VBT – Writers on the Move has a new feature to its marketing campaign – Viewpoint.
Today begins this new feature and Carolyn Howard-Johnson is launching the new segment at her site: www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com
The title of Carolyn’s article is:
Amazon, Reviews, Free Speech and More. C'mon, Let's Rant!
What’s happening is Amazon has decided to restrict the use of promotion on their site. Authors have always posted reviews of other authors' books on Amazon and included a link back to their own Amazon book page as part of their usual signature. Amazon, in their questionable wisdom, has disallowed this practice. When signing your review, you can only put your name – nothing else.
Does Amazon have a right to do this? Is this a fair practice?
I personally don’t understand Amazon’s motives for this attack on authors. If there are Amazon customers who feel Amazon shouldn’t be a promotional venue for authors they don't have to make use of the links given by authors.
If one were thinking clearly, it benefits everyone if authors/reviewers include links back to their own selling page:
1. The Amazon customer reading that review may feel confident that the reviewer, as an author, may know what he/she is talking about. This may encourage a purchase.
2. Amazon sells that book.
3. The author/reviewer may get someone to follow his link back to his selling page and make a sale.
4. Amazon sells that book.
It seems to be a win-win situation.
To read the original article by John Kremer and then Carolyn’s response go to Sharing with Writers right now. Let us know what you think about this!
Karen
Very good points, Karen. You gave some of the points I made in a comment on my blog, http://vivianzabel.blogspot.com, only in a more organized manner.
Ish, talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. (I seem to talking in cliches today)
Hi Karen:
Thanks for taking an interest in my past case with Amazon over deleted book reviews. This case has been resolved and I'm happy with how Amazon handled it.
To summarize, it was an error made by some Amazon employees. There is NO policy that states authors can't sign a review with their name and mention their own book titles.
Amazon has apologized for this error and has reinstated all my reviews, even taking the time to manually add my signature line at the end of each review.
You can read the full story at The Write Type ~ Multi-Author Musings.
~Cheryl Kaye Tardif,
author and book marketing coach
Dan Poynter said in a seminar that I attended last Saturday that this issue had been resolved. I had not heard that. Have you heard anything more?
Oh, I just read the other comments and it does look like it has been resolved. Good!
Thanks, All, for stopping by.
Cheryl, thank you for setting the record straight. It's nice to occasionally have a happy ending.
Karen