same as paying someone to make a cover - they already have the resources in place.

I can't speak about other review services, but Hidden Gems saved me a ton of time and energy, and I was happy to pay for their services.  I've gotten three, four, and five-stars from their reviewers with well-thought-out commentary on most.

And you know the funny thing?  Several of their reviewers liked the book so much that they became "verified purchase" reviewers (even though their review says they received an ARC) on not just that book but the rest of the books in the series.  Securing those new readers actually paid for my fee to HG, which I'll be using again for future releases.

So yes, be wary of ARC services, but just don't lump them all into the same basket.


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## Guest (Dec 5, 2017)

Bill Hiatt said:


> That assumes that everything that happens is a carefully planned, rational move on Amazon's part.


Oh, I would say the majority of things Amazon does ARE carefully planned...not neccessarily rational, but carefully planned!



> I actually respect any desire Amazon may have to keep the review system clean. However, if that were really what Amazon was trying to do, it should also be purging the reviews that aren't about the product, that were posted to the wrong product, etc. Many of these violate the review guidelines. They stay up, anyway.


What you are suggesting makes perfect sense...in Amazon was prepared to spend money on human beings to actually qualify reviews. But it is doing everything with automation, as least, as much as CAN be automated. Which is why we get bulk removals of all reviews from a reviewer instead of individual reviews removed. Once Amazon finds something that smells funny, they use a chainsaw, not a scalpel. Because chainsaw method can be ran with an program. Scalpel requires a human to make a decision.



> Thousands of free copies? Wow, I guess I haven't been doing enough.


What do you think a permafree is? Or when people place their book on free sale for five days and do mega-promos to drive free downloads? There is a whole school of thought around here that says if you aren't giving away thousands of copies during a promo, your promo failed.



> I'm going to respectfully differ on the manipulation point. Buying reviews is manipulation. Encouraging impartial reviews isn't. When I tried the Hidden Gems service, for example, the ratings mirrored my organic reviews on the same book. I'm not sure why that data would be unreliable or artificial.


I already explained this in my example. And yes, those reviews feed into algorithms for recommendations. They don't impact RANK, but they do impact recommendations to a degree.



> As far as the data being from customers is concerned, the $50 requirement seems to have been intended to address that.


The requirement was to make sure people were real people and not sock puppets. And when I say customer, I mean customer OF A SPECIFIC PRODUCT, not someone who shopped at Amazon periodically. Crest doesn't care about people who go to Amazon only to buy plumbing supplies. They care about people who go to Amazon to buy toothpaste.



> If Amazon really wanted to preserve the integrity of the system and saw a potential threat in the same way you do, why not eliminate Goodreads giveaways?


I never said they were trying to get rid of all non-customer reviews, which is what you seem to be arguing. My point was that when _a critical mass of non-customer reviews_ invades the system, it causes waves. A certain quantity of non-customer reviews can help drive traffic to a product and give customers some level of confidence when a product is new and has no history yet. But when a small number of services are driving huge quantities of non-commercial reviews to a product, you have to see how that can mess up the system. Don't think of this as "But I am honest and innocent so I don't understand." This has nothing to do with whether someone is "honest" or "innocent." It has to do with third-party services mucking up information you are cultivating for your own business. The problem is that people are thinking in terms of individual reviews, specifically solely books, and not metadata being compiled across the entire store.

They are looking at raw blocks of data in the millions, being processed by computers to churn out predictive algorithms. And all of the major players are doing this now and there is no reason to pretend we "don't know" whether or not they are doing it. They are. I can tell you for a fact that they are, though I can't go into details (because I like my day job and want to keep it). They have the programs and the tools to learn an enormous amount about their customers. And that includes reviews. They can scan reviews and search for common phrases and keywords and extrapolate.

Amazon recently made a manufacturer CHANGE A BOTTLE CAP due to consumer feedback. Not complaints from customers, but data from reviews. A cap the manufacturer has been using for years and years without incident. But Amazon said "Fix this or we won't sell this product."

I don't pretend to have secret knowledge of the inner workings of Amazon, but I am aware of certain things others aren't by virtue of what I do for a living. Look beyond ONLY indie ebooks and think about the big picture across the entire platform.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

As a reader only and a customer of kindle books, any kind of review that has any kind of connection to the author is disregarded by me. That includes arc, street team, news letter giveaways, raffle thingies. Any review that mentions "received for free from author or service" is scrolled right on by. Special marks for using the word "honest review", I scroll even faster past those. 

I find the vast majority of those type reviews to be way over starred and over positive. This is especially an issue in the romance genre, which I like reading. Brand new books out the gate with 100's of arc type reviews and not a one regular reader anywhere. I seen many books where it seems they have absolutely no organic reviews. The books just keep going through promotion after promotion and its packed with those reviews. I do not trust those reviews or those books.

Many of us have stopped browsing for books because of this reason, this artificial "hype" that often gets created with those rah rah reviews. Then I compare this brand new author with books from established, well known and well loved authors and the average rating is just way over the top high. 3.6 and up is a great rating for me. Yet I see these brand new books with 100's of reviews and having a rating of 4.5 and above. 

This stuff isn't just an issue with books of course. Its site wide. I can't trust anything anymore. At least with books though I can look at actual reader reviews over on goodreads. Its not that easy for non book products. 

I keep hearing how trade publishers do the same, yet I don't see that at all. I read trade books and when they come out new, they might have a handful of blog reviews, some of those tidbits are in the editorial section. But not 100's or even 1000's of them. That is not even remotely the same. And I never have any issues to finding actual reader reviews on those books. I basically disregard unknown blogger type reviews also, they are just like arcs. In romance especially everyone now has a "blog". Doesn't mean anything. The opposite, they want to continue to get and review books for their blogs so they are doing a lot of the rah rah 5 star ones also. 

