John Kremer, a respected expert in book promotion, recently caught my attention by remarking: "How stupid can they be! How really, really stupid.... Amazon is stupid. Amazon is stupid. I want them to know that I think they are stupid. I hope they read this post. I think Amazon is incredibly stupid, stupid, stupid.... Amazon is stupid. The people at Amazon.com are imbeciles.... Start sending your customers to BN.com today."
Wow! What could Amazon have done that so irritated this prominent book promoter? Well, Amazon deleted 85 book reviews written by author Cheryl Tardiff -- not because the reviews were unhelpful, not because they were unfair, not because of their content at all -- but because the signature line on her reviews contained a link to her own book.
Is there something per se wrong with listing your own title at the bottom of a review? John Kremer doesn't think so. As he puts it, "Why in the world would Amazon limit the ability of authors to give their credentials — which provides potential customers with a good reason to give more credence to such reviews? If Stephen King reviews a novel, I know it's going to be great. But how will I know if the reviewer on Amazon is the noted horror novelist or one of thousands of other Stephen Kings around the world? Even Stephen King won't be able to give his credentials."
I think John Kremer has an excellent point. You don't have to go very far to find a stupid review on Amazon that is unfair to the author - and good luck to an author who tries to talk Amazon into deleting an off-point or utterly unfair review. Check out these reviews - scroll down and wonder with me why Amazon leaves this garbage on its website while deciding that reviews that list or link to the reviewer's own titles are always inappropriate.
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