Make no mistake. If you have heard me speak before almost anywhere or read anything I have to say about writing, I emphasize one thing above all else:
“You can be as artsy as you want to be while you are writing your book, but once it is finished, it is a product. A product you must distribute and market in order for it to sell.”
There’s another part to this reality of writing as a business: the number one distributor of ebooks remains Amazon, and for most authors about 80% of their sales would disappear, should the online giant refuse to sell their work. Discoverability on Amazon is the number one trick authors, publishers, and book marketers are trying to crack. Of course, if it works on Amazon, the same method will likely increase sales on iBooks and Nook as well, provided an author even offers their books for sale in those outlets.
There are strong pros and cons and arguments on both sides of offering books for sale exclusively on Amazon and taking advantage of Kindle Select features and having your books available in the questionably lucrative Kindle Unlimited.
The problem is, there are always those who want to cheat the system and try to skew it to their advantage. Their actions can also have an effect on the innocent. There are some things to be aware of, some new and some that have been around for a while.
Paid or Fake Reviews
You should never pay for a review. Give the reviewer a free book, sure. Although if you gift it to them through Amazon, it will show up as a verified purchase, something Amazon pays attention to (and makes it much less likely they will delete the review).
It is clearly against Amazon policy for sellers to purchase reviews. You might get away with it, but if you don’t, at the least the review will be deleted, and all of the other reviews of your work will be carefully scrutinized. At worst, your KDP account can be closed and your books removed from sale on Amazon.
Even worse are those who create fake Amazon accounts and review their own work, or have others do it for them through fictitious accounts. Some authors have amassed hundreds of reviews this way, and then have been penalized by Amazon as a result.
Why the push for more reviews? The simple fact of the matter is that Amazon weighs reviews heavily in rankings, and if a book has 50 or more mostly positive reviews, Amazon will promote it to readers in newsletters and other genre features.
How do authors get caught? Amazon cannot possibly analyze every review posted on its site manually, right? No, but they do have analytics that can red flag items for more scrutiny. This is where even honest authors can get tripped up.
Analytics Explained. Analytics is transforming the way companies do business, as they gather more and more data. Here’s how it works.
- Big Data. Users offer a lot of information voluntarily, including their location, IP address, and the account they logged in with. This information from each customer is “enriched” automatically and put into a set of data. This amount of data is too big for a standard computer to process, and so is stored on large, fast servers and is known as “Big Data,” and is being used by businesses like Amazon to innovate in several areas.
- Artificial Intelligence. Programs much like IBM’s Watson are then used to analyze the data for relationships and anomalies.
- Thresholds. Once certain markers have reached certain thresholds, Amazon will act on the data, issuing a warning or penalizing the author’s account automatically.
Real, fake, or paid? Amazon flags reviewer accounts who are paid to do reviews. They discover this information in a number of ways, including author reporting, K-boards, and simple internet searches. These reviews are automatically flagged and removed.
Fake reviews are another matter. However, Amazon flags multiple accounts created from a single IP address or too many from the same physical location. Last year, they also flagged reviews from “people you know.”
This was discovered because of authors sharing long-tail and affiliate links on social media. Amazon picked up on this practice, and analyzed if a review came from a user clicking on one of those links who left a review, but was not a verified purchase. It was a mess for authors who gave out review copies.
Prevention Steps:
Don’t pay for reviews. This is against Amazon’s policies. If you do so, even from “reputable” reviewers, just know the reviews may be removed and you may be penalized.
Friends and Family: Be careful about this one. If your co-workers want to review your work, be sure they do so at home, and that several of them do not do so from your common work IP address. This will flag the reviews to Amazon. Also, discourage family from reviewing your work, or anyone who profited financially from it, including your editor, cover designer, and anyone associated with the book’s publication.
Be Wary of Review Offers. If you get an offer from someone you do not know to review your work, look them up on Amazon. Make sure their reviews are legit, and stay posted. Also be aware the user could be a pirate looking to steal your work. Offer them a copy through NetGalley if you use that service, or gift them a copy through Amazon. Your work will be better protected that way.
Don’t share affiliate or search links via social media. What does this mean? Share clean links: the difference is between link a and link b below:
- Not Clean: https://www.amazon.com/Typewriter-Repair-Shop-Ridge-Falls-ebook/dp/B00T3P6516?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc
- Clean: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00T3P6516
Note the tail on the Not-Clean link. It tells Amazon where the link originated (in this case, my Amazon author page, so this is not a horrible link). The clean link is what comes up via a normal Google or Amazon search, and so leaves your potential connection to the reviewer confidential.