I don't know how they can fix the reviews at this point. They are so artificially inflated across the board that they have become utterly useless. Everything apparently is a 5 star book now. Yet for me a 3 star is a good book to read. Where are the masses of 2 stars, 3 stars with Arc reviews on a new book if they are just like any other review? I don't see it. Its all super great 5 stars, at most 4. And I am talking about masses, not some few lonely ones that get drowned out in another tsunami of 5 stars right after.


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## Lefevre (Feb 1, 2014)

Atunah said:


> As a reader only and a customer of kindle books, any kind of review that has any kind of connection to the author is disregarded by me. That includes arc, street team, news letter giveaways, raffle thingies. Any review that mentions "received for free from author or service" is scrolled right on by. Special marks for using the word "honest review", I scroll even faster past those.
> 
> I find the vast majority of those type reviews to be way over starred and over positive. This is especially an issue in the romance genre, which I like reading. Brand new books out the gate with 100's of arc type reviews and not a one regular reader anywhere. I seen many books where it seems they have absolutely no organic reviews. The books just keep going through promotion after promotion and its packed with those reviews. I do not trust those reviews or those books.
> 
> ...


As a reader, I totally agree with you.

For a long time now, book reviews on Amazon have ceased to be helpful. Realistically, it takes approximately the same amount of time to read the sample as it does to scroll through a bunch of reviews. Since the former quality assessment is far superior to the latter, book reviews are mostly irrelevant. It is also bad that promo sites are so reliant on the amount of reviews a book has. With all of the review shenanigans that people are using just to access promotional tools, it is probably just a matter of time before Amazon removes this functionality entirely.


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## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

Atunah said:


> ...That includes arc, street team, news letter giveaways, raffle thingies. Any review that mentions "received for free from author or service" is scrolled right on by. Special marks for using the word "honest review", I scroll even faster past those.
> I don't know how they can fix the reviews at this point. They are so artificially inflated across the board that they have become utterly useless.


Yikes, you are tough! I myself find all the star ratings, no matter the amount of stars, pretty useless. I read a bit of the review. If the review actually has something to say other than "I liked this book. It had many twists and turns" and it otherwise does not sound like a second grader wrote the review, I'm apt to buy it. Normally I read the blurb and then I use the Look Inside This Book Function. I just posted a book for kindle (it's under review) and I did not see a place to post an opening paragraph or two. I think we really need the option to post a bit of the book's opening for potential readers to sample. I mostly find books to read by reading the author k-boards. Authors often drop little things in passing that make me go hunting for their books.

I don't care if an author's friends, family or ARC groups, or random strangers wrote the review. It's how the review is written that matters to me. As an author, it's really fun to read reviews that praise my books from people I have no idea who they are, but that's just my ego enjoying being stroked.

People who write spite reviews are evil.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

CynthiaClay said:


> Yikes, you are tough! I myself find all the star ratings, no matter the amount of stars, pretty useless. I read a bit of the review. If the review actually has something to say other than "I liked this book. It had many twists and turns" and it otherwise does not sound like a second grader wrote the review, I'm apt to buy it. Normally I read the blurb and then I use the Look Inside This Book Function. I just posted a book for kindle (it's under review) and I did not see a place to post an opening paragraph or two. I think we really need the option to post a bit of the book's opening for potential readers to sample. I mostly find books to read by reading the author k-boards. Authors often drop little things in passing that make me go hunting for their books.
> 
> I don't care if an author's friends, family or ARC groups, or random strangers wrote the review. It's how the review is written that matters to me. As an author, it's really fun to read reviews that praise my books from people I have no idea who they are, but that's just my ego enjoying being stroked.
> 
> People who write spite reviews are evil.


I don't read samples of books, ever. Its not part of my vetting process. I just don't like having partial books floating in my head. It also would not tell me what I need to know. That comes from reviews. I just go to goodreads for those and here in the book corner. Readers I trust.

I don't care what grade level a review is written. I much prefer one that might not be technically well written, but conveys the emotion and tone of the book in question. Those are the things that matter to me. Not technical details on something I know nothing about. I am not a writer. Maybe that is because english is not my first language and I was never educated in an english speaking country. All I have now is what I got from reading and speaking. I do expect books to be proper in that regard, but reviews? Nope. I don't care if someone might not speak well, writes well. I will never ever make fun of someone for that as I have no idea what the situation is. None. We are not all writers and that doesn't mean I shouldn't write reviews.

If it comes from the heart it is more valuable than any technical babble about grammar. How did it make the reviewer feel, how satisfying was it to read. Were the characters believable, was it interesting, did the ending let them down, etc. Was it actually the genre the author claimed it was. Was it boring, are there TSTL characters. Did it feel authentic. Those things matter to me. Not a book report.

We are also not evil for not writing all 4 or 5 stars. When I write a 1 star, or a 2 star review, I am not evil. Its not spite, its just that I didn't like the book, period. Nothing more and nothing less.

I don't call it being tough. My time and money is valuable. I want to read all the good books. So I vet in my way. Unsolicited reviews are part of that. And looking at the ratings I give, its working.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

Atunah said:


> If it comes from the heart it is more valuable than any technical babble about grammar. How did it make the reviewer feel, how satisfying was it to read. Were the characters believable, was it interesting, did the ending let them down, etc. Was it actually the genre the author claimed it was. Was it boring, are there TSTL characters. Did it feel authentic. Those things matter to me. Not a book report.


I'm curious. How is any of that useful if people's opinions are subjective? Are you talking about reviews that include spoilers from the book? Every review without any actual facts from the book usually tells a lot about the reviewer but nothing about the book. I ask because I got a few vague 1-star reviews on Goodreads that mention things like TSTL characters and that could be posted on any book, and I wonder if anyone is actually going to fall for that since I know they're fake (they included a common complaint that doesn't fit my book, so I realized something was off). As a reader, the only thing I search for in reviews are spoilers because the rest means nothing to me.


