Blind Panic? - An Amazon Accident?
"What's going on in the workings of Amazon?": That's what most authors are wondering right now. According to this article from Opposing News (LINK) Amazon is panicked over sock-puppet reviews and is just deleting reviews at random.
A majority of us authors are paying attention to this, not only because disappearing reviews hurt our books' rating, but because it could be disparaging to those who take the time to write reviews. Who wants to write a review and post it, only to have it taken down for no reason? This could be destructive to all authors over time; it's already hard enough to get people to post honest reviews, now they've made it even harder.
Their reasoning behind the deletions apparently has something to do with paid reviews. Supposedly authors are paying people to review their books. This is a low practice if you ask me. If you have to pay people to leave you a good review, your writing must be terrible. When I try to find reviewers for my work, I shy away from any site or person who asks to be paid. I don't mind providing the review copies though, that's just a given - they need to read the book to review it!
I'm hoping Amazon comes to their senses and realizes they're causing more harm than good. They would be better off creating a verification process for reviewing than they would deleting at random.
Because of everything that's going on, people are leaning more toward B&N and GoodReads - I applied with GoodReads to become a librarian earlier today. What's important to me is that reviews are still written, still read, and people can buy and enjoy books that appeal to them.
Keep reading! Keep reviewing! KEEP SUPPORTING YOUR FAV AUTHORS !
Copyrights owned by Rebecca Besser, 2012. All rights reserved.
A majority of us authors are paying attention to this, not only because disappearing reviews hurt our books' rating, but because it could be disparaging to those who take the time to write reviews. Who wants to write a review and post it, only to have it taken down for no reason? This could be destructive to all authors over time; it's already hard enough to get people to post honest reviews, now they've made it even harder.
Their reasoning behind the deletions apparently has something to do with paid reviews. Supposedly authors are paying people to review their books. This is a low practice if you ask me. If you have to pay people to leave you a good review, your writing must be terrible. When I try to find reviewers for my work, I shy away from any site or person who asks to be paid. I don't mind providing the review copies though, that's just a given - they need to read the book to review it!
I'm hoping Amazon comes to their senses and realizes they're causing more harm than good. They would be better off creating a verification process for reviewing than they would deleting at random.
Because of everything that's going on, people are leaning more toward B&N and GoodReads - I applied with GoodReads to become a librarian earlier today. What's important to me is that reviews are still written, still read, and people can buy and enjoy books that appeal to them.
Keep reading! Keep reviewing! KEEP SUPPORTING YOUR FAV AUTHORS !
Copyrights owned by Rebecca Besser, 2012. All rights reserved.
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