Disappearing reviews

I may have mentioned in an earlier post that reviews keep vanishing for no apparent reason. It's really frustrating as reviews are hard enough to get when you start out, especially ones that have a 'value' to the would be purchaser. These are peoples opinions of the book, and good reviews (for me) highlight the good bits, the not so good bits and opinions around the characters, story line and construction. Whilst I respect that reviews are written for the benefit of the reader, it is nice (as an author) to be able to pick out tips and thoughts that can be regarded as constructive to improve my own ability. 

With Russian Redemption I would eagerly click on the Amazon page looking, at first, for the number of reviews, and then the excitement of seeing the rating and then reading the whole review. The very first review for Russian Redemption opened with "This is the most enjoyable novel I have read in quite a while..." can you imagine how elated I was to read that from one of Amazons own Top 1000 reviewers, David Bryson. For me it was vindication for all the time, effort and money that I had invested in the adventure. Slowly, more and more reviews came in, for me it was like unwrapping a birthday present each time.

Then one disappeared, vanished. Suddenly the number of reviews dropped from eight to seven - how the hell.......?  Then about a week or so later another was gone. Amazon informed me that it could be that the reviewer deleted their review but wouldn't discuss it any further. I managed to contact the reviewer and she assured me that she hadn't asked for it to be removed so she reposted the review. A few more weeks went by and another went missing. Amazons view on this is 'tough' and if you want to complain we'll get very hardline and pull your book altogether. They wear the big boy pants! So, as an author, you have to just suck it up. But it niggled me in a big way. Reviews were reposted and re-removed, it almost became a game. One of the reviews was from a work colleague; she had purchased a copy and was exercising her right to leave an opinion. Having investigated the disappearance of her first review, it was suggested if she started the review with "I know the Author..." then Amazon would not delete it so she did..................... and Amazon did to!

These were all four or five star reviews, gold for a new author, being wiped away for no apparent reason. Last week another review went missing, only this time the reviewer had no idea who I was when he posted the review some weeks ago. After reading Russian Redemption he tracked me down on facebook and sent a friend request which was duly accepted; four weeks later the review was gone. And that is how I uncovered the one common denominator of all of the missing reviews - they were all part of my growing facebook community. I made a few enquiries on some forums and it appears that somehow Amazon 'bots' track Facebook and deem any 'facebook friend' to be an admissible  source of reviews. How bloody ridiculous is that!! 

So, here's the 'heads up' - do not tell Amazon or Goodreads (Amazon own Goodreads) that you have a facebook account, keep that information away from 'Big Brother', your reviews may well stick around a whole lot longer.