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

Bill Hiatt said:


> I think we need to distinguish authors' own ARC teams from ARC services.
> 
> As much as I am pro-ARC in general, I abandoned my own efforts to build an ARC team based on posts such as yours that I read in the past. I think it probably is true that some authors might manipulate the system.
> 
> ARC services, on the other hand, may encourage their members to review but don't necessarily demand positive reviews. The first time I used Hidden Gems, I went through and checked profiles after most of the reviews were posted to see if everything looked appropriate. Some of the reviewers did give most high ratings to books; others gave mostly low ratings. Others were in the middle or varied considerably. If HG was somehow pressuring its reviewers for positive reviews, it certainly wasn't evident from what they were producing.


The source matters. There's a general downward trend in ratings from Netgalley reviews, and book bloggers can sometimes be a little harsher than the general reader. And again, reviews from people who picked up a permafree book might be harsher due to people reading outside their usual genres. On the other hand, you will get better star ratings from ARC teams run by authors.

The trouble is it doesn't necessarily all balance out, so I appreciate Julie's points about it skewing the data when done on a large scale.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

katherinef said:


> I'm curious. How is any of that useful if people's opinions are subjective? Are you talking about reviews that include spoilers from the book? Every review without any actual facts from the book usually tells a lot about the reviewer but nothing about the book. I ask because I got a few vague 1-star reviews on Goodreads that mention things like TSTL characters and that could be posted on any book, and I wonder if anyone is actually going to fall for that since I know they're fake (they included a common complaint that doesn't fit my book, so I realized something was off). As a reader, the only thing I search for in reviews are spoilers because the rest means nothing to me.


I was talking more about some of those technical type comments that talk about the bones of the actual writing stuff. In detail. Most of that means nothing to me. I don't really include much from the actual book either when I write reviews. I don't want to spoil for one thing and I just write about how a book made me feel. So the vague ones you are talking about are probably like many of mine are. And yes, it can tell something about the reviewer. Which of course is helpful if you want to follow that reviewer on goodreads or amazon. If I know the things a reviewer likes or doesn't like and it jives me my opinion, that is a good thing. Most of us non writerly reviewers write more basic. About feelings and emotions. At least I think so. 
Sure, there are always those that write the non technical book report type reviews that are long and very very interesting to read. I am in awe of those folks. I follow them if I can find them. But they still write a lot about feelings and often can put in words in ways I can understand why a book worked or didn't work.

For most of us it is very very hard to write so in depth. Very hard. Something you writers often tend to forget as its what you do, write. I can't write my way out of a paperbag. So I have to fall back on what is important to me when I read. Sometimes something doesn't feel right, but I can't put my finger on it. I don't know what to call it. So in a review, what do I say. I just say this didn't work for me. I just didn't like it and I don't know why. Because that would be the truth. You guys might have a technical term for it, if I could explain it, but I don't. And I suspect many of us readers don't. Sometimes all that is needed from a fellow reader is "you have to read this, I am still thinking about the characters a week later." Or some such thing. Those are organic reviews.

I have no use for reviews that tell me the story. I want to read the story myself, or why bother. So I try to avoid anything spoilerish. Things like, "this isn't a romance the couple dies at the end" isn't a spoiler. That's a PSA in my opinion. . Or telling me something is a cliffhanger. The TSTL reviews are also very useful. Some stuff I just don't like and try to stay away from.
Spoiler to me is telling me bits of the story that are important to experience while reading the book. Its like letting the air out of a balloon.

Again, goodreads is better as I can find reviewers I can trust and I have done the same on Amazon. I can follow authors and reiewers there and I love that. Its the only way I can sift through the wall of text.


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## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

> We are also not evil for not writing all 4 or 5 stars. When I write a 1 star, or a 2 star review, I am not evil. Its not spite, its just that I didn't like the book, period. Nothing more and nothing less.


You misunderstand me. A spite review is not a review with 4 or 5 stars or even one with 1 or 2 stars. On the contrary, *a spite review is a bad review *of the book *to hurt the author *and really *has nothing to do with how good the book *is. *Writing a review to hurt the author *rather than writing a review to tell how you like the book *is a spite review*, and *is what's evil*.

Reviews inform readers about the book. Therefore, they need specific details that will let readers know if they will like that particular book or not. Even if the details given are to demonstrate the reviewer did not like the book, another reader may decide that's what they want in a book. When something so general as "It has many twists and turns" is said, that really does not help because it is too general of a statement.

What you want in a book is probably different from what I want. That is all good. We need books for everybody, which means all sorts of books are needed.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

CynthiaClay said:


> That is all good. We need books for everybody, which means all sorts of books are needed.


And we need all sorts of reviews for everyone. 

I don't know how you could tell if someone writes a review to hurt the author. Unless you personally know the person, you wouldn't. I once wrote a review were I absolutely chewed out the author. In my opinion it was deserved. There were claims of repeated editing, in the book and in the blurb. I supposedly purchased a version that was yet again finally properly edited. Past the 20% mark in, there were so many errors it was just horrific. I felt insulted. So yes, I put that on the door of the author, rightfully so. That wasn't spite either. I didn't write it to hurt the author, I honestly don't really think about that. I am a consumer, I buy, I read, I talk. That author didn't care that they hurt my pocketbook or took my time away from me. Sure they didn't really care either.

Its not all personal out there. I don't know any readers that review just to hurt an author. What would be the point of that. Maybe other authors have some kind of reason or agenda on that. Reader don't. But that is another kettle you guys have to figure out among you.


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## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

[quote ]
I'm curious. When people I know read the latest novels by famous authors like Grisham or Patterson, they don't leave reviews on Amazon. So where do all those reviews come from by novels published by the big publishing houses? They seem to start rolling in as soon as the books are released. A bit puzzled about this.
[/quote]

The big publishers send out Advanced Review Copies (ARC's) to newspapers, bloggers, magazines, tv shows, etc., etc. long before they release the book as a publication. For instance, they send them to Kirkus. Kirkus reviewers are always paid; they are professional reviewers who are hired for their knowledge of literature. Either they are paid by Kirkus or they are paid by Indie authors. Perhaps the big publishers pay them a flat fee for so many reviews regardless of what books will be sent--I'm only guessing on that. The newspapers and mags pay their reviewers, too.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Atunah said:


> As a reader only and a customer of kindle books, any kind of review that has any kind of connection to the author is disregarded by me. That includes arc, street team, news letter giveaways, raffle thingies. Any review that mentions "received for free from author or service" is scrolled right on by. Special marks for using the word "honest review", I scroll even faster past those.
> 
> I find the vast majority of those type reviews to be way over starred and over positive. This is especially an issue in the romance genre, which I like reading. Brand new books out the gate with 100's of arc type reviews and not a one regular reader anywhere. I seen many books where it seems they have absolutely no organic reviews. The books just keep going through promotion after promotion and its packed with those reviews. I do not trust those reviews or those books.
> 
> ...


