Two Writers Rambling – GUILTY without Trial!

GUILTY without Trial

That’s what Amazon does when out of the blue a reviewer gets an email stating:

“We have determined that you have violated our Customer Review Creation Guidelines. As a result, we have suppressed all of your reviews, and you will no longer be able to post reviews on Amazon.com.

We made this decision after carefully considering your reviewing account. This decision is final.”

In some cases, it’s the author who gets this frightening (you’re fucked) email claiming Amazon has determined the author has been manipulating either the KU program or the review policies, then are informed there are here by banned from publishing through Amazon ever again.

When was the trial? Why is it no one ever receives a letter in advance to inform them they have been flagged for suspicious behavior? I understand Amazon is not a public domain and therefore can conduct business as they see fit. However, they are also a customer related business that relies solely on vender supplied products. Amazon is a retail conductor, not a retailer producer. So why is this incredulous behavior their standard for handling issues they are clearly not capable of handling? Which brings me to the why this is happening. Fraud, fraudulent reviews and scamming the KU system. But wait, in the recent announcement of Amazon’s new review policy, did that not come back to amend that the new policies were not intended for Book reviews? So why are we still seeing mass genocide of book reviews?

I wish I had an answer. I wish I had a even a suggestion, but I don’t. In fact, I discovered last night I had lost 6 reviews scattered over 6 of my books. Having heard of a popular book review site Bikers N Books, was struck down by the ‘Zon last week (one of my favorite send to reviews for my Teddy Bear Collections), I could only assume another reviewer or two got the guillotine which would explain the recent mass killing of reviews on my books. I say mass killing because when you only have four or six reviews to start with and then you lose one, you feel it.

Should authors stop publishing with Amazon? I wish I could say “let’s do this” but we’d only being shooting ourselves in the foot. Amazon is still the 900lb gorilla we have to sleep with if we want to sell more than a handful of book copies. I’m just saying— that now the gorilla is farting in the bed.

It just plain STINKS!

~ Rant over ~