Is Amazon deleting reviews?

Hey all,

Happy new year in advance!

Just a quick question - has Amazon been deleting reviews? I noticed this from the old Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252738/Amazon-deleting-thousands-obviously-fake-book-reviews-anger-authors.html).

I just checked mine and a 2 star review I did for Ian McEwan's Solar a while ago has disappeared (it wasn't my cup of tea and I guess I was in a bad mood!). Is this now a thing? I mean it's a bit irritating as I didn't think my review was that bad!

Looking for all those wiser than me to help me out! MY blood flow is a little slow after yesterday's Xmas lunch.

Cheers all,
David

I have had one of my reviews deleted for no reason that I can see as it was a good one and I do not know the author. Also three 5* reviews of my book have been deleted. One was by my daughter-in-law, (which she admitted) but it was a genuine review. The relationship might be the reason. But the others?????

Amazon delete any reviews if they feel the reviewer and the author are connected at all, or if the authors involved are competing in the same genre, or if they don't like you andthere is an 'R' in the month.

My Mum is gutted that she cannot review my books. As is my Mother-in-law.

I may be wrong, but I thought that if someone is connected with the book, say the author's beta-reader, and is not asking for payment or receiving any, and writesthe standard 'disclaimer' into the review, this was permissible? Is it that amazon deletes your review, or do they not 'take'?

Unconnected beta readers are fine, I believe as long as they have no other connection with the author, and declare the receipt of the copy. But one of my last beta readers is with the same publisher as I am, and her review was burned.

How can they tell whether anyone is connected if that person does not admit it? Seems like a lot of detective work! My friend and editor posted a review for me, and admitted who she was, but it has not been deleted. I think you are right Will. If there's an R in the month. And authors who favour writing a particular genre, generally read that genre, therefore are probably the best people to review. (personally i read everything except vampires)

There's not much consistency in Amazon's deletions. I'd speculate they may do a sample check of reviews (and posts) periodically, and may also respond to complaints from other users. There appear to be some words/phrases that automatically trigger Amazon computers so that reviews/posts containing these get rejected immediately. (Recall writing a perfectly innocent comment about the dog Lassie, but using the word for a female dog stopped it from being posted!)
Whilst dodgy reviews have always been present in publishing, there's no doubt that sites such as Amazon have been particularly ill-used in this respect, and a high percentage of suspicious reviews and posts don't get deleted. Particularly in self-published work, time after time you find a book that has got a handful of reviews - all 5 star and nearly always by people who've never reviewed anything else; odds are these have been planted there by the author and/or their family and close associates. The same applies to a lot of the supposedly unbiased recommendations within these forums.
It's a shame really because it makes the ordinary customer highly suspicious of all reviews and posts.
I can only speak for myself, but I only take note of reviews by people who've submitted a reasonable number of reviews in the past, and I also tend to disregard 1* and 5* reviews. The most insightful comments usually come within the 2*-4* range.

I was wondering if it has to do with complaints, or reporting abuse. I had a review removed (ages ago) by Tony, who happens to be an author and just loved my shorts. He also read another book which he didn't like and posted a 2-star review. The author complained, and as a result Amazon deleted ALL of his reviews. They were all re-posted after they clarified.
With all the Indie hate going on, and jealousy between Indies, tagging and sabotaging, reporting, complaining, whining, and whatnot, plus the bad press with the bought and fake reviews used to manipulate the system, I'm not surprised Amazon tries to get it under control.
But, as always, they don't do it with a plan. *sigh*

I recently wrote a negative review of a book I had purchased through Amazon's Kindle store. The review was almost immediately deleted and, when I enquired why, Amazon advised that it was because I had a "financial interest" in this book. This accusation is as offensive as it is incorrect. As anyone with any common sense can see: I have never been involved in the authorship, publication, sale or distribution of this or any book in my life.

When I explained this to Amazon, and asked that they reinstate my review, they continually refused, constantly citing my "financial interest" in the book.

Clearly I have no such interest whatsoever; I merely read a dull book and felt I was entitled to write a negative review. My opinion now is that Amazon deleted my review because negative reviews impact sales. Bizarrely, a positive review I wrote at the same time, but for a different book, was published and has not been deleted. Clearly Amazon are engaging in the dishonest and, frankly disgusting, practice of arbitrarily deleting negative reviews.

It is worrying if Az is deleting adverse reviews for no good reason, although I have to say it's never happened to me even where I've been quite critical of a product. Given that there are so many phoney 5* reviews on books, we need all the critical reviews we can get (as long as they are genuine) to try and get some sense of balance.

