Comment by Margaret on Amazon deleting reviews!

[Dennis]

(I know sometimes we group members miss threads with wonderful information and I thought I would post this comment by Margaret so more folks get to see it.)

I know a few authors who have had success contacting Amazon and asking that their reviews be reinstated. One, in particular, had most of his reviews disappear and was able to get nearly all of them back. If you don't already, I would suggest copying all your reviews when they appear (I keep a word document with mine) so you have a record and can easily figure out which ones are missing. You can then be more specific in asking Amazon to put them back up. I've had a few removed too with no valid reason to do so...they were not purchased, not from friends, etc., so it's frustrating to try to figure out why Amazon does what it does.

(Carol has given us a voice, let's us it! Share this with everyone.)

[Anita]

Good tip. Thank you.

[Dale]

Question (because I have no clue about this): Is it possible to determine if reviews were intentionally removed as opposed to inadvertently lost? Being a professional software developer, I could tell you some horror stories about data going missing through human or machine error. It seems just possible to me that vanishing reviews could sometimes be errors rather than intentional, but of course there is no way to tell unless the owner of the site chooses to reveal what happened.

[Carole]

Everyday I go own- the numbers of the reviews change. I will write and ask them, Dennis- you've given me motivation.

[Anita]

Carole wrote: "Everyday I go own- the numbers of the reviews change. I will write and ask them, Dennis- you've given me motivation."

I will be interested in their response.

I noticed something when I was researching top indie authors on Kindle, Nook and iBooks. Amazon has 14 publishing imprints for different genres. They are publishing not only ebooks, but also print books. This isn't createspace or kindle.

7 of the top 10 books on the top 100 for kindle were published by an Amazon company. You can access the list by clicking on the link (see top 100 paid in kindle stores) next to the sales ranking. Then click on the book to identify the publisher.

Getting onto that list is a huge sales boost. Seems a bit of coincidence that the list is skewed in their favor. Especially when you look at the top ebooks at other outlets. Makes a person wonder if they are stacking the deck?

[Dale]

Alex wrote: "The odds are that Amazon has an algorithm in place that auto deletes reviews that hit certain criteria (criteria that is unknown probably even to the majority of the people working for Amazon)."

That's certainly possible, in which case reviews that vanish when they shouldn't would be like non-spam emails that get sucked into the spam folder. :-P

[Carole]

My friend was a top reviewer on Amazon. They wiped out her entire account a few days ago. She had about 2000 reviews. They said she didn't disclose she had coupon codes or something.

[Carole]

Anita wrote: "Carole wrote: "Everyday I go own- the numbers of the reviews change. I will write and ask them, Dennis- you've given me motivation."

I will be interested in their response.

I noticed something w..."

I tried to get them to publish me- I was rejected. I wouldn't be surprise to see their own books being pushed forward. For some reason, they put Stillwell< Michael's second book as a Kindle choice- right out of the gate- We didn't know until we turned on Kindle and saw it there. This propelled it into the top spot and it stayed there for a year or more. We sold so many copies of that book.

[Anita]

Jeez, that's tough. Getting a bit heavy-handed in their review patrol.