Over the last weeks, we’ve been working literally day and night to better understand the recent review removals happening across Amazon. And I want to share something important with you: We have already identified new behavioral patterns that appear to be strongly connected to review removals, and we’ve already started implementing additional controls and monitoring systems inside BookVillage to minimize these risks even further. As I’ve said before, the most important factor overall remains the purchase history and long-term behavior of the Amazon account being used. A healthy Amazon account with a real purchase history behaves very differently from an account used almost exclusively for reviews. But beyond that, another factor appears to be involved in roughly half of the review removal cases we analyzed: ⚠️ When the same reader posts more than one review within less than two days. And similarly: ⚠️ When the same author receives multiple reviews on the same book inside the same short timeframe, even when those reviews come from different Amazon marketplaces. This is one of the reasons why inside BookVillage we constantly insist on naturally spacing reviews over time instead of concentrating them aggressively. Today we also noticed something very unusual on some Amazon accounts. In some cases, many previously posted reviews disappeared simultaneously, including reviews completely unrelated to books. And interestingly, most of the removed reviews seem to have been originally posted before April 2026. At the moment, we do not yet know whether this is a temporary Amazon bug or a broader review cleanup update. The accounts involved still continue functioning normally and many of them actually have strong purchase histories and otherwise healthy behavior patterns. This is important to understand: This issue is NOT something limited to BookVillage. It is currently affecting the entire Amazon ecosystem and every review acquisition strategy, including Amazon FBA product sellers.

Over the past few weeks we’ve noticed a recurring situation on Amazon. Sometimes Amazon allows the submission of a review, but after a few days you discover that the review was never approved. In other cases the review is approved and visible, but then disappears a few days later without explanation. We analyzed the data across readers and books and there is no clear correlation between specific readers or specific books. It is important to clarify that we are not talking about suspicious reviewer accounts, VA activity, or accounts created only to post reviews. In the cases we analyzed: • the Amazon accounts continue to function normally • the accounts are not banned by Amazon • the readers correctly purchased the books in Verified Paid Purchase assignments • the readers are able to continue posting reviews on other products In other words, everything appears legitimate both on the reader side and on the author side. This issue does not only affect review platforms. It also happens to people who post reviews occasionally and even to users reviewing physical products on Amazon. From what we are seeing, this may happen roughly once every 10–20 reviews posted. For this reason, it currently appears that the cause is something happening on Amazon’s side, not related to the quality or behavior of the reader. It is also possible that Amazon is currently running internal tests or changes to their review moderation system, although at the moment we have not found any clear pattern explaining these cases. Whenever this situation occurs, we verify that both the reader and the author followed the rules correctly, and in the vast majority of cases everything appears perfectly legitimate. Before voting, please put yourself in the position of both an author and a reader, because on BookVillage you will eventually experience both situations: sometimes you will be the one posting reviews, and sometimes the one receiving them. So when you vote, try to choose the option that you believe would make the overall experience of the platform as smooth as possible.

I posted one (verified purchase) about 10 days ago and it’s still not showing. When I checked the book page, it looks like Amazon isn’t allowing my account to review that specific book, even though I can review others. Haven’t had this happen before—just wondering if this is normal right now or if something’s off. I'm not sure what to do.

Right now verified paid reviews are available for 0.99 and 2.99. I was wondering if there were plans to extend this to 1.99 (and even higher priced) books in the future?

I wanted to thank you for the number of sign-ups we have received for our Reader Assistant service. You should have already started receiving all the instructions needed to begin having your assignments managed directly by readers trained by us. We are also working on expanding the available slots to allow more users to take advantage of this service. I’m very happy to see that you have understood its value, even though it is something completely new in the self-publishing space. For those who may have missed it, here is the link again with all the details: https://bookvillage.pub/wiki/new-to-bookvillage--start-here/reader-assistant-service