Amazon Review Policy: can anyone help?
I wrote a 2-star review of a book on Amazon on Saturday; it isn’t there any more. I noticed over the weekend that it was getting a surprising number of people ticking the “this review was not helpful” box.
My question is, if a review gets more than a certain number of these ticks, is it automatically deleted? If it is, then the system is open to massive abuse by publishers seeking to censor an inconvenient review. Even without this kill policy, allowing reviews to be ordered in terms of which are the most “helpful” can be gamed by a publisher.
I couldn’t find anything about this on the Amazon website - does anyone know the policy?
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February 4th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
This happened to me with a 2 star rating i gave to a book on Albania.
I don’t think they allow reviews that bring down the average rating for the book etc
February 4th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
There have been reports elsewhere in the blogosphere of all the bad reviews being moved onto the paperback version and the good ones to the hardback, presumably in order to sell more hardbacks…
May 14th, 2008 at 6:34 am
My guess is that someone (possibly the author or publisher - or one of the people who thought it was unhelpful) complained about the review to Amazon. There are plenty of one or two star reviews around on Amazon, so it’s not a question of them automatically deleting unfavourable reviews.
Did you post the review under your real name?
There have been cases of competing authors “trashing” their competitors’ books on Amazon under fake identities - so especially when there’s doubt as to whether the review was impartial, you’re at risk of deletion.
May 14th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I absolutely wrote it under my own name and am a little insulted at the suggestion I simply set out to trash the book.