From author Anne R. Allen:
My inbox has been bursting with unsolicited emails for the past few weeks. I must be on a new list of “easy prey” circulating in the the author-scamming community.
. . . .
These emails will “analyze” the Amazon buy page of one of my books—always assuming I’ve only written the one—mansplaining how I’m too stupid to know it’s overpriced, too short, has a bad cover, a bad sales rank (even when it’s a bestseller) and of course, has an insufficient number of reviews.
. . . .
The emailing creeps have no idea I’m with a small press, and they’re actually dissing my publisher. But I can imagine this approach is pretty effective on self-publishers, especially relative newbies. Some judgey stranger offering unpleasant criticism in your morning email can shake an author’s confidence.
And they’re counting on that. Once you’re feeling vulnerable, they pitch bogus or wildly overpriced services, “break into Hollywood” scams, worthless interviews, and that old warhorse, paid Amazon reviews.
. . . .
But when I started to research the paid review business this week, I ran into a bunch of new dramas and draconian changes. So I decided to devote this post to the latest Amazon review horrors.
DO NOT Pay for Amazon Customer Reviews!
One email notified me that I’d failed to get “enough” reviews on my new Author Blog Book. But I could get 25 Amazon reviews from him for only $900!
Dude, here’s the reason many of us “fail” to get tons of Amazon reviews anymore: scammy review-sellers like you.
This is because Amazon fights paid review violations with robots, which are wrong more often than not. And they’re scaring off real reviewers.
In 2016, the Zon changed their TOS to require reviewers to be Amazon customers and forbid any payment—including free products or gift cards—to reviewers of anything other than books. (Book reviewers can review free books as long as they disclose.) This was supposed to crack down on the rampant gaming of Amazon’s review system. For more, see my 2016 post on Amazon’s New Review Rules.
. . . .
A review on a blog is useful, and can be quoted in Amazon’s “editorial review” section, which often has more clout with readers.
But Amazon has recently made more draconian changes. The guidelines have been modified again, and so have the punishments.
It used to be that customers violating Amazon’s TOS were banned from SELLING on Amazon, but the new policy bans them from BUYING.
Your account will be deleted. No warning. No explanations.
. . . .
Amazon’s Review Police-Bots Deleted “Over a Million” Innocent Customers’ Accounts this Month.
Amazon’s latest police-bots are out for blood: if they even suspect you of breaking the rules, your account gets deleted with no warning.
. . . .
The victims got this explanation:
“The account has been deleted for one or both of the following reasons.
Your reviews were posted in exchange for compensation, such as gift cards to purchase the product, product refunds, review swaps, or free or discounted products, and/or Your account was used for commercial purposes.”
. . . .
The most recent crackdown doesn’t only involve draconian punishments for suspected paid reviewers.
Amazon is also banning reviewers from posting in more than one Amazon store. It used to be reviews could be posted in the US Amazon store as well as Canada, UK, Australia, etc., so a UK reviewer could also post a review on Amazon.com, where it had a potential to increase a book’s sales and get it into Bookbub and other newsletters.
Link to the rest at Anne R. Allen
PG says, among other things, the history of Amazon has been typified by an ongoing battle between con men/con women and Amazon. The battle has often been fought in the reviews section.
PG doesn’t blame Amazon for working hard to keep their reviews legitimate and clean. Online customers are among the flightiest of creatures and can click to competitors on the slightest provocation. As anyone who has watched human activities online for very long understands, herd behavior is a real phenomenon and all sorts of seemingly minor problems or lurid stories can startle large numbers of purchasers off to Walmart or Costco.
In the battle between Seattle and Evil, innocent bystanders can be digitally injured.
An estimated three billion people use the internet today. The number and variety of online cons is impossible to calculate and Amazon is likely to see a good portion of those cons, so they have reasons to be paranoid.
That said, it is imperative for Amazon to treat its suppliers well. Just as customers can move elsewhere, so can suppliers. If PG were running the world, there would be more well-designed online indie-friendly bookstores.
So, what’s the problem?
Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
I’m all for them enforcing their Terms of Service. Paid reviews, traded reviews, and scams do the rest of authors a very big disservice.
And without some means of automating part of the process, the whole Amazon idea doesn’t work.
It’s not a perfect service, but neither is the New York Times list of bestsellers.
It looks like Amazon is content for some authors to find their service unattractive. Nothing appeals to everyone. Those authors will market through other channels. That’s how the rest of the economy works.
To date much of the complaining demands Amazon spend more money so independent authors can make more money.
In every business there are always customers/partners/suppliers that are more trouble than the relationship is worth.
In Amazon’s case they have a long history of cutting off returns abusers. Those are also the ones that whine the loudest on the internet. Contrary to what they think, Amazon doesn’t mind their whining: it reminds people that buying/selling via their mall is a privilege, not a right.
It’s disingenuous to agree to the Terms of Service on Amazon (yeah, you clicked the box without reading – good luck with that in court, and lawsuits are expensive) and then immediately try to scam them.
I’m constantly amused by the people who do something illegal, unethical, or just obviously wrong, and then scream when caught.
Yeah, this is not a person I’d assign much credibility to. “Mansplaining” (scamsplaining would have been a clever term, and she should know that the major problem in KU stuffing/scamming is coming from the Mastermlnd group that happens to be majority-woman), “creeps” (okay, but I think that’s focusing on the wrong bad attribute, as “creep” implies so much more than “scammer”),then she disses self-publishers by implying they’re mostly suckers (when in fact actual self-publihsers/indies are some of the savvyest people around, except for the total noobs).
