[NoLongerPosting]

Removed due to site owner's change to TOS.

 

[Laran Mithras]

Trads certainly do, Rickie. No one argues that. But Amazon seems to be coming down on the indie practice while ignoring the trad practice.

Though I hate ARCs of all forms, I do think it is quite unfair to target indies for this pogrom.

 

[NoLongerPosting]

Removed due to site owner's change to TOS.

 

[Dolphin]

The real problem is that Amazon is so opaque with its requirements. Well-meaning indie authors want to comply with the rules. But they have to know what the rules are. I try to steer clear of anything that might even remotely contravene TOS.

I'll agree with that wholeheartedly.

One thing that I suspect complicates things is that KDP Support is probably choked with people who haven't the first earthly idea what's going on in whichever dev group is responsible for fixing the reviews. There could even be multiple bailiwicks on either side, plus additional departments sticking their beaks in. We probably don't have a coherent, universally applied set of rules for this because there isn't one. I hate that, and I wish it wasn't so, but it'd square very neatly with my own experiences in the tech sector.

Amazon probably just doesn't see fixing it as a major priority. The crisis management and communications types they're hiring for KDP may either be meant to resolve the problem or simply smooth it over, if that's cheaper.

 

[nikkykaye]

IMO, the value of reviews is in alerting readers that I'm not publishing p0rn, and specifically giving them a sense of the kind of book I write. Romance is a huge, huge category, and there isn't enough space in a cover or blurb to signal some of the things that reviewers notice and comment on. These are things that I myself never realized until reviewers pointed them out, and they are of use to potential readers.

I want at least a few reviews from the beginning, because organic reviews are hard come by when you're at the prawny stage like me. Am I supposed to make my books free just to get "organic" reviews? I don't think that's right, either.

I totally agree. These days, blurbs are so competitive, marketing-oriented and stylized (for lack of a better word) that they might not really offer much about the story or style to the reader. Quite often I find reviews are the best source of a capsule synopsis of the book, and they'll tell me if the book is dark or funny or whatever. I certainly rely on them as a reader.

But as an author, sometimes I worry that too many ARC reviews turn new readers off. If you have 50 reviews and 49 of them say "I was given this book and this is my honest opinion," it begins to sound facetious. So I can see both sides of this. If my books aren't being covered by a ton of blogs, then ARC readers are the sourdough starter of my readership (so to speak). I'd love to say that I have 500 organic reviews within 48 hours of release, but I don't have that fan base yet.

 

[Dpock]

When I started researching self-publishing last fall I reviewed a long thread on ARCs. The discussion centered on their management, tracking their reviews, keeping spreadsheets, etc. The general advice was to cull any ARCs who gave you lower than four-star reviews, and this strategy was generally endorsed by thread participants.

After reading that thread I decided to give ARCs a pass.

 

[Hope]

When I started researching self-publishing last fall I reviewed a long thread on ARCs. The discussion centered on their management, tracking their reviews, keeping spreadsheets, etc. The general advice was to cull any ARCs who gave you lower than four-star reviews, and this strategy was generally endorsed by thread participants.

After reading that thread I decided to give ARCs a pass.

How were they tracking the ARCs reviews? Some reviews are posted as Amazon customer. How would they even know if they had left a review? It sounds like having ARC reveiwers isn't worth it.

 

[jaehaerys]

That's the nub of it, I think. Repeat after me: Amazon only cares about customers. This is meant to improve reviews for their benefit, and anybody else whose interests get caught up is acceptable collateral damage.

Besides, we've been complaining to them about unfair reviews since at least the John Locke fiasco half a decade ago. Now they're trying to fix it. I'm receptive to that, even if the initial efforts seem draconian.

I'm even sympathetic if one of their explicit goals is to eliminate the ARC teams that indies have been working so hard to cultivate. Yes, they've been helpful to many an indy career. Yes, I know you're not explicitly pressuring them to provide a positive review. But don't they, usually? Despite the rule that you can't require a review in exchange for an ARC, don't you cut them from your list if they never leave a review? Does the customer benefit when every new release gets reviewed by a stable of 100 diehard fans--the kind of people you know will read your book and review it within days? Is the primary purpose of your ARCs to benefit the customer? Or is it for the benefit of the author, and a natural outgrowth of exogenous factors like BookBub's review requirements?

I mean suppose we're talking here about repeat reviewers who're typically positive and have some other kind of connection to the author (could be a Facebook fan, Facebook friend, Twitter follower, nearby address or IP--anything a weak AI might find and interpret as a link). Tell me how you can identify which among those reviewers has received some kind of inducement. Tell me how you know which ones are biased out of loyalty to the author, absent any quid pro quo. Tell me which ones are sockpuppets created by the author or a contractor. Tell me how to engineer an algorithmic method to sort all that wheat from the chaff so that only the objective, unbiased reviews remain.

