I’ve
read for years and years. My mother recently produced a tape from her loft back
in England of me, reading my own stories aged five...a very long time ago. I
also did singing on the tape and I swear I haven’t done that for over
thirty-five years so that gives you an idea. Even God doesn’t want to hear
nails on the blackboard again. It’s probably still etched on his mind from the
first sitting!
Reviewing
was a whole other matter. Who would care about my opinion? I’d read a novel and
enjoy it, then promptly forget the name of the author, the title and eventually
the characters. I could read it again in ten years’ time with that peculiar
sense of deja vu. Why would the author care what I think? They have publicists
and agents and clever people to tell them if their stuff’s any good. Don’t
they?
When
I published my first novel, I realised how essential reviewing was. If you like
or dislike a novel, it’s like the finishing touch, to submit a review. Amazon
have made it so easy; you get asked to rate a novel as you finish it and on the
more high tech kindles, you can do your review right then. My mother now
reviews every book she reads, good and bad. Why? Because I told her to. As an
author I see it from that viewpoint. We need reviews. They’re our life blood in
the Amazon algorithm which pushes us up the greasy pole or buries us.
But
it’s there in Amazon’s terms and conditions that competitors are not to review
each other’s product. Now if I’m a blender manufacturer and so are you, it’s
probably not appropriate for me to comment on yours as you’re clearly in direct
competition. But if I’m an author writing in the same genre as you, why should
your book not inspire me and vice versa? Well, apparently not in Amazon world. The
blog below is written by a lovely reviewer who also publishes, but woke up to a
dictatorial letter from Amazon and his 1700 reviews of other people’s work deleted.
When he asked why, he just received automated copies of the rules, over and
over without explanation. So sadly, he’s moved away from Amazon, having spent
thousands of dollars on the books he reviewed with verification and is in the
process of taking his own books with him.
A
little research revealed blogs from 2012 when this culling actually began,
making the national press in the UK. Amazon insisted they were primarily
targeting reviewers with a ‘personal relationship’ with the author and
malpractices leading to manipulation, such as other authors creating false 5*
reviews for their own work whilst giving 1* to other authors in their genre. A
case which blew it all out of the water involved writer, RJ Ellory, who after
being exposed on Twitter, admitted to doing exactly that.
“But in his messages on
Facebook, posted over the past two days, Ellory wrote: “Thank you. Your
kindness is immensely appreciated. I cannot, however, avoid responsibility for
what I have done, and I do not intend to.
“Over the last ten years I have posted approximately
12 reviews of my own books, and I also criticised a book written by Stuart
MacBride, and another by Mark Billingham, both of whom had done nothing to
warrant such criticism.
“This I regret deeply, but time cannot be turned
back. I have apologised for what I have done, and I hope in time that we can
move beyond this.”
Here are Amazon’s rules on what not to post:
"To help illustrate,
here are a few examples of reviews that we don't allow:
-A product
manufacturer posts a review of their own product, posing as an unbiased shopper
-A shopper, unhappy
with her purchase, posts multiple negative reviews for the same product
-A customer posts a
review in exchange for $5
-A customer posts a
review of a game, in exchange for bonus in-game credits
-A family
member of the product creator posts a five-star customer review to help boost
sales
-A shopper posts a
review of the product, after being promised a refund in exchange
-A seller
posts negative reviews on his competitor's product
-An artist
posts a positive review on a peer's album in exchange for receiving a positive
review from them
If you think we got
it wrong and removed a customer review that we shouldn’t have, please e-mail review-appeals@amazon.com and
we will take another look."
Well, they have taken another look at poor Christoph’s reviews...and
left him banned. I refuse to believe that of his 1700 reviews, a high
proportion were for people he knew or other authors who reviewed his work in
return. It’s just not realistic is it?
I’m a member of 2 online book clubs. Invariably there are both readers
and other authors there. It’s inevitable as we chat about other people’s work,
we will end up gravitating to each other’s.
In the above Telegraph article, a bestselling novelist is quoted,
advocating peer reviews.
“Joanne
Harris, the best-selling British author of titles including Chocolat and the Lollipop Shoes, said authors were in many ways the perfect people to review books
as they are experts on them.
"One thing authors are able to do is
articulate about books. They tend to read about books and their opinions... are
listened to," the 48 year-old told The Daily Telegraph.”
Amazon don’t want that. From the same article, the reporter writes:
“Amazon has now admitted that it has introduced a ban on authors
leaving reviews about other people's books in the same genre because they may
pose a “conflict of interest” and cannot be impartial about their rivals.
This means that thriller writers are prevented from
commenting on works by other authors who write similar books.
Critics suggest this system is flawed because many
authors are impartial and are experts on novels.
In recent weeks, some authors said they had more
than 50 reviews deleted without notice, provoking waves of critical comments
and posts on blogs and internet forums.”
This blew up three years
ago and it’s safe to assume it’s been happening fairly continuously ever since.
We just rarely get to hear about it. Christoph reviewed one of my books, months
and months after I reviewed one of his. We didn’t review swap, we’ve never had
a conversation and I’ve never met him, but it puts me squarely in the firing
line, I guess. I write across multiple genres and read across even more than
that. Does that mean every review I ever wrote for an author I never met or
spoke to is disregarded as manipulative and inappropriate? In their eyes, probably.
It really begs the
question, is it better as an author not to review at all?
If I don’t do reviews for
other people, I can’t have my integrity called into question and remain
blameless. But then I don’t get to tell other authors how much I appreciated
their work, or how much I learned from it. I become another faceless author
with no voice, rather like Enid Blyton was to me as a child. I will have been
censored and shut up, thanks to unscrupulous, unknown and known, others.
Many are taking their
reviews to the other sites out there. My work is available on Smashwords and
therefore Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and many other players. I’m coming to
the conclusion it would be better for me not only to review there, but to buy
there also. Yet even as an author, Amazon has me in a strangle hold. They
demand my price is lowest at their site, driving readers to them. So if I
choose to take my reading elsewhere, I will be financially penalised too.
Amazon own Createspace and Goodreads so there's not much guarantee with
duplicating reviews there. It seems the only thing to do is copy reviews
instead to one of the Smashwords group if they are to have any longevity.
Authors beware!
This is coming to us all.
#Amazon #monopoly #votewithyourfeet #authors
#Amazon #monopoly #votewithyourfeet #authors
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