I have just received an email request to pass on a warning about Amazons latest actions against book authors reviews.
Amazon is currently reviewing and deleting any book reviews that are signed by authors, using or adding their own book titles. It is common practice for authors to sign their articles and reviews with signatures that include e.g……author of ‘The Logical Organization’, with a link to their book sales page.
According to Amazon, this is in breach of their participation guidelines…: “Please know that our participation guidelines don’t allow customers to promote their own titles in their reviews.”
Amazon requires that you use your real name and that’s it. Anything more and your reviews, blogs etc will be deleted.
They have also recently made changes to the Amazon Connect program. You are no longer permitted to add the book link supplied by Amazon directing tracffic to your own book title’s Amazon page.
There will be no notice of these actions by Amazon – so please review the review publishing guidelines carefully and amend any past review signatures and resource boxes. This rule also applies to any comments you leave on a book review.
I can understand that Amazon may be keen to reduce the amount of self interested marketing going on in their reviews, however, when an expert takes the time to add a review, adding their book title helps others recognize that expertise, and legitimizes the review.
I guess its the same with everything, all of us suffer from the black hat actions of a few.