Amazon has every reason to ask those questions and grasp at solutions. Sure, they don't want to do anything to spite us, but neither are they in the business of rewarding us for anti-competitive business practices that don't benefit their customers. If the best solution they can arrive at is to eliminate anything that gives even the appearance of impropriety, then so be it. They'd be well within their rights. We may even come to appreciate it, in time. New authors who lack their own ARC teams would benefit immediately and never feel the loss of a tactic they never employed.

I've got two main thoughts about how to react.

First, do away with the "street team" ARC approach. This would save some time and effort, which could be used elsewhere, and you may still be able to finagle early reviews through other approaches. Maybe it means buying more AMS ads early in your release cycle--all part of Amazon's evil plan, to be sure. The successful writers will find ways to flourish in the new world order. 'Twas ever thus.

Second, if we think this is tied to Facebook, why not do away with Facebook? Do you need it? If you could have your ARC team or Facebook, which would you choose? How else could you use the time that you're currently spending on Facebook?

What's niggling at me is this notion that your account could be shut down for review manipulation if anybody connected to you reviews your books (or simply reviews more than one book!). The communiques from Amazon in this thread haven't clearly been specific to ARCs. I'm inclined to read that as some kind of miscommunication (what are the odds, right?). If that were the policy, what choice would you have besides withdrawing from social media? Gets even hairier if it extends past Facebook.

I'll be interested in seeing how it all plays out.

I agree with all of this. Great post.

 

[jaehaerys]

When I started researching self-publishing last fall I reviewed a long thread on ARCs. The discussion centered on their management, tracking their reviews, keeping spreadsheets, etc. The general advice was to cull any ARCs who gave you lower than four-star reviews, and this strategy was generally endorsed by thread participants.

After reading that thread I decided to give ARCs a pass.

I feel the same. I remember reading threads like that, and it was definitely off-putting.

 

[Atlantisatheart]

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Content removed due to new owners; VerticalScope Inc. TOS Change of 2018. I received no notification of a change to TOS, was never asked to agree to their data mining or sharing of my information, including sales of my information and ownership of my posts, intellectual rights, etc, and I do not agree to the terms.

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[Dolphin]

When I started researching self-publishing last fall I reviewed a long thread on ARCs. The discussion centered on their management, tracking their reviews, keeping spreadsheets, etc. The general advice was to cull any ARCs who gave you lower than four-star reviews, and this strategy was generally endorsed by thread participants.

After reading that thread I decided to give ARCs a pass.

Please believe there are well-placed staffers at Amazon who read KBoards, among other things. A thread like that could've easily raised alarms.

This happened to a friend of mine and she doesn't have a facebook page. She said she thought it was all to do with goodreads and possibly bookbub considering which reviewers they were taking down.

An interesting addition. I'd love to hear more details from folks who've had an experience with this. We know Amazon won't be sitting us down and filling us in on the nitty-gritty.

 

[ImaWriter]

How were they tracking the ARCs reviews? Some reviews are posted as Amazon customer. How would they even know if they had left a review? It sounds like having ARC reveiwers isn't worth it.

Just because all you see is "Amazon Customer" doesn't mean Amazon doesn't know exactly who they are, where they live, where they work, what credit cards they have, where their kids go to school, what size clothes they wear, what toothpaste they use, how much they earn, their criminal record, and use their zillions of lines of data mining from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, and every other website in the known universe, to connect them to you.

I understood Katy to mean how would an author know who left reviews. They wouldn't know the name behind "amazon customer," so how accurate is their tracking.

 

[555aaa]

About 'effing time. ARC "street team" reviews have been yet another reason to avoid indie author/publishers. You can see these in the sales data - they have splurgy launches with gushing reviews far outside the "natural" rate for that sales rank, and then they plummet into obscurity. You also see this as a reader - you keep seeing the same fanboy/fangirl reviews, for each book, within a few days of publication. Readers don't expect authors to have a "launch team" primed to dump a pile of glowing reviews out on release day.  If you were buying toasters, do you think that the toaster company should have a launch team of fans poised to leave a few dozen glowing reviews of their new toaster? It's no different.

 

[Hope]

I understood Katy to mean how would an author know who left reviews. They wouldn't know the name behind "amazon customer," so how accurate is their tracking.

Yes, that's what I meant, thanks.

 

[Dpock]

I understood Katy to mean how would an author know who left reviews. They wouldn't know the name behind "amazon customer," so how accurate is their tracking.

There may not be 100% transparency, but they only worry about culling ARCs from their teams who leave three or fewer star reviews.

