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Originally Posted by jbjb
It does seem to open an even worse possibility, however. The article refers to instances where a threat was made to remove the *book* from Amazon if violating reviews continue to be made. Note that this means the book is removed solely due to the actions of people other than the author. If that's really the case a malicious author has a better option than simply down-rating their rival - they can get the book removed altogether.
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That is not what the article said:
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When one of the fans queried this, on the basis that they had absolutely no relationship or financial interest in the book, Gagnon says Amazon threatened to remove her book from the site completely if the fan contacted them again about it.
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Amazon will remove the book if fans ask about the removal of reviews.
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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
True enough. But the fact that you can't eliminate all possible conflicts of interest isn't a reason not to eliminate some forms.
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Then eliminate the biggest conflict: paid reviews.
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Originally Posted by Andrew H.
The real problem isn't Umberto Eco writing a review on Amazon (assuming he would do such a thing). The real problem is when you look at a self-published book and find that it has 10 5-star reviews. You then check out the reviewers and find that each of them is a self published author, and each of their books has a positive review by the person who wrote the book you originally looked at. This is a real problem with the credibility of Amazon's reviewing process, and Amazon should stop it. Most customers want to read independent reviews, not reviews written by other authors in the hopes of getting reviews of their own books. That just looks like marketing.
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But isn't this just because a bigger percentage of the readers of a self-published book are self-published authors compared to traditionally published books? And it might also be possible that non-author readers of self-published books are less likely to leave reviews.