Kindle Unlimited Excessive Reads
The subject of much debate itself, Kindle Unlimited is the Amazon lending service much like a Netflix for books: for a monthly subscription fee, readers can read an unlimited amount of books.
How do authors get paid? Each month, Amazon sets up a pot of money, and authors are paid a percentage based on the number of pages readers read of their work: if someone finishes a book they borrowed, the author gets their max share of the pot.
The problem: As with any system, scammers saw a way to get more than their fair share. They would “hire” click farms who had created hundreds of Amazon Unlimited memberships. The “users” would then “borrow” a book and click through to the end, giving the author a full read, even though the user had not actually read the book.
As with other scams, Amazon caught on. So books that received a disproportionate number of reads in a single day were analyzed and removed from Amazon entirely.
But not everyone who received a spike in reads was guilty. Take Pauleen Creeden, an ordinary mid lister whose story was told recently on The Active Voice. Paulee woke one morning to a message from Amazon that her KDP account had been suspended and her books removed from Amazon for a violation of the company’s policies.
She didn’t think she had, but she did see a spike of Kindle Unlimited reads on one day. So she petitioned Amazon, and eventually got her account restored and her books once again for sale.
Prevention: Some things are difficult to prevent entirely, but you can protect yourself by following a few simple rules.
- Don’t buy into scams. If you receive offers from promotional websites promising a certain number of reads or downloads of your book, stay away. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Even the best promotional websites like Bookbub don’t offer guaranteed numbers.
- Watch your numbers. If you see an unusual spike, ask Amazon about it. Maybe one of the quick read “farms” got your book by accident, or maybe you got a natural bump. Either way, letting Amazon know you are aware of the unusual activity makes it more likely they will work with you to figure out what is really going on.
If you are honest and careful, you can avoid being flagged and having your KDP account removed, suspended, or otherwise penalized. Using only legitimate reviewers, clean Amazon links to your work, and paying attention to what is going on with your Kindle Unlimited activity will help.
But no one is guaranteed a place to sell books on Amazon. We operate in their house, under their rules. So abiding by them to the best of our ability is crucial to our continued presence and success on Amazon.
teleread.org 
This is a good reason for having your books listed with lots of retailers.
The risk of being blacklisted by Amazon (or anyone else) might be fairly small but if all your sales are coming through that one channel the impact could be catastrophic.
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True. If all of your eggs are in one basket, there is a certain hazard to that. On the flip side, you can move your eggs at any time. Still, I think wide distribution still rules.
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I was sweating it a little bit when I heard they don’t like friends and family reviewing, but now that I know it’s not illegal, that’s not so bad. I don’t like the idea of paid reviews, even if they’re saying bad things (even if honestly, which I’d hate, but at least respect, as long as it’s not pure vitriol and utter crock). It’s like hiring the services of a lady of the night, in some ways, and I’m not sure which is more awkward to explain to your accountant! Paying for promotion is one thing, you expect them to tweet your work out. Paying for a review is not strictly illegal, depending, but it’s still against Amazon’s policy, and if you’re using Amazon to publish your book, you have to do it their way or use something else. I get that it’s hard to get noticed, but doing it illegally or by ethically-gray means just hurts your reputation. If you want to be rich and famous, you have to wear the consequences of your rise. But it certainly is tempting to pay for reviews. Just don’t do it on Amazon, is what I’ve read. Friends and family are perhaps a gray area, but I’m glad to read that it isn’t strictly illegal. And that they can be reasoned with to some degree, whatever the doomsayers say. Still, that payment system – ie from a pool set aside, which doesn’t directly come from your sales – is not exactly an encouraging business plan. The founder of Amazon didn’t like the way it’d evolved, either. It’s still the best way to get results, though. All according to the internet, mind you…
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Right. Some things not illegal are still not best practice. Just like any other business, writing and selling on Amazon has best practices. If we want to continue to distribute with them, we have to follow those.
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Yep. You sign the line, you do the time… or something :p
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I have a price promo lined up along with several adverts due to run on the same day for my book, do you think I should inform amazon of my planned adverts and (hopeful) spike of sales?
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No. The only spikes they look at are sudden rise into the thousands a day, and most specifically reads on Kindle Unlimited. Legit sales in reasonable numbers will not flag them.
I’ve had good promo days, and as long as those sales are legit, and they are not large numbers of quick reads, Amazon does not care. Also, be sure you are using clean URL’s for promos you do, not affiliate links or other lengthy ones.
