The Politics of Privacy: Amazon’s New Reviews

Move over, Big Brother.

Amazon, the world’s leading independent publishing marketplace, has its eyes on everyone with cross-hairs pointed directly at indie authors. That is the overarching message we have gleaned from a topic of intense debate and discussion in the literary world today.

In June, Amazon announced that its policies for book review (among others) would undergo a complete overhaul. The purpose of instituting these changes was, allegedly, to give more credence to “helpful” reviews in the hopes of thwarting junk or spam reviews.

What’s the difference? Is not every review helpful in some way? Authors lean on this form of feedback. Five-star reviews are just as valuable as one-stars, aren’t they? Unfortunately, there are people who have willfully “gamed the system,” delivering low ratings and negative feedback for personal reasons. Because of those people (perhaps more aptly named trolls) the entire indie author population is up in arms- and rightfully so.

As of early last month, Amazon changed its customer review policy which had a major retroactive impact. Not only were thousands of reviews, positive and negative, removed without warning, Amazon automatically disallowed reviews from anyone that the author knows personally. That makes sense, right? Your friends and family, coworkers, colleagues, everyone that knows you would have some sort of bias. Any review they provided then, therefore, would cause the scales to tip unfairly in your favor.

It is not a question of intention or logic, though. One of the most prevalent inquiries that keep popping up is, how does Amazon know who knows whom? The corporate “e-tailer” seems to be in no hurry to answer.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a concern of privacy. We were recently approached by an indie author, one who has contributed to our blog previously, about this issue. On the heels of a huge book launch, Brenda Perlin says that the change in Amazon’s policy, though global, hits hardest in her own back yard:

“The consequences of this new policy may change where authors are selling their books and where readers are buying them. Personally, I am going to do as little as possible with them and have taken my books out of the Kindle Unlimited program. I hesitate to take any drastic steps but eventually I might consider selling my books anywhere but Amazon.”

With the help of readers and fellow authors, she says, it is possible to avoid taking such measures.

But how?

…

Stay tuned for the full article, with sources cited, later today on The Official Prose. Blog at: blog.theprose.com/blog.