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Should You Review Your Friend’s Book on Amazon? · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, welcome to the Daily Writer, where we help writers become authors of their own lives.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you're an author, the last thing that you want to do is upset the Amazon gods.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: As we all know, Amazon is a key part of our ecosystem as writers and authors, and it's a huge way that readers find us.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: In addition, we obviously sell books there, and there's all sorts of benefits to being active and also in harmony with Amazon.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, in that spirit, today I'm sharing a question from email subscriber Pam Brown about keeping Amazon happy and avoiding activities that might cause some trouble.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive in.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Here's what Pam writes.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, Kent.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: I self-published a book last fall.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: One of my advanced readers posted a wonderful review on Amazon.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: That earlier reader has now self-published a book.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: She asked me to be an early reader and provided testimonial as well.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: That testimonial made it into her book and identified me as the author of my book.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that author has now asked me to leave a review of her book on Amazon.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: Two questions.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: First, is it appropriate for someone whose testimonial is included in a book to also review that book on Amazon?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: And second, because she reviewed my book last year, is it possible that Amazon will assume we are, quote, review swapping, unquote, and take down our accounts?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Neither of us paid for the other's book as we were reading PDFs of the books prior to publication.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Pam, thanks so much for your questions.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see any ethical problem with leaving an Amazon review just because you gave a testimonial for a book.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Those are two totally different things, and by itself, I don't think one of those.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Pam, thanks so much for your questions.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's dive into the first question first.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I don't really see any ethical problem with leaving an Amazon review for a book just because you gave a testimonial for it.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Those are really two different things, and I don't think that creates a conflict of interest.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've done that myself.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have left Amazon reviews for books where I have not just given a testimonial, but also perhaps written a whole chapter for a book.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've done that two or three times where I've been included in an anthology.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I literally was one of the authors of the book, but then I also left a review for that book as well.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I never saw any Amazon issues due to that.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: The biggest issue here is whether your review for that book is honest.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you believe that a book is valuable, then it's totally appropriate to leave a positive review for it, regardless of whether you gave it a testimonial or not.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now let's dive into your second question about reviewing one another's books.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's inherently a problem.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Many authors genuinely read and recommend books that were written by friends and colleagues.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's that's just the nature of what it means to be an author.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You have friends, you have colleagues, you have family members at times who come out with books and they want you to read and review those books, just like we want people to read and review books who know us.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the nature of relationships.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think the important thing here is that there's no agreement to exchange reviews and that every review reflects your honest opinion.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have no problem asking readers to leave an honest review.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: However, I do really have a problem when authors ask readers to leave a five-star review because there's kind of an implicit understanding there that, hey, you're going to leave a five-star review for my book even if you don't really like it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think readers should have the freedom to leave whatever kind of review they want.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, it undermines the integrity of the whole book review system to begin with.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that said, and I don't think this is backtracking on what I just said, my personal policy is that I never leave negative reviews for books on Goodreads or Amazon.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: If I can't give a book four or five stars, then I just won't leave a review at all.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: I just try to follow what my mom taught me and probably like what many of our parents taught us, which is, and you know what I'm gonna say, it is if you can't say anything nice, then don't say anything at all.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just have a thing where I don't want to publicly bash somebody else's books.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Even if I don't like the book, um, I'm just gonna keep that opinion to myself.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't see any purpose in me leaving a negative review for a book.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, thankfully, there are other reviewers out there who take a different approach.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if a book genuinely has issues, I think it is important to have an honest review system where people have the freedom of speech to leave the kind of review that they want, as long as it's obviously not harassing somebody or um, you know, anything like that, that would be inappropriate.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: I do think honest reviews are really, really important, but my personal policy is that I don't leave negative reviews for books.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, all of this said, here's sort of the summary of this whole thing.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: At the end of the day, nobody outside of Amazon really knows how their review system works.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Amazon occasionally does things that leave us sort of scratching our heads.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And the best that we can do is to be above board, to leave honest reviews and avoid anything that resembles trying to game the system.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is really what I think it comes down to is if we're trying to game the system or get around Amazon's rules or somehow subvert the integrity of an honest book review system, that in itself is an issue, much less an issue with Amazon.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's an issue with integrity overall, much less an issue with Amazon.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when it comes, when it comes to leaving reviews for people that we're connected with online, a good rule of thumb that I like to ask myself is this would I be comfortable if my relationship with that person were made public?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think if the answer is yes, you're probably on solid ground.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, Pam, that's my two cents.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, probably more than you wanted to know, but that's my two cents.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope this is helpful.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: And for all of you listening, thanks so much for listening as always.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Keep writing, keep showing up, and I'll see you tomorrow.