Great post, Barb. Sharing far and wide.
An open letter to Amazon:
Dear Amazon,
I should be your Holy Grail. I’m the real deal, an actual reader who goes through books carefully, thinks about what they mean and how they’re written, and then writes a considered, thoughtful, and hopefully helpful analysis—in other words, I’m a book reviewer.
Writers, potential customers, publishers, and oh yes—you, Amazon—should be jumping for joy and giving thanks that I’ve taken hours to read and yet more hours to craft reviews for hundreds of books. Instead, Amazon, you’ve decided to punish reviewers like me.
In the name of discouraging “fake” reviews, your new policy requires reviewers like me to spend $50 on Amazon’s US site and even more, £40 on Amazon UK before I can share my review. Have you thought about other solutions, or the effect this will have on legitimate reviewers?
Amazon has figured out how to conduct millions of legitimate…
View original post 228 more words
betweenthelinesbookblog.com 
I was going to release my first book on Amazon this week but I think I’ll take it elsewhere. I want a site that encourages reading, doesn’t punish it
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think this is a poor business decision by Amazon.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It really is.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was wondering why Amazon stopped allowing me to publish my reviews there. I always used to post them on Amazon uk and usa. Now only uk lets me and I didn’t understand why until I read this. Bad decision by Amazon, and terrible for Authors. Thanks for sharing this.
Amanda.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The same happened to me just this week. I emailed a few people to see if they were having the same problems. Really bad decision. it can only hurt the book world.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I just discovered yesterday that I can no longer review on Amazon US, since I can’t buy from there. I do see their point to be honest – there are so many fake accounts and shill reviewers on the site. But I wish they could have found a better way to differentiate between fakes and genuine reviewers. As a minimum, they could have taken into account if you purchased from one of their other locations… Bah!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree they need to do something about the fake accounts but there has to be better ways to deal with it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
This is awful- I’m actually not allowed to post on Amazon any more because at one time they thought I had an affiliation with an author ((which is rubbish, I always post honest reviews!). Anyway, they took all the reviews I did down. Ridiculous! 😔
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh no! That’s shocking. They’ve grown too big and have too much of a monopoly, I think.
LikeLiked by 1 person