Support for Indie Authors discussion

There are a handful of reviews that are not showing up when I sort them by 'verified'. Has this happened to anyone else and is there any way to rectify this with Amazon? As you know, verified purchases that result in reviews carry the greatest weight, especially with some promo sites and at this point I don't feel confident that I will be receiving credit for those reviews should I be fortunate enough to get more.

Hi Tara,
The same thing is happening to me with my new novel Wolf: A Jessica James Mystery. Several verified reviews were taken down and I know of others who purchased it, reviewed it, got email confirmation of their reviews, but the reviews were never posted. It's difficult to even figure out how to contact Amazon. I did so through the "corrections to book details" form. But I haven't heard back from them. Let me know if you have any success. It is very frustrating!
Best, Kelly

Kelly
Thank you for sharing this. It is very frustrating. From scouring the KDP community forum it seems that verified simply means the reviewer has an Amazon account with a credit card on file and has made at least one purchase (excluding the book) in the past. Even this explanation, however, doesn't explain what is going on because people who meet this criteria are still not having some reviews show up. It turns out you don't even have to purchase an item from Amazon in order to leave a review for it and it be considered verified. I also came across more than one story of people who had reviews listed that disappeared after several months of being active. I'm starting to think the rule is that there are no rules. Frustrating, indeed. Keep me posted!

A verified purchase just means they bought your book through Amazon. Sometimes reviews take a while to show up, and sometimes they are in violation of Amazon's review policy even if they paid for the book.

Tara, as Christina said, the verified purchase will show if you bought from Amazon. It can be from a dealer through Amazon and I am wondering if that is what you mean.

I've bought many items through Amazon from independent dealers and yes, they show as verified purchase. Amazon was the middle man. They know you bought the item. However, I'm yet to have posted a review on an item I hadn't bought from them showing verified purchase. (And I do post a lot of reviews.)

The main rule is you have to follow their rules when it comes to writing your review or they will not accept it.

The strange thing is that reviews that were up, came down after a couple of weeks, for no apparent reason. And others who got email confirmations that their reviews were accepted did not go up.
I queried Amazon through Author Central and I will let you know what they say!

In one particular instance I had a podcast host tell me he was looking forward to reading my book and that he planned on leaving a review (he knows how important they are). I offered to send him a review copy but he insisted on purchasing the book to show support. Sure enough his review showed up a couple of weeks later but it is not listed as verified. This has happened to my reviews on more than one occasion. There are no Amazon policy infringements because I barely use facebook or other social media and no one who has purchased the book with the intention of reviewing it is one of my fb friends. It's a mystery to me.

Tara wrote: "In one particular instance I had a podcast host tell me he was looking forward to reading my book and that he planned on leaving a review (he knows how important they are). I offered to send him a ..."

Do you have your books exclusive to Amazon or are they available elsewhere? He could have bought from another outlet. Or from a market outside the US. Your best bet is to read Amazon's policy on reviews. There is no proof that Amazon is taking down reviews based on social media relationships. Were that the case, none of my reviews would stand and I've never had one taken down.

Tara wrote: "In one particular instance I had a podcast host tell me he was looking forward to reading my book and that he planned on leaving a review (he knows how important they are). I offered to send him a ..."

First, are you exclusive to Amazon? Because he could have bought a copy on Barnes and Nobles or iTunes for instance. Second, it's been awhile since I've actually checked but you used to be able to uncheck the Verified Purchase thing, meaning that even if you bought from Amazon, it wouldn't show.

People do lots of things without thinking. Maybe he unchecked it. As for the infringements about Twitter and Facebook, I don't know. Amazon states that you shouldn't worry about it and build your fan base.

Personally, I write my reviews under a pseudonym but they still know who I am. By they I mean Amazon. I interact with whom ever I want on both Twitter and Facebook and I don't recall anyone complaining my reviews had been removed and I haven't seen any of my own reviews disappear. Sometimes they took a few days to appear, but they end up showing. One of these, it turned out half of his reviews were not showing. He contacted Amazon and it took days and many exchanges but they finally found the problem and posted them back for him.

The bottom of this is if there is an actual problem, maybe you should contact them. They can't be aware of every glitch.

EDITED: Slow typer. Christina beat me to it for the exclusive lol

I have been exclusive to Amazon since I published in early March and don't use any other platforms, as of yet. I have never had a review fail to post or disappear after posting - my particular concern was with the reviews being listed as verified or not. That is very interesting to know that you can actually check the verified purchase box before you leave a review. This could explain what may be happening although I am not quite convinced that could have been the case for every situation in question. Still, very good to know. Thank you to everyone for your knowledge.