Oh, I dunno. There are certainly authors gaming things, especially in romance. They tend to do other stuff as well. And I agree that ARC groups are not as unbiased as, say NetGalley reviewers--because they're already fans of an author's work, or they wouldn't be in the group. But later books by an author, esp. in same series, will mostly be reviewed by people who are, yep, fans of the author's work. Indie or tradpub.

On the other hand, I opened Amazon Music last night and a window popped up that said, "Give us 5 stars!" and asked me to review it.

Yep. Amazon's in-house music app. They asked me to review by asking me to give them 5 stars.

I went, "Whoa."

If Amazon thought reviews were being gamed too much, I expect they'd do what Audible and Goodreads do and allow star-only ratings. That tends to bring average ratings down, in my experience, by .3 to .5 stars. They haven't done that, which is interesting. I'm guessing they will at some point.

Out of curiosity after reading your post, I went and checked Lee Child's first book and my first novel. (A brand-new book by a brand-new author that nobody had ever heard of. I didn't even know what an ARC was.)

Lee got better reviews than I did on Goodreads, which is why he's Lee Child and I'm not. But not by much. Here's how they stack up.

The Killing Floor:
Amazon: 4.3 stars on 5,300 reviews
Goodreads: 4.0 stars on 188,000 ratings
Audible: 4.3 stars on 6,000 ratings

My Book 1: 
Amazon: 4.3 stars on 1,100 reviews
Goodreads: 3.8 stars on 6,200 ratings
Audible: 4.1 stars on 665 ratings

Here are Susan Elizabeth Phillips's averages on her first (re-released) book (she's written 20+ books, I guess, & is a major romance author much respected for the quality of her work. But probably nobody would call this first book of hers her best.):
Amazon: 4.0 stars on 128 reviews
Goodreads: 3.7 stars on 6,000 ratings
Audible: 3.9 stars on 600 ratings

The stats I gave on my Book 1 are my lowest ratings on any book. That's partly because I got considerably better after Book 2, and partly because the pool of people who picked up later books by me included a subsection of folks who liked how I wrote.

I'll say again that my reviews on books during the period where I gave ARCs are about the same as before I did. For the first few books, where I gave away 1.2 million free copies on Amazon and also sold hundreds of thousands (so the pool's pretty big), the review average is 4.2 to 4.4. After that (when a higher percentage of my readers had heard of me/read me before), the books all average between 4.4 and 4.8. On Goodreads: between 4.0 and 4.5.

That's anecdotal, but there you go. I think there may be a little too much cynicism around this, honestly. Aside from certain groups of authors, I don't think there's all that much gaming going on.

I do expect we'll see star-only ratings allowed & counted in the future.


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## 97251 (Jun 22, 2017)

Regardless of the whole arc debate, I think it's important to remember that reviews are good for Amazon.

Reviews are content. Amazon, having the highest number of reviews for any given book (most of the time), is the go-to store for a reader who likes reviews. And nowadays, other than Goodreads, that's the place to read book reviews. Zon knows that authors work hard to provide content (reviews) for Amazon, and I bet they are super happy that promo sites ask for reviews from them. 

From a commercial point of view, there's nothing wrong with arc teams or arc services for Amazon. Not to mention that you're bringing people to their store. Of course, as long as it doesn't discredit their review system. So I think that's the thing. 

I'm the type of reader who likes to read reviews. It helps me decide if it's something I'm going to like or not. I like to understand what readers liked and disliked. I find reviews are usually pretty accurate, both the high and the low ratings, but they focus on different aspects. And Amazon reviews are cool because they are not only from prolific readers.


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## kcmorgan (Jan 9, 2013)

C L Salaski said:


> So is this just another case of the big boys slamming a sledgehammer down on the little guy's head? What's good for the goose is not good for the gander?


Nope. Some reviews went missing and that's what people decided had happened, and we got into a long debate over whether it was justified or not. And after it was clear Amazon wasn't coming down on ARCs, we just continued debating it as if it happened.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

CynthiaClay said:


> The big publishers send out Advanced Review Copies (ARC's) to newspapers, bloggers, magazines, tv shows, etc., etc. long before they release the book as a publication. For instance, they send them to Kirkus. Kirkus reviewers are always paid; they are professional reviewers who are hired for their knowledge of literature. Either they are paid by Kirkus or they are paid by Indie authors. Perhaps the big publishers pay them a flat fee for so many reviews regardless of what books will be sent--I'm only guessing on that. The newspapers and mags pay their reviewers, too.





C L Salaski said:


> So is this just another case of the big boys slamming a sledgehammer down on the little guy's head? What's good for the goose is not good for the gander?


Those aren't "Customer Reviews" and they belong in the Editorial Review section where customers are aware they are pure marketing added by the publisher. Kirkus, etc. do give negative reviews but you never see those added to the book page.

As a reader-only, I will say that ARC reviews for self-published books have become so ubiquitous they no longer have any meaning for me personally. I don't have any clue how many pre-release copies traditional publishers send to "regular" readers versus professional reviewers, but I don't see new releases from my favorite authors with nothing but "I received this book for free ..." in the large numbers I see for so many self-published books. I guess it is a self-publishing marketing dilemma.

