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When I broke into the self-publishing business in 2014, I never really knew the power of reviews. I simply published my book, pestered my friends and family, then gently asked them to leave a review when they got the time. Once I was about a year into self-publishing, I learned from various YouTubers that review gathering should be treated equally important as the writing process, sometimes going to seedy depths that had disastrous consequences.
At the time, review swapping was the best way to get reviews. This system consisted of two authors exchanging books and leaving reviews. While I went into it completely doe-eyed with this near unbreakable Pollyanna spirit, I came to find I was putting way too much work into it. Sure, I was getting the reviews, but it was coming at a slow clip of about one review per week.
After all, if I were to leave an honest review of a book, I wanted to read the whole thing. That is, until one day, a self-publisher told me by DM:
Bro, are you actually reading the books?
Well, yeah, of course, I'm reading them. Why wouldn't I?
This conversation pulled the rose-colored shades off my bald head to see that very few authors and self-publishers were using this method to give honest feedback. They were merely there to game the Amazon algorithm, because at the time, Amazon showed a lot of favoritism to products with high review counts with a consistent flow.
While that doesn't hold true today, one thing that does hold true is that Amazon deems review swaps as being biased and that violates their Community Guidelines. If one author knows the other, then Amazon believes those two authors will leave biased reviews.
I felt dirty. Used. And disappointed. Was this how the world worked? Did I jump into a business that required unethical practices in order to succeed? I tossed my hands up and just went with the flow.
I left review after review then. We're talking up to three to five per day. Admittedly, I flew a little too close to the sun and got burned. Around June 2015, reviews mysteriously vanished from my books. At first, I thought it was a glitch.
It wasn't.
Then, I checked the status of my reviews.
They were gone. Every one of them. Gone!
I felt sick. After all, the other authors held up their end of the bargain. Now I wasn't upholding my end.
I contacted the Amazon Review team only to get a boiler plate response that essentially said, "We caught you red-handed. Go to jail, do not collect $200. Do not pass go."
Besides my ability to purchase, I lost all my privileges on Amazon. No reviews. No community engagement. None. And I was told I would never get those privileges back. And I had it coming to me. I violated some guidelines and earned that punishment.
Did I get banned from Amazon? No. Did my books lose all the reviews? Oh, quite a bit of them, somewhere in the hundreds. The ones that remained were organic reviews and a few honest authors who never succumbed to the pressure of exploitative loopholes and tricks.
I have to lead this talk with this story, because over nine years later, I've since redeemed myself and got my review privileges back. And, I've learned a LOT of what to do to get more reviews without selling your soul or resorting to sketchy business practices.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather be in this business for the rest of my days. I love to write and publish. It's my passion, not just a hobby. And I want the same for you too, even if you want to stay for a cup of coffee or ride it off into the sunset.
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