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Amazon contributes to this problem by making it possible to get the names and contact of high-ranked reviewers. I know. I get several emails a week from companies offering me, as a ‘top-ranked reviewer’ free stuff for reviews. I trash their email, but they must be getting enough takers to make the process worthwhile.
Suggestions:
1. Amazon needs to lighten up on their friends and family policy. Simply stating a relationship, i.e. “This book is by my Uncle Bob,” should be enough.
2. Authors read a lot of books that they could review. We need to establish a writer’s ethos encouraging authors to review what they read, particularly when they don’t know the author and thus don’t trigger all this Amazon hostility. That’s particularly true outside the U.S. From what I’ve seen, Americans are more willing to review books than Europeans. The latter lose out in the review game.
3. Closely related to #2, Amazon could encourage that by establishing an authors reviewing other authors program. Who better to review a scifi or murder mystery than someone who writes them? Amazon could offer a tit-for-tat. Authors doing reviews in the program couldn’t review books of those they know, but they could include a link in passing to one of their books. That would aid discovery.
–Mike Perry
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Agreed. Amazon is definitely part of the problem. I think they know it, but they just don’t know how to fix it. The review system has all kinds of issues (maybe this will be my next article)
A review system filled with trolls, where friends and family can’t review, you get penalized for paying for reviews, and getting them organically is difficult, especially outside the US makes little sense.
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Reblogged this on Motown Writers Network . . . Michigan Literary Network and commented:
Good article every author should read
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Thanks for sharing!
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Great post
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Thanks. I hope it was informative and useful to you.
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definitely. I’m still up on the debate of using my affiliate link to using direct links. I pretty much do both in my social media, but usually on my website I try to use direct links only.
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It is a tough call. You want the revenue from affiliate links, but you also don’t want Amazon to flag or remove reviews either. It is a tough call.
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Yet another instance of how privatization erodes important principles such as due process. Amazon, Apple et. al. are under no obligation to be fair. It’s their party and they’ll do as they want to.
Diversity is certainly one defense but I’d add self-publishing to the list. Thus the question, if Amazon closes your account and removes our book, can you then self-publish them?
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Kindle Direct is self-publishing, and where authors are most often removed. It is rare for Amazon to remove a publisher’s titles, even a small press. But if Amazon removes your book and closes your KDP account, you cannot self-publish again in your name.
You can certainly self-publish on other platforms though. Amazon is just the primary source of revenue for many authors.
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Reblogged this on Don Massenzio's Blog.
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Reblogged this on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog.
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Thanks for sharing!
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Welcome Troy 😃
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Reblogged this on The Life & Times of Zoe the Fabulous Feline and commented:
Great insight, the details are valuable for everyone.
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Reblogged this on Kim's Author Support Blog.
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Reblogged this on Wild and Woolly Wordsmithing and commented:
Excellent information here! Must share!
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Very informative post, thanks. I’m traditionally published (from a BIG publisher to small presses), but recently had several reviews taken down (for a number of books). Most of these reviews were from an excellent AND honest reviewer who was subsequently banned from Amazon and had all his/her reviews removed. This reviewer’s integrity is unquestionable, but for some (still) unknown reason all his/her reviews were removed. An no, I don’t know him/her personally, only through correspondence while submitting books for review, both from the publisher(s) and me. I’m wondering if you’ve had any knowledge of this type action by Amazon. It is baffling, to say the least. Thanks again for a great post.
–Michael
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I have heard of such things. The only recourse is to contact Amazon, and hope the reviewer can prove their integrity and the reviews be restored. Essentially they have to prove they are not being paid for reviews (against Amazon policy) and are not affiliated with the publisher or authors they review in a monetary way.
It is an unfortunate part of a broken review system that no one seem to know quite how to fix.
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Thanks, Troy. This reviewer has, I assure you, done everything you’ve mentioned and there is no evidence of any paid reviews, affiliation with publishers or authors, or any other discrepancies. The grating thing is, that Amazon flatly refuses to offer or provide ANY shred of proof or reason as to why they banned the reviewer in question. Amazon is, in my opinion, acting like the worst of dictatorships (figuratively speaking, of course).
Amazon, as the owner of Goodreads, sadly is culpable of similar situations, with zero recourse to the wronged author/publisher, etc.
It appears the ten-ton elephant is free to tromp on whomever it wishes without recourse. Sad.
–Michael
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That sis sadly true. But as the largest book retailer in the US, they have authors and reviewers alike under their thumb, so to speak, and as they are a private business can make up the rules as they go along. SO things are not, and never will be, fair under their system.