She goes on with lots of hyperbole and overstatements, such as the fiction that Amazon “deleted over a million innocent customers’ accounts this month.” Rather, they threatened over a million, deleted thousands, had many protest and get them restored–and a lot of the deleted accounts were NOT innocent. Yeah, it was messy and grossly unfair to some, but again, a big overstatement.
Anyone who spins up with a hysterical and overstated post like this is suspect–and really, PG, you might not want to republish this type of stuff when it includes such overblown rhetoric. It tends to imply you agree with it and endorse it, unless your commentary immediately refutes it.
I’m sure PG appreciates you mansplaining all that to him, dear. 🙂
Still a better love story than Twilight.
“Mansplaining” may be an appropriate term when identifying blatant sexism, but like all loaded terms, it loses power when misused, and its misuse often shows more about the user’s own bigotry than that of the target.
As does the condescending putdown “dear.”
I think you might be underestimating the naiveté of authors. I went to a writers group meeting last Saturday. The afternoon talk was on doing research for your books. The speaker started with how to Google. Her second point was the difference between a browser and a search engine. I left at that point. Sent an email to her when I got home because I wanted to make sure I hadn’t offended her by doing that. Her reply stated she’d surveyed some of the members before preparing the talk and most of them didn’t know the difference between a browser and a search engine!
Re Amazon reviews, I recently ordered a dozen pairs of socks from Amazon. Although they were from a third-party seller, they were “fulfilled by Amazon.” Inside the package was a card promising me an additional dozen pairs if I left a review and provided them with the proof I’d done so.
Knowing of the crackdown on reviews, I wrote Amazon customer service asking if this was permissible. I also made the point that _they_ had shipped this product to me. In return, I got a scathing email, almost threatening, about how receiving anything in return for a review was a violation of TOS, etc. And all I did was ask a question. So, yeah, in my opinion they’re overreacting.
Her reply stated she’d surveyed some of the members before preparing the talk and most of them didn’t know the difference between a browser and a search engine!
I have a slight phobia about people who use email addresses from the AOL domain because of the tech support I had to do for customers who needed to know the browser/search engine difference, as well as the the browser/email difference. That last one was easy: “Do you see an @ sign? It’s an email address. If there’s no @ sign, it’s a URL.”
That said, I was keen to help them because I like adaptable people who were willing to try new things. I agree with your reaction that the class was below our level, though. And you’ve provided an important reminder that “noob” does not equal “idiot.”
The email most likely had a name associated with it, and from the name you could deduce a sex.
So all these emails I get from 20-something Russian women who have fallen madly in love with me really are from 20-something Russian women?
Good to know!
Pretty much stopped reading at “mansplaining”.
How does she know that the scammer is a man?
If she thinks that only men use this type of psychological manipulation, or that internet scammers always use their correct name and sex… well… she’s wrong. Badly so.
It fit her agenda …
My disillusionment with Amazon grows almost daily.
Same here. I’m also starting to consider selling my books direct.
Oh, dear. I occasionally remember to post a review on Amazon.com and .UK. Looks like it’s a good thing I usually forget!
I’m afraid when Amazon is the behomoth that it is, they should be blamed for “collateral damage” and should be expected to take care.
And I’m afraid that when you have that many millions of suppliers/buyers and billions of sales, you will have people trying to game the systems to make more money than they should. And it’s funny how loudly some of the self-entitled ones will yell when the ‘tricks’ they were using get turned off.
And from where I sit they do seem to be taking as much care as they can – otherwise the ‘collateral damage’ could be much worse than it has been so far.
And I’m still waiting for Jeff to decide he’s sold enough kindles and he can divert an extra twenty million a month to another project by closing KU – and then he could delete all that email saying he isn’t running it right!
If you don’t like Amazon then don’t use them – there’s still Walmart or Target – who never do nothing wrong. YMMV …
KU is meant to be a marketing tool, not a primary revenue channel. And certainly not the only one. Since enrollment is voluntary, there is always the option to just avoid it.
Looking at the number of Kindle Indie titles out of KU, it seems a lot of authors do choose that option.
“KU is meant to be a marketing tool, not a primary revenue channel.”
Agreed, ‘not a primary revenue channel’, but it’s amazing how many writers using it seem to think it should be – at least for them.
And since it’s so easy to get in – even the scammers love it.
It’s a bit like if Amazon built roads. And people used those roads – as did a couple of thieves …
And people cried out ‘Amazon built the roads – they should police them better!’
So Amazon did.
Now the people cry ‘Hey! Why did I get pulled over and questioned? Amazon is going too far!’
No matter what Amazon does or doesn’t do someone will cry foul about it.
And since the press gets more eyes (and therefore gets more ad money) from bad news than good, we’ll keep hearing about the one out of ten thousand and nothing about the other nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine …
I see the same kind of thinking on the reader side from people who berate KU as worthless because it doesn’t feature recognizable brand-name authors. The kind that are already established and well-known and…
…don’t…
…need…
…discovering!
(With apologies to Mr Shatner.)
The authors that would only be cannibalizing full-price sales with discounted rentals…
Like, in what world would it make sense for Patterson or Roberts to put even their backlist on KU?
The business world is transactional: it only works when the other side gets something of value.
TANSTAAFL!!
Is it mansplaining when it’s a cut and paste email sent to anyone?
And when does it cross over into femsplaining?
Now there’s a wonderful idea! Would that it caught on!
I, too, have been experimenting with Kobo promos and liking the results. C’mon, reviewers! Jump into the Kobo waters; they’re fine! 😉
Yes, a good idea. I live in hope.
“Authors Beware: Amazon Gets Medieval on Paid and Traded Reviews”
They get yelled at for not doing enough – and for doing too much. There’s no happy middle ground that will please everyone.