Two Writers Rambling – Amazon says its working on it, but are they?

Amazon Scandals – AMAZON SAYS IT WORKIN ON IT, BUT ARE THEY REALLY?

An article was posted up at The Memo just last week about the fake reviews at Amazon as if it were new news. They should have asked me. I’d have informed them otherwise. It’s not new— neither is the piss-poor way Amazon takes a stab at policing the scandal vs legit reviews just so they can say “they are doing something about it”. But there is very little backing to the Amazonian review storm that comes down like a Godzilla movie scene where everyone gets nervous, authors scatter to go hid in their corners… I read once that Hugh Howey took to twittering to rally for fan support and managed to double his reviews under threat of getting a shave…

then after a  span of a few days, the monster attack is all over. Back to silence and sadly, the cons are left standing in the street… unstomped on.

From an author’s point of view, it seems even journalists and many bloggers trying to weight in their opinions on the topic (self included) are completely overlooking the central hub to this. It is correct to assume Amazon is not taking the appropriate initiative and when it does, they take the lazy way out to assert some recklessly planned action so they can ‘claim’ they are working on it. Except they aren’t even touching on those who are the problem. Rather instead, authors, who, not guilty of scamming, often end up being the ones who take the punishments by having their hard earned reviews garnished.

The worst part of this,for many authors who have been hit, sit back with their hands tied while Amazon seems to be utterly impervious to the most obvious of guilty culprits. Take for example: when a first time author pops up with an instant book and has over a hundred 5 star reviews in a matter of days, then HELLO? It warrants investigation.

Some Common sense might help in the matter. For example, when authors like, Rice, King, Ward, Koones, Carthwright… all of which are national bestselling authors, see reviews pour in rather quickly after a new release its pretty much expected. After all, it makes sense, as it would for many other authors, who like the ones i named are ESTABLISHED authors! So you keep the hounds out of their corner. Any first, second, and third book publishing from new/unknown authors who have magically managed to get what takes others years of promotions and name building, should at least get flagged and investigated to assure the reviews are legit.

Whether you read it or not. Last week I did a topic on The Do’s and Do’s of book marketing. I also mention none of them are magic wands and not everyone was going to get the same results. Nevertheless, I assure you, there is nothing short of buying reviews that is going to get a new author a hundred 5 star review on their first book by day 2. Nothing.

Another red flag is when all the reviews coming in are only 4 and 5. Generally when an author releases a new book their biggest fans are most likely to be the first to review. So it’s natural to see the first wave of reviews to be high rated. That’s not to say the reviewers are not being legitimately honest, just because a reader is a follower doesn’t mean they blow false praise. There will be plenty of times when a reader feels let down every once and a while, and they’re usually quick to point that out when it does happen. But those readers genuinely enjoy that author for a reason. Eventually, if the author is lucky to continue to receive reviews, a spectrum of ratings starts to show up. But when the count gets up toward the 3 digits and so far nothing under a 4 star has been posted… yep… better flag that shit and take a closer look. Are you listening Amazon?

Amazon isn’t, but if you are, you might want to check out this video from USA Today on the subject. They seem to know how to spot them as well.

And it’s not as hard as anyone might try to claim. If Amazon can track a reviewer back to their facebook account and see that they are on an author’s ‘friend list’, which they are… (and for the record most authors have upward and over a thousand ‘friends’ on facebook, its where readers can follow their favorite authors. It doesn’t mean they are true friends in a physical sense of ‘knowing’ that author in everyday life.) Again, this sort of mine sweep on it, takes one or two reviews from an author. Authors who only have a dozen to begin with, that one or two stripped away feels like a punch in the belly. How did one review from a fan cheat the system?

It’s the reviews that are purchased in blocks of 50 to 100 that are altering a book’s ranks in the complex and unfair algorithm branding within Amazon’s search engine. Its for that same reason the beast exists too. Start a race and someone is going to find a way to cheat to get to the finish line faster. But if Amazon can trace even one fan back to facebook, then they can trace back these true fake posters back to the network source. The ‘Verified purchase’ means nothing, the services that post the reviews charge a fee to purchase the book and then post the review, making it a ‘verified purchase’. Nice try Amazon, but your criminal investigation skills still suck.

