Why Amazon is deleting book reviews: understanding Amazon’s new review policy and how to get back deleted reviews

UDPATE – also read this: Are advanced reader copies (ARCs) for book reviews illegal (against Amazon’s terms?) Amazon has been doing review purges for some time, but today was a massive glitch, with many authors seeing ALL of their reviews disappearing – both indie and traditionally published authors lost hundreds of reviews at once...

Why people won’t review your books

Why people won’t review your books

  I see a lot of indie authors begging for reviews (and feeling stupid for it). I hate begging for stuff. I hate asking friends and families for reviews, giving out ARC copies, and then knowing specifically who should be but isn’t reviewing my books. Trust me, I’ve been there. But I stopped that nonsense years The 3 secrets...

How to remove negative book reviews from Amazon (with Kindle’s “most helpful” feature)

2018 UPDATES: Amazon has been doing “purges” of reviews and a lot of authors have seen hundreds of reviews deleted. Read this to keep Amazon from deleting your reviews. Also for a while Amazon was displaying the review with the most comments on top, instead of those voted most helpful… but that didn’t seem to stick...

Author Ethics and Utilitarianism (Or, “Why Authors are Bad People”)

Author Ethics and Utilitarianism (Or, “Why Authors are Bad People”)

Tonight I read with interest two posts about Author Ethics. This one by Jane Steen on selfpublishingadvice.org argues that while indie authors often lament (and admit to be challenged by) quality issues, the equally important issue of Author Ethics is ignored. The concept of “Author Ethics” refers mainly to bullshit book reviews; a...

High price = higher satisfaction: except when selling books (+a defense of Hugh Howey)

High price = higher satisfaction: except when selling books (+a defense of Hugh Howey)

A couple nights ago I met up with Hugh Howey Fan Fic writer Wes Davies over pizza and beer in Tainan, Taiwan; as indie authors we discussed marketing and pricing strategies. The best plan (I continue to affirm) is cheap or free – especially at the beginning, and especially as a lead-in to a series. The 3 secrets to book marketing, and...