I'll probably get hollered at for saying this, but when I see the disclosure of a free book received next to a verified purchase tag, that looks shady to me. I've seen multiple people say, "They liked the ARC so well, they went ahead and purchased a copy to support me!" Really? They spend their money on a digital license for a book they have already received, read, and is still available to them for a re-read instead of a new read? I always think they must have received some other quid pro quo just to add that verified purchase tag.

I would personally like it if Amazon would start treating ARC and other reviews with the disclosure like they do Vine reviews. Once there is some arbitrary number of organic reviews (30, I think), they start deleting Vine reviews.


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## jasonbladd (Dec 22, 2015)

crebel said:


> I'll probably get hollered at for saying this, but when I see the disclosure of a free book received next to a verified purchase tag, that looks shady to me. I've seen multiple people say, "They liked the ARC so well, they went ahead and purchased a copy to support me!" Really? They spend their money on a digital license for a book they have already received, read, and is still available to them for a re-read instead of a new read? I always think they must have received some other quid pro quo just to add that verified purchase tag.


Not necessarily shady or quid pro quo...If you're running a book review campaign after the launch, you can direct your book review candidates to download the book on one of your free days if you're in KDP select. They get it free and it shows up as a verified purchase.


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## crebel (Jan 15, 2009)

jasonbladd said:


> Not necessarily shady or quid pro quo...If you're running a book review campaign after the launch, you can direct your book review candidates to download the book on one of your free days if you're in KDP select. They get it free and it shows up as a verified purchase.


That isn't an ARC or a book that requires disclosure to review, anyone can get it on those free days. If they are downloading it on a free day for the verified tag after they already have the digital book as an ARC or review copy given to them, that is manipulative as heck, IMO.


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## katherinef (Dec 13, 2012)

crebel said:


> I'll probably get hollered at for saying this, but when I see the disclosure of a free book received next to a verified purchase tag, that looks shady to me. I've seen multiple people say, "They liked the ARC so well, they went ahead and purchased a copy to support me!" Really? They spend their money on a digital license for a book they have already received, read, and is still available to them for a re-read instead of a new read? I always think they must have received some other quid pro quo just to add that verified purchase tag.


Don't some ARCs expire after some time if they were acquired through sites like NetGalley? Or maybe the reviewers want the final copy instead of the ARC that might contain typos or not have all the parts. A weird thing happened to me with a NetGalley reviewer once. They purchased the book and returned it. It was one of my older books that was no longer selling much, so I could tell. Their review was a 5-star, and it's still up with a verified purchase tag. I was mad about it because I couldn't understand why they'd do that. Maybe it was an accident and they misclicked while trying to post their review. I know it looks shady, but there's nothing I can do about it.


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

Life's too short for most readers to read books they aren't interested in. Free or not. If somebody wants to get an ARC copy from an author on NetGalley or elsewhere, odds are they're a big fan or read heavily in that genre. 

Look, Amazon has never given any indication that they have a problem with ARCs when disclosed, etc. If readers have a problem with them, they can certainly discount those reviews. (But less scrupulous authors will be asking reviewers NOT to disclose the ARC. The ones you're seeing with "free copy" are the ones on scrupulous authors' books, the ones who are least likely to be incentivizing or gaming or reimbursing reviewers for their "Verified Purchases." Hate to tell ya.)

I think all reviews on all products have to be taken with a grain of salt. Not that they aren't honest, just that they're of varied value depending how much they tell you about the product, the reviewer, and why they liked or disliked it. And of course the body of evidence as a whole among all the reviews. 

Amazon wants reviews because reviews sell products. I don't see that changing.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

{Gone}


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

PaulineMRoss said:


> This is absolutely spot on. We can all use (or not) reviews however we wish. Some people look at the overall number, some at the overall rating, some discount ARC reviews or non-verified reviews or five stars or whatever. Some people never look at the reviews at all. That's all fine. They're there for those who want them.
> 
> Me, I find the most useful are the 1-3* reviews IF they say why they disliked it. If I'm looking at a Regency romance, for example, and a review says it was slow/boring/not enough action/no sex, I'll very likely buy it. If the review complains about grammatical errors, modern language and widespread historical errors - nope, not for me. I don't care whether a review is verified or an ARC or not, it's the content of a review that matters most, and particularly the negative comments.
> 
> But I don't see ARCs going away any time soon. For me, they're some insurance against a casual 1* early in a book's life, which can be very damaging. My ARC reviewers, bless them, are not at all uniformly 5*, which is absolutely fine.


Yikes, you just said your ARCs are there to insulate you against a readers one star review meaning you know they are inflated toward positive. That's review gaming at its most basic.


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## PearlEarringLady (Feb 28, 2014)

{Gone}


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## Guest (Dec 6, 2017)

Herefortheride said:


> Yikes, you just said your ARCs are there to insulate you against a readers one star review meaning you know they are inflated toward positive. That's review gaming at its most basic.


At least she's being honest. ARC reviews tend to be more positive, that's common knowledge. As a consumer I find book reviews (especially on Amazon) to be nearly worthless. People just don't know how to review books. Some fans will five star everything by an author they like, they'll give a book one star because a book didn't have a happy ending, etc.

I can go to IMDB and find really good movies rated 7.5 stars (Just because you enjoy a movie it doesn't mean it's perfect) and yet on amazon mediocre to below average trash is littered with 4.5 star ratings. Book reviews are nothing more than promotional tools.


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## Joseph John (Nov 6, 2013)

When I buy books to read on Amazon, I don't look at the rating. I look at the sheer number of reviews. My thought process is that if a book has a lot of reviews, readers found it interesting enough to express their opinion about it. If readers don't care enough to leave a review, either good or bad, it's probably a mediocre book.

If it has a good number of reviews, then I'll look at the description and probably the most helpful positive and most helpful negative review.

But that's just me. I'm sure everyone decides which books to read or not read differently.


