THE Group for Authors! discussion

When I went onto my page this morning it says there is one fewer rating for my book Love and Robotics. According to the rating stats a 4 star rating has been taken down but I can still see this rating on the book's page. Is this a bug or is Goodreads taking a while to update? It still says "30 ratings" at the top despite it now being
29.

I didn't realize Goodreads took ratings away.

It might be a reviewer changing their mind. I've had that happen sometimes.

But when I click on your book I see only 8 ratings and not 30 or 29.

No, I mean total ratings - that book plus my two others. If someone has deleted their ratings it'd be 29 altogether.

And now it's back on! Mystifying.

Hi Rachael, I have seen this happen a few times with my books, if that helps at all. It seems there is sometimes a delay on the site, in terms of how it updates itself, and things do disappear then reappear. I agree. It is mystifying.

Hey, I've been having strange numbers as well on ratings recently so I'm not sure.

How about Amazon? Do your sales correlate to reviews at all? I'm consistently selling every month yet I only received one new review this YEAR and it was removed!!! This freaks me out a little bit because as you know reviews are a big deal... can Amazon withhold publishing reviews?

On goodreads, you can try refreshing your stats (edit the book and that option is midway down righthand column next to where you set that edition as featured/primary).

Last I knew, the average cache catchup took 10 minutes to 72 hours to refresh everything on your books when site was performing at normal speed.

Reviewers can remove their reviews. Amazon and goodreads can also remove reviews they feel are against their site TOS and review guidelines (particulalry if because violate U.S. consumer fraud laws by not disclosing some connection/bias or commercial incentives). Amazon and Barnes and Noble both also have a few "checking" algorithms that can prevent a reviewer even publishing their review. Their business sites, their guidelines (plus some actual laws).

It's kind of a catch-22 for an author to fight the removal of a review because simply your knowing that there should have been a review from someone makes the review suspicious. You can still post reviews that Amazon doesn't allow in with the customer/consumer reviews in the editorial description section. Amazon and goodreads both are okay with reviews that are paid solely with a free review copy so long as disclosed.