Authors' New Amazon Headache

This shady character is causing all the trouble

This week the author loops I follow are all abuzz about a new Amazon policy. (Or a newly enforced Amazon policy.)

Beginning in 2012, Amazon began to crack down on fake reviews. The company removed thousands of reviews from its website. How did they choose which to ax? Only Amazon knows for sure. But if you think about the web of data they have at their disposal, it's easy enough to guess where they'd start. A reviewer who only gives out 5-star reviews, and reviews ten items a day, is probably getting paid to hand out shining reviews.

If you search "Amazon review" over at Fiverr.com right now, you will get 10,000 hits, most of them offering to write you a glowing endorsement.

Reviews are essential to Amazon's business strategy, but only if those reviews are not seen as worthless. So the policing continues. If Amazon knows you're an author (because you've used your Amazon account email to register at Author Central) it may disallow your reviews of books. And Amazon might use other data to discover that your relatives are writing reviews for you. (Do you have your reviewer's "wish list" saved under your account?)

The latest flap is about gift cards, though. In celebration of a new release, many authors do a giveaway. And some of those giveaways include Amazon Gift Cards. And why not, right? Dollars at Amazon are practically a universal currency. The recipient could use that money to buy a box of spaghetti or a tee shirt.

However.

If the winner of your gift card reviews your book whether or not they used the gift card to buy it, that review may be taken down. And if you "gift" an ebook to anyone for any reason the subsequent review also may be taken down.

Hence the freakout. Because Amazon admits that, in the time honored review tradition, the gift of a book / galley / ARC for reviewing purposes is not an ethical lapse. Paying any remuneration above the cost of the book is where the trouble lies.

Okay, fine. But web data is a blunt instrument, apparently, since disappearing reviews don't seem to discriminate between $25 gift cards and $2.99 ebook gifts. Authors who have pressed Amazon to explain their actions have come away frustrated.

Hopefully, market forces will do their thing. Because Amazon doesn't really want authors to give away copies only on, say, Kobo. And simply emailing book files to potential reviewers causes its own headaches. In the daily struggle against ebook piracy, Amazon's DRM is viewed by some as a helpful tool.

Let's hope the big brains at the Amazon mothership will come up with some clearer guidelines. Soon.

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

Publishing Pulse for April 26, 2013

Around the Internet

A brand new literary prize, The Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction will be awarded to author Don DeLillo.

World Book Night was this past Tuesday, and 500,000 free books were given out across several countries. Did you participate? If you'd like to be a World Book Night giver next year, follow the project here.

GalleyCat reported this week, from info found in Amazon's financial filings, that the Amazon Kindle Prime lending library now contains more than 300,000 titles. Publishing business nerds might also like to note that Amazon's quarterly sales were up a healthy 22% over the same period last year. But net income was down. (Translation: economy 1, bottom line 0.)

Sarah Pinneo  is a novelist, food writer and book publicity specialist. Her most recent book is Julia’s Child. Follow her on twitter at @SarahPinneo.

Publishing Pulse for April 29, 2011

New At QueryTracker:

Congratulations to QueryTracker's two newest success stories, Aislinn Macnamara and Michael Goins.

We've added two new agents to the database, Christa Heschke and Michele Mortimer, and eleven agent profiles were updated this week. As always, please double-check before you query to make sure the agent is still open to queries and has not changed his or her query guidelines.

Carolyn Kaufman is hosting a contest giving away a $20 Amazon gift card, a signed copy of The Writer's Guide To Psychology, or one of two other books. Take a photo of her book "in the wild" and you might win!

Publishing News:

A biologist and his grad students discover an out-of-print book about flies is insanely priced on Amazon.com, and with a little sleuthing, they determine why the price eventually reaches $23 million. If you click only one link from this Pulse, please make it this one, for the geek factor as well as the laughs.

Speaking of Amazon.com, the recently reported quarterly profits significantly lower than Wall Street's expectations, although their overall revenue had risen, at the same time that they expanded their employee base by 12%, adding 4200 employees.

Around The Blogosphere:

Jessica Faust gives a few, er, interesting lines from letters she's received.

Elizabeth Weed talks titles: books with their original titles and the titles they were published under.

Natalie Whipple discusses how to know when to rewrite your book.

Why writers need to avoid an interminable agency clause (and many examples of the wording to avoid.)

via Kym McNabney we have this gem:


Literary Quote Of The Week:

This book is not to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

- Dorothy Parker

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Jane Lebak is the author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (MuseItUp, 2010). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. She is represented by the resolute Roseanne Wells of the Marianne Strong Literary Agency.