 

[MClayton]

I mentioned somewhere up-thread that when my friend had ARC reviews removed, there was a lot of speculation that it may have been because she used the same ARC team to review each new release. I do tend to think this is a trigger. That doesn't mean every time we receive a review on a different book from the same reviewer, it'll be removed. I've had the same reviewers review multiple books in my series (I don't have an ARC team, FWIW - these are either review sites or fans), and they've never been removed. I think the difference may be in the way they occur. Mine trickle in over weeks and months - organically, whenever a reader gets to the book - whereas ARC team reviews occur all at once. That could surely throw up a red flag to someone at Amazon.

 

[A J Sika]

IMO, the value of reviews is in alerting readers that I'm not publishing p0rn, and specifically giving them a sense of the kind of book I write. Romance is a huge, huge category, and there isn't enough space in a cover or blurb to signal some of the things that reviewers notice and comment on. These are things that I myself never realized until reviewers pointed them out, and they are of use to potential readers.

I want at least a few reviews from the beginning, because organic reviews are hard come by when you're at the prawny stage like me. Am I supposed to make my books free just to get "organic" reviews? I don't think that's right, either.

If you have an appropriate cover and description - readers will most likely know what to expect in your book i.e. genre and heat level.

Let's not kid ourselves; when authors use ARCs they're not doing it for the benefit of the readers. It's a marketing strategy. The more good reviews I have early, the more people will be attracted to my book. It's just like using promo sites to push a new book or applying for a Bookbub. And that's okay because being savvy marketers is part of our job. But let's not pretend that there's some altruism involved in ARCs.

As a marketing strategy it's an okay one. Though suspicious readers like myself tend to side-eye books with primarily positive reviews that have no verified tag and have those words 'I received a FREE copy of this book in exchange....', the ARC way seems to work for some otherwise authors wouldn't be working so hard to from 'street-teams'. The problem with this strategy is that it straddles the line between ethical and unethical quite alarmingly and opens the door to some pretty unsavory practices. For instance culling members of the team who don't give glowing reviews, rewarding reviewers with giveaways (the reader then feels indebted and ends up giving a positive review), ARC buying etc.

Am I pro or anti ARCs? I'm not sure, but I won't don a sack and walk the streets if they are banned.

I've been tempted to use them a couple of times because I have a good list made up of fantastic fans. But every time I do, some part of me always asks what if this is the time Amazon decides to crack down on everyone using ARCs suspiciously and I get caught in the net? Nah! Not worth the hassle. I'll just take my reviews that come a day to a week later and go my way. Thankfully a lack of ARC hasn't affected my sales. On a recent book I got to top 1000 on the store without a single review - so, you know, Whatever!

 

[LadyG]

There may not be 100% transparency, but they only worry about culling ARCs from their teams who leave three or fewer star reviews.

Do you have proof of this, or is it just your pet theory?

 

[Guest]

I wouldn't mind if ARCs were not allowed for anyone. However, the way things are I'm afraid this new policy will end up hurting new writers and writers who don't have a substantial fan base yet. I'm already seeing the bigger authors suggest rotating ARC reviewers from your mailing list to avoid being flagged by Amazon algos but that's easy enough for those with thousands of subscribers. For the rest of us, it won't be so easy, thus we'll have an even greater disadvantage in the future.

PS. Not saying said successful authors are doing anything wrong, just that Amazon keeps punishing the little guys every time they come up with a new restriction. 

 

[jaehaerys]

I wouldn't mind if ARCs were not allowed for anyone. However, the way things are I'm afraid this new policy will end up hurting new writers and writers who don't have a substantial fan base yet. I'm already seeing the bigger authors suggest rotating ARC reviewers from your mailing list to avoid being flagged by Amazon algos but that's easy enough for those with thousands of subscribers. For the rest of us, it won't be so easy, thus we'll have an even greater disadvantage in the future.

PS. Not saying said successful authors are doing anything wrong, just that Amazon keeps punishing the little guys every time they come up with a new restriction.

Trying to make it in indie publishing is extremely difficult at the best of times, you could even say the entire premise is punishing in and of itself. And like anything else that's probably as it should be.

Yes, there are established authors with platforms they've built through questionable practices, but there's nothing we can do about that now. We can't go back in time and undo those wrongs. So, there's no reason Amazon should continue to allow these questionable practices to continue just for the sake of 'making things easier' for any new prospective writers looking to jump on that less-than-ethical bandwagon.

Instead, we can encourage new writers to enter the struggle realizing that yes, it is a struggle, only the cream will rise and it can and should all be done above-board and with genuine success achieved organically. At the same time, we can only hope Amazon will help by closing the loopholes and the schemes and finally putting these other more questionable practices out of commission for good.