As
some of you might have become aware, Amazon made some changes to their
review guidelines recently. In a nutshell, they are no longer allowing
paid or subsidized products to be reviewed where the reviewer is sent
the product for free or at a heavily discounted rate (like paying $1
for a $100 product) for a review on Amazon. To Amazon now, this
constitutes a paid review, and existing reviews are being taken down.
You can read about it in more detail
here.
For
book reviews, you'll see in the article I mentioned above, book reviews
do not count in the change in review guidelines ... sort of. However,
it has always been stated that reviewers who were given books or
Advanced Review Copies for free should state in their review that they
were given the book for free in exchange for an honest review. This is
no longer viable because being given the book for free in exchange for
a review does constitute a paid review. You ARE getting the product for
free. ... Even though the article says books are not included.
Being
a blogger and a book reviewer, obviously I am given books to review and
I belong to a number of book and author groups. In one particular
group, the author posted this notice in the group, which I think is
fantastic. With her permission, I am reposting what she said here. It's
great advice.
So,
if you're a reviewer and you've been posting reviews to Amazon and / or
Goodreads with the wording above, you may want to consider changing
what you write.
What does this mean to Deanna's World and the
reviews I post either here on the blog, on Amazon and / or Goodreads?
Nothing really. After all this happened, I went to my
blog
review policy page
with the intent of changing my review policy only to find I really
didn't need to. I had been careful in what commitments I would make
with regards to posting reviews.
One thing I did try to do was
post a review as close to the release date of the book as possible,
oftentimes on release day itself. This will change. It has come to my
attention that reviews posted too close to release day may come into
question since someone may not have been able to purchase the book,
read it and post a review quite as quickly as at the moment the book is
published without it being an Advanced Review Copy, which may then fall
under the "paid review" umbrella, intentionally or otherwise. A lot of
this is open for interpretation, and a lot of it depends on the person
working for Amazon sitting on the other side of the screen and what he
or she may perceive as a paid review or not. I'd rather not take any
chances, so reviews for new releases, while I will attempt to be as
timely as possible will probably see a lag in posting timing between
the release day and the day the review is posted. It does not help
myself, my readers nor the authors if any of my reviews are taken down,
so I would rather be safe than sorry.
Reviews will always go up
on the blog here first. Following that, then Amazon and Goodreads,
usually at about the same time. I do not know the timing or lag between
the review being on the blog vs Amazon and Goodreads, though I
understand the importance of reviews being on Amazon with it helping
search algorithms and Amazon recommendations to other readers. I will
not follow a pattern when it comes to posting reviews to Amazon and
Goodreads. They will go up when they do.
I can understand if
some authors may be unhappy with this slight policy change on posting
reviews with Deanna's World, but please be aware, in the long run, I am
doing this for the benefit of the books (and authors) I am reviewing.
It helps no one if my reviews are taken down from Amazon or if I am
banned from posting reviews.
I hope this has been helpful and
has clarified a few things. If you have any questions, please ask. I
will be happy to answer them for you.
I will continue to review
books, of course. This does not change my reading and reviewing habits.
Reading is my drug of choice. :-)
So what do you think of the new Amazon review policies? Will they
affect you in any way?
Find Deanna around SOCIAL MEDIA:
