AMAZON Deletes Readers Reviews

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Bestseller author Rayne Hall originally shared this post on Google+

Petition: “Amazon: Stop Arbitrarily Deleting Reviews!”

“I’m glad someone has taken the initiative and started a petition. Amazon deletes masses of customer reviews, without giving a reason. Presumably, this is to stop the mushrooming of fake reviews (the kind where you pay someone $5 and they leave a gushing 5* review without ever reading the book).
Unfortunately, many thoughtful, sincere reviews get deleted in the process, while the fake reviews from sock-puppet accounts continue to flourish. I have lost many thoughtful reviews from genuine readers.

Some readers have emailed me, deeply unhappy about the deletion of their reviews, not understanding what’s going on. Any requests to Amazon for explanations have yielded nothing but bot-generated unsympathetic uninformative brush-offs. Several readers emailed me to say they will no longer leave reviews at Amazon, because their time and effort has been wasted when Amazon deleted their previous reviews. I can understand their position.

This petition demands that Amazon provides clear criteria for what makes a review deletable, and when deleting a review, gives a reason why. I think this is a sensible, modest request.”
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The Petition organized by Author Derek Blass, Denver, CO Amazon: Stop Arbitrarily Removing Customer Reviews From Indie Author Books

He explains: “Amazon is currently removing customer reviews from books published by indie authors without any notice, and without any explanation. This petition demands that Amazon explain for every author that loses a review (good or bad) why that review was removed, and set forth clear guidelines as to what will and will not be removed in the future.”

“Hi all, I just sent the first email to Amazon, informing them regarding this petition, the success we have had in a short period of time with respect to this petition, and asking that they initiate contact to address the demands made in this petition. I wanted to paste the content of the email in this news update, but posts are restricted to 900 characters. Thus, I have posted the entire email on my blog which can be found at derekblass.wordpress.com
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My own advice: Best thing would be to copy your reviews as soon as posted (just in case) and then paste them in the author page as statements with date and name of the reviewer.

P.S.  Just read an article, the Guardian wrote now too:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/nov/05/amazon-removes-book-reviews

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