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Amazon reviews
Apr. 8th, 2008 12:22 pmI found this linked at Smart Bitches:
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/04/07/highland-press-warnings/
Summary: an author DeborahAnne MacGillvray (who is also a secret co-publisher) engages in a variety of shady activities to deal with negative reviews including the following:
"When MacGillivray she gets a bad review, she tells the loop to click on the link to the Amazon page and vote “no” and then “report abuse”. With enough of those “report abuse” entries, the review is then removed."
Holy cow! I don't think the report abuse button was in existence when I departed. RHI that enough reports generate auto-removal but an e-mail complaining will get the review reinstated (unclear whether that reinstatement can then be auto-removed as 'abuse' again or if it is stickied into place).
The situation has been discussed on Amazon, as well:
http://www.amazon.com/tag/romance/forum/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?%5Fencoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxM42D5QN2YZ1D&cdMsgNo=11&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx1GBYID02K3VTS&cdMsgID=Mx1ZU3T8H7A1H0G#Mx1ZU3T8H7A1H0G
What to do? Hard to say. But if you buy based on lots and lots of good reviews/few bad reviews, you might want to add some additional checking to your process (over and above ignoring Harriet Klausner, for example).
http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/04/07/highland-press-warnings/
Summary: an author DeborahAnne MacGillvray (who is also a secret co-publisher) engages in a variety of shady activities to deal with negative reviews including the following:
"When MacGillivray she gets a bad review, she tells the loop to click on the link to the Amazon page and vote “no” and then “report abuse”. With enough of those “report abuse” entries, the review is then removed."
Holy cow! I don't think the report abuse button was in existence when I departed. RHI that enough reports generate auto-removal but an e-mail complaining will get the review reinstated (unclear whether that reinstatement can then be auto-removed as 'abuse' again or if it is stickied into place).
The situation has been discussed on Amazon, as well:
http://www.amazon.com/tag/romance/forum/ref=cm_cd_et_md_pl?%5Fencoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxM42D5QN2YZ1D&cdMsgNo=11&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx1GBYID02K3VTS&cdMsgID=Mx1ZU3T8H7A1H0G#Mx1ZU3T8H7A1H0G
What to do? Hard to say. But if you buy based on lots and lots of good reviews/few bad reviews, you might want to add some additional checking to your process (over and above ignoring Harriet Klausner, for example).