Amazon.co.uk and .com reviews? Is there a difference

[Ben]

Hi all, wondered if anyone knew the facts on this because I've had a Google around and not been able to make head nor sense of it.

I've long wondered why my books do pretty well in the UK, but absolutely nothing in the US? I've got decent reviews, and have continued sales in the UK, but not elsewhere. I've recently spotted today that when I go to my book on Amazon.com, it shows no reviews, which would of course, explain everything.

That seems to me, to be massively counterproductive on Amazon's part. Is this just a thing they do, or have I set something up wrong, so that the book is only reviewed in that territory?

Thanks in advance

Ben

[Brian]

Thanks for posting this, Ben. I hadn't considered that reviews might be exclusive to only one region. I had a reviewer in the UK and didn't even know it! Looking at my books through the UK portal, reviews from the US appeared, but not vice-versa. I can only hope that Amazon addresses this but unless they are engaged (eg. through the Amazon Author Community) they might not even realize reviews from one region may not be visible in others.

[Ian]

All the national sites are quite separate, for some reason. Some (but not all?) show their own reviews plus those from Amazon.com, but not the other way around.

I don't know why that should be the case, but as far as I know it's always been that way.

[Ben]

Thanks for that, at least it explains why I was having such a disparity between marketplaces. Something I'd never seen mentioned anywhere else. Time for a US re-launch!!

[David]

Amazon.uk is a different company. they operate differently. I wish it weren't the case. I wish UK advertising operated in the same way as the US company--I wish that when you advertised in the US on Amazon the same ads would show up on the UK site. But they don't and i can't figure out their advertising system. UK Author Central does not let authors editor their book pages either whereas US Author Central does, which is enormously helpful. I've never been able to get my book pages right on Amazon UK. Reviews from US do show up on UK which is nice. I would have more reviews on UK for my books, but as I said, advertising there, I find difficult.

[Jillian]

David wrote: "Amazon.uk is a different company. they operate differently. I wish it weren't the case. I wish UK advertising operated in the same way as the US company--I wish that when you advertised in the US o..."

It is good to know others see this "independence" between the amazons as a surprise, too. I would also love to advertise on the UK site, since my historical fiction would do well with British readers.

I have brought up the page editorial issues to the KDP help desk, both UK and .com, and the UK Author Central is "working on" being able to do the same editorial features on your author/book page on the Authorcentral UK system for books set up on the USA side. They copied in the KDP people on the US side (maybe to say again--see the complaints?) They seem to have had a lot of feedback about the problem of the book blurb text for paperbacks being compacted into one paragraph, when it was nicely formatted on the KDP website original description.

I have some reviews on the German amazon.de as well as the UK amazon sites and, same as you all, only the US reviews are carried over to those sites.

Amazon's reply to my query about the one-way posting was that putting the .com reviews onto the international pages was a Beta test--that was a year ago. My hunch is they don't want to start adding German/French, etc. reviews to the USA site, thinking something mentioned in a foreign language might slip by their monitoring. I don't know why that is an issue for the UK reviews.

[John]

I'm glad this topic is being discussed. It was a big surprise to me when I discovered that whereas the UK site shows reviews of my book and has an author page, the US site is like a desert! I had assumed that information linked to a book would be global.

I know now that the different Amazon marketplaces behave like semi-autonomous companies. It's up to the author to have to duplicate a lot of effort and create author pages on each of the regional websites (if so inclined). So calling it a Author CENTRAL is a misnomer.

One thing I have done is to manually copy my UK reviews and paste onto my US author page. In other words they don't appear on the selling page for the book, but they do appear on the author page below the relevant book. It's not ideal but better than nothing.

[Eileen]

My issue with the UK site is that it seems to be extraordinarily difficult for US writers to use AMS ads there. I've gotten confusing info from Amazon about how to do it. I know some writers who have managed it, but it isn't intuitive.

[William]

Amazon.com is the mothership with the regional sites underneath. That is why reviews from .com show up on .co.uk but not the other way around. My reviews are split about 10 on each which is good in one way but would rather have 20 on .com.

[David]

John wrote: "I'm glad this topic is being discussed. It was a big surprise to me when I discovered that whereas the UK site shows reviews of my book and has an author page, the US site is like a desert! I had a..."

I wonder if you could do the same thing with Goodreads reviews i.e. copy and past them onto your author page of Amazon.com in Author Central. That could be useful.

[John]

Yes I agree that would be useful, but unfortunately as yet I don't have any Goodreads reviews!