We as authors just have to decide if we are going to work within them, remove our products from their virtual and physical shelves and try to make a go of it elsewhere, or endeavor to play by the rules and hope beyond hope that we are not among those singled out wrongly.
There are those who are abusing the system and getting away with it, those getting caught, and the wrongly accused whose very livelihood is affected by the “ten-ton elephant.”
We can only control ourselves. Unfortunately this does mean that sometimes the innocent do get trampled.
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This 50 reviews and Amazon will promote you meme should be burned and crucified. I have no idea who started it, but it is simply not true.
Authors want reviews because many promotion sites require them. *That* is the real reason that authors are so keen to get reviews, because it makes their books eligible for Bookbub or ENT or a plethora of other sites.
Her name is Pauline Creeden. Not Pauleen or Paulee.
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Patty, exactly ZERO of my books have 50 or more reviews. A couple are getting there, but it’s a slow grind. What reviews I do have are, for the most part, very positive from both readers and “editorial” review venues (Booklist, Library Journal, etc.). I’m traditionally published and get “some” help from my publishers, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how some authors manage to rack up hundreds of reviews (and I’m not talking about King, Clancy, et al). That’s always been a mystery to me. If anyone has the secret, I’d sure like to hear it. My writing can’t be THAT bad. 🙂
–Michael
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Sell books. That’s what gets you the reviews. That’s what gets you the promotion. The reviews by themselves do nothing. They only make you eligible for promo sites.
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Many of those authors also use Net Galley. There are som co-ops if your publisher does not have an account with them. But selling books is the real key. King and others get hundreds of reviews by selling thousands of books.
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Reblogged this on Smorgasbord – Variety is the spice of life and commented:
Troy of Teleread.org with an article that every author who has a book for sale on Amazon should read.. even those of us who are not affiliated into any of the Kindle programmes.. Thanks to Annette Rochelle Aben for highlighting and please head over to Troy’s blog to comment and share.. thanks S
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Thanks for sharing.
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thanks Troy.
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Some great advice here. I’ve been “cleaning” my links when I share them (not using the search link) but purely for having a shorter link, I didn’t know what other implications it can have.
Troy, if you don’t mind me asking, I’ve seen that Amazon makes your book more visible once you have more than 50 reviews, but I’ve never seen anything like an official link to prove that it’s actually a fact, rather than a rumor. Do you have a source for this? So far it’s just been something I see people sharing on forums or blogs.
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I don’t think Amazon says that directly anywhere, but I have heard the same thing. It may just be by inference. I think these kinds of statements make it tempting for authors to buy reviews.
Getting 50 reviews organically is kind of difficult. But it can be done. And almost every book you see in an Amazon newsletter has more than 50 reviews. But no, I don’t have a direct source.
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Reblogged this on Anita Dawes & Jaye Marie.
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Thanks for sharing. I really do appreciate it.
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Reblogged this on Linda Bradley.
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Patty, I DO sell books. I have one book which has sold around 70,000 copies. Its review total at Amazon stands at 30 (last I checked). It did have a few more reviews, but for whatever reason, they were taken down. I can assure you they were all legitimate reviews. I’m not boo-hooing here. My stuff is good, and I would keep on writing if I never made another penny or received another review. I was simply questioning how “some” books have received hundreds of positive reviews. Most of these also have many, many negative reviews that state (and I’m paraphrasing here):
“I don’t see how this book received all those 5-star reviews, it’s terrible, written like a high schooler, full of typos, stilted dialogue,” etc., etc.
My question is, why does Amazon hammer some authors and others slip through the cracks when it’s “fairly” obvious that the majority of the reviews are planted? Read some of these. Many sound as though they were written by the same person. You’ll find the similarities: “Can’t wait for the author’s next book.” Couldn’t put it down.” “This book reminds me of King’s, ‘The Stand.'” And on and on.
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Reblogged this on Just Can't Help Writing and commented:
Here’s help negotiating Amazon’s review process! So much mystery!
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Reblogged this on Memoir Notes.
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This is good and nfo. Thanks.
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I just noticed a massive spike in a 24-hour period this morning. Over 20,000 page reads (in a day!) when the most I usually get in an entire month is about 8,000. I messaged Amazon immediately and am *kind of* freaking out.
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I enjoyed reading your article. Thanks for sharing this with us.
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Thanks for reading! I appreciate it!
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i have a problem that i can not access my bookshelf ,but i can access my reports and royalties .
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