If you, the reader, are not sure if the review sounds legit, just click on the reviewer’s name and check out some of their other reviews. Most readers stick to just a few genres with occasional ventures into the neighbor’s yard. But if their books and product reviews are as random as they come with unrelated genres in way of books or music and/or the reviews start looking robotic? Red flag.

Amazon apparently hasn’t figured this one out, when they yanked 1700 reviews all from Review Blogger Christoph Fischer on Amazon with claims he ‘knows’ all 1700 authors. Yet won’t explain how they came to this conclusion. They’ve also allowed a hate reviewer to remain standing, having left a little over eight hundred 1-Star reviews to bash authors of erotica with regurgitated rants for her earlier reviews over just the last six months. [More on this] and… [here] and… [here]

Talon and I have a reader fan, much like Christopher Fischer, who has been banned from leaving reviews for any of our books on Amazon. He’d been kind enough to keep us up to date as he sought out further explanation for the ban. It took him 28 emails to Amazon to get an answer. ‘He won an Amazon gift card from us during one of our Rafflecopter giveaways to celebrate a new book release.’ Having been the receiver of an Amazon gift card we sent direct to his account, pegged him as a ‘you know this author‘ villian.

But the fake shit on amazon doesn’t end there…

Kindle book “All About the A’s” contained 6 chapters of the letter A

Books like ‘All About the A’s’ was first received as a joke, but what it was, in fact, a Kindle Unlimited scam. Readers found it funny and in posting reviews even went along with the joke, leaving remarks like one 5 Star reviews said: “I have searched my life for the cosmic answer to life and here it was staring me in the face. It was all about the A’s.”. Even the 1-star reviews were in on the fun as one review said: “I was so disappointed in this. After delving into the philosophies of A’s I thought for sure the author would go on to more deeper topics such as B’s and G’s and the formidable XYZ’s.”

But what many did not catch onto at first was the ‘so called’ author was raking in a fair share of the KU payout pool with this and many others like it, since at the time a reader need only go as far as 10% into the kindle book and the authors received an approx. $1.35 for the read. Every curious onlooker at least went that far just to see if the book really was ALL A’s.

The more fake books that flooded the KU program the less payout legitimate authors of novels and short stories received  Essentially the scammers were stealing from other authors as well as scamming Amazon.

Here’s another thing Amazon sucks at, detecting fake books. To start with, there is a whole slew of “How-to” books loaded up on Amazon on: “How to make books to sell and make 3-6k a month and never write a single word.” From one book to the next they’re all pretty much just regurgitated version of the next. Some have good ideas, some not so much, and almost all of them tell you how to go about buying reviews. Really Amazon? How hard was it for you to miss that? You have a couple of what?, a hundred… a thousand employees that work with Author Central and over the last 6 or so years, you still haven’t realized what those are? Con artists teaching people how to ignore the obvious copyright violation by doing this: “copying information, shorts and snippets from website blogs- comprising it into one book then selling them on Amazon.” This form of copyediting of books doesn’t hit the fiction genres too often. But there is one scam that does.

Take a close look at the screen shot of an actual counterfeit listed on Amazon

They are the counterfeits. Books that have been reloaded up on Amazon under a fraudulent author claiming ownership. These counterfeits are often so obvious, again it’s a wonder how Amazon doesn’t spot books like these.

Because readers and authors alike spotted the forgeries right off the bat, yet Amazon allowed someone using the alias Jay Cute to upload 26 books in one day without any problem. The counterfeiter didn’t even try to hide the fact the books belonged to another other. Same covers, same interior… the only different was the thief pasted his name over the cover. Often not even covering up the original author’s name. All 26 books were signed up for the Amazon KU program. Original Authors and supporter railed to the cause, flooding Amazon with a torrent of complaints. When that got no action from Amazon, readers and authors took to posting 1 star reviews on all the books, advising buyers the books were pirated copies. As many as 20 1 star reviews hit these books (just a reminder, Amazon policy scans reviews before they go live) and yet it still took over two weeks before Amazon took any action and had 26 counterfeits removed. I knew two of the authors victimized by this and neither to date have receive any compensation or apology from Amazon.

Read More >> Kindle Counterfeiting — A Growing Threat to Authors

Though, in other recent articles put up on USA Today and The Verge, it looks like Amazon is suing some of these review sellers. Glad to know they’re on the ball for themselves.

Read More >> Amazon is suing over 1,000 fake review sellers

Read More >> Amazon is cracking down on fake review sellers