It’s more common than you think.
Did you know that Kindle will allow anyone to review a book, even if they haven’t purchased it? It’s true. Many authors find this discouraging, and it’s alarming that their book reviews may be filled with spam. A few bad reviewers are simply trying to sell their services and products by adding links to their own website and adding links to their affiliate products.
I recently experienced an aggressive reviewer. This person had reviewed over a thousand books and those reviews consisted of nothing but 3-4 sentences of advertisement and affiliate links. When I searched the KDP author forum for support, everyone seemed to say, “Good luck with trying to get that removed”. The overall advice was to “let it go” but that wasn’t an acceptable answer for me.
How I Got The Spam Removed
I’m not saying that this will work for you, but this is what I did to get the review removed.
1. I wrote a letter to Kindle support at https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/contact-us
2. I included very detailed information:
- The name and the link to the spammer’s Amazon profile.
- The approximate number of spam reviews that I could clearly see in their profile.
- The details of the spam review, destination of the spam links, and what they were selling.
- The star rating they left on my account.
- A reqest for KDP support to review the spammer’s profile.
- A request for the entire review and the star rating to be removed.
My Result
My first letter to KDP support resulted in them only removing the links.
My second letter to KDP support resulted in them informing me they understood what I was saying, but the reviewer had not violated any rules.
My third letter to KDP support resulted in them thanking me for the information and removing the review and star rating. I guess the 3rd time really is “the charm”.
Write on!
Make An Impression
Sabrina Espinal
Sabrina&Company Marketing