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## CBB (Nov 14, 2017)

crebel said:


> I'll probably get hollered at for saying this, but when I see the disclosure of a free book received next to a verified purchase tag, that looks shady to me. I've seen multiple people say, "They liked the ARC so well, they went ahead and purchased a copy to support me!" Really? They spend their money on a digital license for a book they have already received, read, and is still available to them for a re-read instead of a new read? I always think they must have received some other quid pro quo just to add that verified purchase tag.


Correct me if I'm wrong on this, and I may be, but what if the author made changes to the book(s) later on and updated them? Wouldn't those updates get pushed to those who purchased the book? So if the reviewer liked the book, but mentioned some issues or noticed some issues, couldn't it be possible they buy the book even though they received it free to get the updated version if the author does one?

Again, I could be wrong, but as a reader, that's what I would do. Granted, I don't get ARCs, so I don't leave ARC reviews, but I would think that if this were the case where an update would be pushed to my device, I might buy the book for that reason. It would have nothing to do with just wanting to get the verified purchase tag, and solely for selfish reasons in wanting any and all updates a book I liked might get.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

crebel said:


> I'll probably get hollered at for saying this, but when I see the disclosure of a free book received next to a verified purchase tag, that looks shady to me. I've seen multiple people say, "They liked the ARC so well, they went ahead and purchased a copy to support me!" Really? They spend their money on a digital license for a book they have already received, read, and is still available to them for a re-read instead of a new read? I always think they must have received some other quid pro quo just to add that verified purchase tag.


I'm not going to holler. I am inclined to give reviewers the benefit of the doubt, however.

By the way, I once had a reviewer who had gotten free copies from me on a couple of other books buy a different book and put the free book disclosure on it by accident. That has to be have been what happened, because I never gave out free copies of the book in question.

Also, if a book is an ARC, it might not have been as neat. Someone with a book collector mentality might well download a free copy of the actual product (which as someone else pointed out, would get a verified purchase tag) just to have it.


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## CBB (Nov 14, 2017)

Puddleduck said:


> I own probably at least 700 books on Kindle, and I would estimate that maybe 5% of them have ever had any kind of update. I really doubt the scenario you're describing is very common at all. Even if I get an ARC/free copy of a book somewhere (Netgalley or whatever), if I read the book, I'm probably going to do one of two things: Buy my own copy in some format immediately because I loved the book (and since I already have a copy of the e-book, this probably means buying a paperback) or put the book behind me with no intention to ever read it again, in which case I don't care about updates because it's still not an entirely new book, and I've already decided I'm unlikely to want to read that book again.
> 
> I mean, yeah, what you describe is possible. I just don't think it's a large enough number of people who do that to explain anywhere near all of the "Verified purchase" tags on ARC reviews.


Ok, yeah, I can see your point. I was just wondering because that's what I would do. But I know, I'm odd in that sense. I don't have that many books on my reader. Maybe like, 10. Granted, I have downloaded/bought more than that. I tend to delete after reading and the ones there are either new or one's I do plan on reading again when I can't find something I like enough to buy. Though, I'm not as cutthroat with my physical books and currently in need of about 5 more bookshelves to be built. I prefer physical books and I am in the whatever percentage that will buy a paperback before I buy the ebook. The only time I get the ebook is if there is no paperback available. But I know most are not like me. Probably why I don't do ARC's.

All that word vomit being said, I can see why that would look odd to have the verified purchase next to a review that said ARC, and could look manipulative.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

One of my instafreebie readers sent me a private email saying she really loved several of my characters and was going to write me a review based on my request at the back of the book but she thought it would "look fake" as she was prepared to say a lot of nice things about the world-building and other elements she enjoyed.

Kind of a weird one. 

Another instafreebie reader sent me a link to her three-star review that said, "for your info".


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## CynthiaClay (Mar 17, 2017)

Joseph John said:


> When I buy books to read on Amazon, I don't look at the rating. I look at the sheer number of reviews. My thought process is that if a book has a lot of reviews, readers found it interesting enough to express their opinion about it. If readers don't care enough to leave a review, either good or bad, it's probably a mediocre book.
> 
> If it has a good number of reviews, then I'll look at the description and probably the most helpful positive and most helpful negative review.
> 
> But that's just me. I'm sure everyone decides which books to read or not read differently.


Horrors! I read a lot, and I've only ever written one or maybe two reviews. That doesn't mean all the books I read I don't like!

In politics, it is considered that one letter from a constituate counts as reflecting the views of one hundred people. In the old world of advertising (that is before the Internet) there was the same sort of idea of numbers. Now with the Internet, it's pretty much 1 review or click, or 1 whatever counts for 1,000 people. So surely this criteria of very few reviews means the book is mediocre can't be true.

At least I hope so. (I see I have to erase much of today's agenda and replace it with moping.)

I've only had 3 reviews for Foreshadow. Three are on Amazon by people who loved it, gave it 5 stars, and wrote educated reviews. Two are NetGallery, who hated it and gave it 2 stars, both of these reviewers admitted to not reading the entire book, only 20% in one case and this one objected to the names and spelling of those names of my characters. My take on this is that the audience for whom I wrote the book loves it.


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## Ros_Jackson (Jan 11, 2014)

crebel said:


> As a reader-only, I will say that ARC reviews for self-published books have become so ubiquitous they no longer have any meaning for me personally. I don't have any clue how many pre-release copies traditional publishers send to "regular" readers versus professional reviewers, but I don't see new releases from my favorite authors with nothing but "I received this book for free ..." in the large numbers I see for so many self-published books. I guess it is a self-publishing marketing dilemma.


Big publishers don't generally do ARCs for huge sellers, at least not in my experience. Their ARC programmes tend to be aimed at launching the careers of newer authors and less well known midlisters. For more famous writers the supply of ARCs, if they're done, will be going to more professional review outlets that aren't going to be copying their reviews to Amazon accounts.


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## AmandaLutterman (Oct 3, 2017)

Maalik said:


> At least she's being honest. ARC reviews tend to be more positive, that's common knowledge. As a consumer I find book reviews (especially on Amazon) to be nearly worthless. People just don't know how to review books. Some fans will five star everything by an author they like, they'll give a book one star because a book didn't have a happy ending, etc.
> 
> I can go to IMDB and find really good movies rated 7.5 stars (Just because you enjoy a movie it doesn't mean it's perfect) and yet on amazon mediocre to below average trash is littered with 4.5 star ratings. Book reviews are nothing more than promotional tools.


