The real problem is that anyone can write any review, under any name, and say anything, and Amazon doesn't care. And when someone (me) tries to tell Amazon that the review that calls a book "groundbreaking," etc., was written by the author himself under a pseudonym, and the book happens to be anything but and from a vanity press, the author can re-post it time after time after time that this someone tells Amazon that it's on the site again, and again and again. Amazon will not do anything (like refuse to sell the book), and it depends on someone (me again) to let them know everytime the guy reposts. I'll never believe another Amazon review ever. Not to crazy about the whole company, actually.

I can 100% confirm what Lisa K has described.

My main amazon.com review account has listed as high as a top 500 reviewer, but these days I have pretty much sworn off contributing to Amazon.com content due to the wide-spread Amazon-enabled and promoted abuse of their review system.

While I have had negative reviews be posted and remain on the Amazon.com, many are "hidden" by Amazon.com staff. I was incredulous when I was first told by a Amazon.com staff member that this had happened and that it is not normally disclosed to the public "because then customers wouldn't buy the book". She was able to see my review, confirmed that it complied with their policies, but could not tell me the reason it was hidden. She also confirmed that many other negative reviews had been written for this title and that only 4+ star reviews remained unhidden by Amazon.com staff.

So the Amazon.com review process has gone from an independent third party opinion service to a third party sales mechanism for Amazon.

I no longer trust anything I read there.

I too have had negative reviews 'disappear'. It doesn't always happen, but it has happened twice recently, including a review for a book I received thru the Vine Reviewer's Program. What I find interesting about the loss of my negative review for Deborah Smith's A Gentle Rain, is that I have mostly posted negative reviews for the last few Vine books but this is the only one that 'disappeared'.

However, a flaw in the article is his contention that those invited to join the Vine program are solely Top Reviewers. I know I am waaaay down on the list (I've done only 65 or so reviews) and yet I was invited to joing the Vine program. In fact, on the Vine message board, we have commented on how 'lowly' most of us seem to be.

Since you have also experienced the hiding of negative reviews, does that change your approach towards writing them?

I don't see what's in it for me to write reviews for a system where only the 'salesy' ones make it to the public.

When the review process was more independent, I felt I was contributing my own opinion in an independent manner. Now that I know that only pro-sales ones are making to print, I'm thinking that Amazon is just getting free ad copy written by gullible writers.

Interesting, I've posted something like 1000 reviews and never noticed any of the 1 or 2 star ones disappearing. I'll have to go back and do a thorough examination. Of course, most of what I review is small press / low sales stuff, so maybe they don't police that as much. As to "why review," for myself, I was already keeping a kind of online book journal for myself. So it's never been that big a deal to cut and paste those same "reviews" into Amazon's system.

I'm part of the Vine program. I too wrote a review for the book A Gentle Rain by Deborah Smith. I gave it two stars because it was awful. I checked and my review is still there, along with another two star review.

Camicar wrote the following post at 01/23/2008 1:53 PM:

"In fact, on the Vine message board, we have commented on how 'lowly' most of us seem to be."

I didn't know the Vine had a message board. I've looked and can't find it. Could you post a link to it here?

The plot gets thicker....

Tonight I posted a response to an Amazon.com discussion of a film, only to find out that my top 500 Reviewer account is no longer in good standing. Therefore, I can no longer post to their "fray" for any books.

I tested the fact that I can still review books, but I can no longer chat about them...at least under that account.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I posted to one book that my reviews were being hidden :).