I have been in contact with Amazon.com over the past couple of weeks discussing an issue that I want to share with you. The issue is the "Reader's Review" section on each author's page with Amazon.com.
I contacted Amazon.com asking them why they do not have a better moderation system in place for the Reader Review section of each author's page. What this often turns into is a forum, not a review of the author's book, for a member of the public to vent all manner of things. When John Gibson of Foxnews announced the pending release of his new book on Christmas, before the book was even available for sale on Amazon--it was just listed--Gibson's book had hundreds of "Reader's Reviews". Do not miss the point, it wasn't even available for sale and there were reader's reviews.
Other authors have this happen too. If someone does not like what the author represents, or his or her views, or whatever, the reader review becomes the forum for this person's rage. Why is this? Does Amazon.com really have no choice in this matter?
I also publish with LuLu Press. They allow authors to disable all or accept all reader's reviews. If the author enables reader's reviews, then the book, through some sort of computer programming magic, has to have been purchased through LuLu Press for a reader to post a comment. In other words, if LuLu Press can do this so can Amazon.com! They can figure out how to program their system so that if someone wants to leave a review of the book in question, then he would have to have purchased the book on Amazon.com.
If you didn't buy the book on Amazon, then you do not get to post a reader's review on Amazon's pages!
I have told this to Amazon in two emails but I get what seems to be a combination of a form letter with a few "live" comments. But, they seem not to comprehend what it is I am saying. They are unyielding!
A good example of this is what I found on our book's site today(THE PLAIN TRUTH ABOUT LIVING IN MEXICO). You can see this in the Reader's Review section of our book's site on Amazon. Just go to Amazon.com, type in The PLain Truth about Living in Mexico, scroll down a bit, and you will see it:
This person reacted to something I posted on the "Customer's Discussion" forum at the bottom of each author's page concerning the Harvard author, Kaavya Viswanathan. I took issue with so-called readers who posted their gripes and complaints in the Reader's Review. The majority of the so-called readers indicated that they had not even read this girl's book. As in the case with the book by Foxnews' John Gibson, they were using the reader review section as a discussion forum when they hadn't read the book.
The reader's review section is for someone who has read the book in question and wants to comment on the book. It is not a discussion forum. Amazon knows this. Amazon also knows, because I have told them so, that the technology exists that would enable only those who bought the book on Amazon to be able to post a review on the author's pages on Amazon. This is a no-brainer!
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