^ Exactly this right here! Most people will complain about ANYTHING!

I read a LOT with KU, and I leave reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, and my blog as part of a blog series.

My 5 stars are reserved for truly amazing books I couldn't put down and loved reading.
My 4 stars are good books, but not that amazing can't put it down read.
3 stars are good books, but something seriously ruined the books for me (Like H being a giant *** through 90% of the book, or tons of spelling errors, etc.)
If I leave a 1 or 2 star review, it's because the writing or the story was truly god awful and I hated it.

Most people, at least in my experience, leave either 5 stars if they liked it, or 1 star if they didn't. 
There seems to be no in between. 
It's either liked it or hated it.

That said, I've read some awful, awful books that were "supposed" to be romance and we're just...not...like bad, bad, wanted to get stabby with the H! BUT they had 5 star AND EVEN glowing reviews! 
I just don't get it!


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## Lydniz (May 2, 2013)

I've had several reviews removed over the past few days. I don't use ARCs so it's obviously not just them that are being targeted.


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## Wisescarab (Oct 12, 2017)

Wasn't there a leak from an Amazon employee a few months back, regarding them moving the ability for non-editorial (but still non-verified) reviewers to a new paid service? And then subsequently, removing all previously non-verified reviews. I will have to see if I can dig that up.


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## Annette_g (Nov 27, 2012)

Squeakers said:


> Correct me if I'm wrong on this, and I may be, but what if the author made changes to the book(s) later on and updated them? Wouldn't those updates get pushed to those who purchased the book? So if the reviewer liked the book, but mentioned some issues or noticed some issues, couldn't it be possible they buy the book even though they received it free to get the updated version if the author does one?
> 
> Again, I could be wrong, but as a reader, that's what I would do. Granted, I don't get ARCs, so I don't leave ARC reviews, but I would think that if this were the case where an update would be pushed to my device, I might buy the book for that reason. It would have nothing to do with just wanting to get the verified purchase tag, and solely for selfish reasons in wanting any and all updates a book I liked might get.


I've sometimes bought the book from Amazon if I got a review copy from Netgalley and the formatting was wonky or they only had it in PDF.PDFs are not the most brilliant format to read in for me.


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## mjl1966 (Feb 15, 2017)

Jeff is passionately obsessed with putting something in front of a customer that is exactly what that customer wants to buy.  The ideal day for Jeff would be to run a lemonade stand and every time a customer walks up, he knows exactly what to give them, on the spot, at which point the customer puts down his money, takes the lemonade and walks away happy. That's it.  

Whatever's going on with reviews has to do with somebody getting between Jeff and happy customer.  Believe it or not, it really is that simple.  And yeah, he will litter the beach with dead bodies in that battle.  

For those of you actually selling books, just keep making lemonade Jeff can sell to the right customers and everything will be fine.  Because most of us can't figure out the right mix of ice cubes and lemon juice.


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## jaehaerys (Feb 18, 2016)

Amazon's review system is broken. Thousands and thousands of books in the store with star-ratings of 3.5 or higher, which just by virtue of mathematics means there's plenty of total dreck out there with inflated star ratings and unwarranted glowing reviews. As a customer, this is completely unhelpful.


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## C. Gockel (Jan 28, 2014)

crebel said:


> I'll probably get hollered at for saying this, but when I see the disclosure of a free book received next to a verified purchase tag, that looks shady to me. I've seen multiple people say, "They liked the ARC so well, they went ahead and purchased a copy to support me!" Really? They spend their money on a digital license for a book they have already received, read, and is still available to them for a re-read instead of a new read? I always think they must have received some other quid pro quo just to add that verified purchase tag.


My ARC readers often do this because they are nice people. {{shrugs}}


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## Guest (Dec 14, 2017)

C. Gockel said:


> My ARC readers often do this because they are nice people. {{shrugs}}


I would agree that, yes, some folks will buy a copy of a book they get free. I have a lot of newsletter subscribers who get our monthly magazine in digital format for free, but then go and buy print copies because they want a print copy.

However, yes, it is also strange for someone to ANNOUNCE that they did it...in a review no less. That is drawing attention to unusual behavior. Sort of like those people who have to tell everyone about how much they donate to charity. Making a big deal out of something like that and announcing it in a review does smell a bit of excess and is a red flag for me. And if multiple people are saying in in reviews, particularly if all of the reviews appear around the same time, that is even more suspect.


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## Desert Rose (Jun 2, 2015)

Bill Hiatt said:


> By the way, I once had a reviewer who had gotten free copies from me on a couple of other books buy a different book and put the free book disclosure on it by accident. That has to be have been what happened, because I never gave out free copies of the book in question.


I've never used ARCs, and I, too, have had reviewers include the free book disclosure on reviews. I suspect that some reviewers read so many ARCs they're just in the habit of putting that on ALL reviews.


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## Victoria Wright (Oct 9, 2015)

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but it seems distinctly possible to me that the reviewer accounts being pulled are not being pulled over ARC reviews at all. Considering that the budget-conscious are typically the most voracious ARC readers / reviewers, I'm guessing a lot of them seek out other opportunities to save money, and so may take advantage of discount codes given out by sellers for extremely discounted or totally free physical products (beauty products, cheap electric gadgets, nutritional supplements, toys, clothing, jewelry, it runs the gamut) in exchange for posting a review of the product.

