The Battle of Reviews and Verifieds

Amazon is up to something again. As I put on my twitter, I had done 8 reviews or so yesterday, to fix the deficit in the trifecta: Finding Book, Buying Book, Reviewing Book. I am very good at the first two but need to do the 3rd much more often.

Basic Rundown:

Amazon is being silly again, I did purchase this book but they took my verified purchase tag off my review. Who are you hiring over there amazon? Seriously. If I love a book, I am very likely to give it 4 or 5 stars. Period. I hardly make purchases I'd hate. FYI.

If anything this is showcasing someone on the amazon's end that is bias towards which reviews are "good" vs not. Gonna do a test. Just to see....

Plus I make my reviews short and too the point, like listed here: Mainly because I know people are busy and like things to the point usually. Ill have big honking review breakdown on the blog if need be.

Yep, I do find these books fun, but this review got to go up instantly vs the other 5 that are still in the que to be posted. The biggest diff. between this book and the others waiting, this features a same sex couple. Its fun, doesn't beat you over the head with stuff but:

What makes the other books any different? Does the review get stopped based on the publisher then? Who verifies the reviews? Lets them through? Because it feels like certain books are able to get their feedback instantly compared to others. In my personal experience.
 

From this article:

Verified Purchase Changes 


From our internal testing of a $20 Amazon product we discovered that giving customers a discount beyond 20% removes Amazon’s “Verified Purchase” label from a review which decreases its ability to affect your average star rating. This makes a lot of sense, as that falls within a typical sale price that a company might offer on their website for a sale price, allowing it to still remain as a legitimate review with the same impact as a full price purchase review. We found that any product that had been purchased through Amazon with a discount of more than 20% did not have a verified purchase review and also failed to affect the product’s current star rating.

5 star reviews and verified 

Fakes vs Real 

As far as I know, i didn't get a discount on that book so why take away my verified status on it. Plus there's this whole idea of fake 5 star reviews, me? I just leave stars based on my personal enjoyment of something. I don't consider myself a traditional reviewer or critical eye based type. 

What if a reader just likes a book and wants to help? Ill temper the amount of reviews I do per day on my amazon account, so they don't get hit with tons all at once but its out of genuine love for reading. I want more readers to find things I like so those writers will get some funds to make more things I enjoy. Is that so wrong? So what if the writer doesn't share your politics. Reading is about entertainment for me.

I've noticed some reviews of mine start out verified, I don't have KU, I buy directly, then over time some of them get booted like:

In a way, it can hurt the writer because verifieds are counted more heavily even though in KU, everyone's review will be unverified. That's why I don't have a KU subscription. I think KU reviews should also be verified when it comes to books/ebooks.

Amazon's combat mindset against all types of reviews is also clouding/hurting books. Only reviews they like should get in? It makes no sense. KU is handicapped because of its lack of VR ability. 

I wont stop trying, if I have to leave my reviews here as small bites and big retrospectives, I will. But I wont let up on putting up reviews on amazon too.