No, it wasn't because your review was negative, unless you've written a book yourself & amazon believes you wrote a negative review on a similar book to make your own look better. amazon's swooping down on reviewers who stand to profit from a book, reviewers who are given gift tokens in exchange for a review, reviewers who review books they wrote, and reviewers who behave in the way I mentioned in first sentence, and it's deleting. A lot. Must be a fairly large campaign, as it's been written about in newspapers. It's ridding the place of many of the worthless reviews but it's also deleting reviews that are perfectly valid along the way . . .

What I don't understand is amazon reasoning, to use the word loosely, that someone with a purported financial interest in a book would give it a negative review--makes no sense whatever.

Amazon are using software to search out and delete reviews. Inevitably, some legitimate reviews are lost in the process. I have found cached reviews that disappeared and added them in the book's description section. Checked over by Amazon before acceptance, all these lost reviews are now reinstated (but cannot be voted upon).

A financial interest isn't necessarily a positive financial interest, a competitor has a financial interest for example.

I wrote a negative response to a book but I had so much hassle from the author and her mates that I deleted it myself. It wasn't worth the bother. The pathetic verbal abuse was uncalled for.

Makes me so angry when I read something like that. So sorry you had the troubles. Some people are just plain idiots.

I honestly think you should *not* delete a negative review, just try to ignore the verbal abuse. A honest negative review *should* be there, I think. You wrote it for the other readers, not for the author, I suppose?

I suppose it depends if the abuse went direct to the reviewer or appeared as comments on Amazon. If the author's response to an adverse review is visible to the public it's best to leave it there; it will probably do far more damage to the author's reputation than the original review!

I did not imagine abuse going to the reviewer by personal e-mails or being even physical. I do imagine attacks on Amazon, like calling the reviewer a career murderer, a sad little <***> who should get a life, and you go worse from there.

I do think the author's and their friends' attacks like that should be left as public as possible

Amazon's system seems to be a bit one-sided and random - there is a certain publishing house that often runs Kindle freebies for a day, and each author with a freebie seems to get a 5* review from her/his fellow-authors, who don't even bother to hide their names. It's totally evident, as on the 'blurb' for each freebie, there's also info about the other freebies on offer, along the lines of 'if you like this', followed by blurb on the other books. Not sure how this manages to bypass amazon's techbot, or does this happen as there are sales off the back of this? One particular instance was so blatantly obvious, as all 5/6 'inter-reviewers' all had short stories in an antho by the same publisher.

There are also a lot of 5* reviews on mediocre books, clearly done by the author's friends-and-family brigade, yet this apparently goes unnoticed. I recently reviewed a 1* book where there was a UK 5* review under one reviewer's name, and on the US site, the same exact, word-for-word review appeared under a totally different reviewer's name.

As to abuse - in 2007, the US site was forced to intervene after a reviewer's daughter and horse were targeted by an author's posse, after the reviewer posted a 3* review, and on her 'About Me' page, was apparently a picture of her next to a 'for sale' poster for the horse, which had a location and contact number. The posse tracked her down, made threats against the family, but action was only taken after police got involved. And, the author is with Kensington, not a tiny publisher, and is still writing (sorry, I am worried about stating her name here, in case the same comes my way!) and her books are still being sold on amazon. Have a look at the author's tweet, from 2008, posted on Dear Author:

Well, thanks to XXXXXX our PI , we now have her name, her husband's
name, her chidrens' names, her grannies and great grannies name. Her
address phone number and email
lol-quite interesting.

Frightening, really. I got abused by one guy last year, who didn't like one of my reviews, who then spent ages trawling through 18 months of my reviews to apparently illustrate his point, then another guy stepped in to defend my reviews (no one I know), and he ended up getting abused by the same guy, so much so, that it deteriorated to a degree that I had to report the abuser to amazon. I've since made sure that my About Me page has the bare min info.

ROROBLU'S MUM, it is a sad and worrying thing. Nowadays the crazies are coming out of the woodwork, and with the internet it is much simpler than the old days of physical stalking, etc. Some authors take bad reviews personally, although in a lot of cases no one is being rude to them, and if they thought about it the criticism is more towards the publishing houses. I know that at times I have been very critical with a book's back cover blurb, which the author doesn't really have anything to do with. You pick a book up and expect it to resemble the brief synopsis on the back, not be completely different, and in some cases outright lies.