Amazon cracked down on this last year or very early this year (I forget exactly when) by saying that individuals could no longer be *required* to leave a review for such products (plus purging a load of accounts for these incentivized reviews), but I don't think that changed much since. I suspect the majority, if not all, of the accounts being wiped are getting taken out because of reviews for physical products as opposed to ARC reviewing alone. Definitely sucks for those affected, but I think properly executed ARC reviewing is still safe and sound in the 'Zon ecosystem.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

I had 8 reviews on my new release, then, sadly, Amazon pulled 2. A 25% hit is tough for us newbies.
My ARC readers are people I don't know, who were kind enough to volunteer from my newsletter (built with short story giveaway).
It seems like Amazon is actually trying to get me to solicit friends, since they seem intent on taking down reviews from strangers.


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## H.C. (Jul 28, 2016)

Guy Riessen said:


> I had 8 reviews on my new release, then, sadly, Amazon pulled 2. A 25% hit is tough for us newbies.
> My ARC readers are people I don't know, who were kind enough to volunteer from my newsletter (built with short story giveaway).
> It seems like Amazon is actually trying to get me to solicit friends, since they seem intent on taking down reviews from strangers.


No, they aren't doing that at all. They are trying to cleanse their system of phony reviews. They have identified many reviewers that have been flagged as phony and removing those reviews. You and I are in the same boat in the sense that we don't have many reviews but they should come organically.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

Herefortheride said:


> No, they aren't doing that at all. They are trying to cleanse their system of phony reviews. They have identified many reviewers that have been flagged as phony and removing those reviews. You and I are in the same boat in the sense that we don't have many reviews but they should come organically.


If all you have is an algorithm, everything looks like a nail

The humans at Amazon have been delightful and helpful in the Author customer-service departments ... the AI not so much

And...one review just came back. Plus another new one, so I'm back to eight and I'm just down one now


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## Amyshojai (May 3, 2010)

Am I the only one who frequently (and this is a couple of times a week) get unsolicited emails from people offering to send me products for free to review--and they'll send me a paypal payment for my troubles?

Alternatively, I've had similar offers that encourage me to BUY an item so it's a "verified purchase" and then they'll reimburse me above and beyond. Now, I could understand being targeted for cat/dog products (as that's my expertise) but these are everything from socks and electronics to kitchen gadgets. 

Similarly, I get frequent solicitations to put up "dofollow" links and reviews of free products on my blog. There are lots and lots of folks out there working around the clock to game the system. It's not just book reviews, it's rampant across the board. Since numbers of reviews don't figure that much into book sales or ranking, I do my best to ignore the numbers on my own, or other titles. *shrug*


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## srobards (Dec 1, 2017)

I just checked my reviews and noticed I have had one reviewers reviews removed off my books. I just contacted her on Goodreads and the woman is a prolific reader from goodreads, and has had over a 1000 reviews removed including from all the books she has has brought from Amazon. She has said she cannot find a contact form to contact them. Does anyone know how she can message them?


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## D A Bale (Oct 20, 2016)

C L Salaski said:


> I've just had another Hidden Gems review taken down today. Anyone else seeing this problem rise up again?


Yes - two taken down yesterday but one restored today.


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## Guest (Dec 20, 2017)

srobards said:


> I just checked my reviews and noticed I have had one reviewers reviews removed off my books. I just contacted her on Goodreads and the woman is a prolific reader from goodreads, and has had over a 1000 reviews removed including from all the books she has has brought from Amazon. She has said she cannot find a contact form to contact them. Does anyone know how she can message them?


PM me if you want me to give you the relevant email addresses.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

both of my reviews which were removed two days ago, are now back.


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## A Dark Path (Aug 24, 2015)

jaehaerys said:


> Amazon's review system is broken. Thousands and thousands of books in the store with star-ratings of 3.5 or higher, which just by virtue of mathematics means there's plenty of total dreck out there with inflated star ratings and unwarranted glowing reviews. As a customer, this is completely unhelpful.


A bit off topic as this doesn't concern ARCs, but Amazon has just yanked another of my reviews in their US store. It used to annoy me to no end, as I've rarely sought reviews (ARCs or otherwise). Now though, I just accept it as a fact of their flawed system.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

C L Salaski said:


> Good point, Bill. I've often wondered about that. Kindle Scout encourages us to contact everyone we know (yes, friends and relatives) so they can nominate our book, get a free copy, and review it. Makes no sense. Like the old saying, what's good for the goose is not good for the gander.


To be fair, I don't think Amazon thought through the fact that some of our nominators could be friends and family. However, there's no question that the free copies for nominators (which they receive before publication) are intended as ARCs. Amazon did the same thing with Amazon Breakthrough Novel winners--and one of those books has thousands of reviews.


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## harmonie81 (Nov 22, 2014)

I had 4 reviews disappear over time - maybe 6 months - just slowly one by one. I haven't used Hidden Gems and I have no idea which ones because the book had 84. I may have had some old ARC reviews on there. The book was published in 2013 and got most of its reviews in 2015 after a BookBub ad. I just think it's weird. Of course, Amazon refused to give me any info as to why and gave me the generic answer that reviewers have the right to remove reviews but I don't think reviewers would remove old reviews.


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## MarilynVix (Jun 19, 2013)

harmonie81 said:


> I had 4 reviews disappear over time - maybe 6 months - just slowly one by one. I haven't used Hidden Gems and I have no idea which ones because the book had 84. I may have had some old ARC reviews on there. The book was published in 2013 and got most of its reviews in 2015 after a BookBub ad. I just think it's weird. Of course, Amazon refused to give me any info as to why and gave me the generic answer that reviewers have the right to remove reviews but I don't think reviewers would remove old reviews.


I had one disappear like a week ago on one of my romances. I've noticed one more disappeared on another. Can't even remember what they said or rating. It seems random still or it's just could be all those accounts being closed. They might be yanking reviews too. It makes me wonder if they are going after the websites that let you advertise your freebie and discounted books on their newsletter lists. Some of the other threads have sited that might be a reason for some of the recent closures. Thing is, that was all legit, like freebies and discounts through KU or just listed at a lower price like $0.99. So, if they are considering those massive lists from BookBubs and other websites like it to be like bots, I don't know what will become of publishing. How will authors be able to get the word out about their books? But will have to see if this is all connected. Something is making me suspect it might be.


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