The days of getting 100 amazon reviews in a short period of time (unless you're selling hundreds of books a day) are gone. I just watched this video (it was posted back in January). I know this is from months ago but what an eye-opening video. Even just the idea of clustering should make anyone who uses any service where a relatively small group of people review from a relatively small group of authors never use these services again. Even if a service has 1000 books and 2000 reviewers the algorithm will be able to notice how unnatural that review would be. It doesn't matter whether I buy the occasional physical product (to try and trick the system). It wouldn't take away the fact that there is a connection and cluster of groups of people giving and receiving reviews. As I see it there are only a few ways to get reviews-: 1. a genuine arc service. 2. Facebook ads where you give away your book for free (and ask for honest opinion from pools of millions of random possible people who may or may not leave a feedback-, let alone a review). 3. Organic reviews. I can't think of any other way. Even the services claiming to be Amazon compliant are not really. If I have to pay to get the book (in order to get a review), it's a no go. I'd love to hear of other ways though (if they exist).

Hello, We have suspended your KDP account because we detected attempts to manipulate the customer reviews of your books. Posting reviews regarding your own books or offering any sort of compensation to customers for posting customers reviews is against Amazon's Community Guidelines. For more details about our Community Guidelines, visit Help: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GLHXEX85MENUE4XF Before we can reinstate your account, please reply to this message with the following information: -- A detailed description of all methods you used to post or obtain customer reviews that are prohibited by Amazon policies, or otherwise manipulate reviews. Include the dates when you used these methods and details on any third parties you used. -- Contact information (name, email address, website, etc.) for any third parties you engaged with to obtain prohibited reviews or manipulate reviews. -- Identifying information for any customer accounts you or a third party used to post prohibited reviews. -- Documentation (e.g., emails, receipts) from any such third party confirming you used their service. -- List of any prohibited reviews remaining on the Amazon site. -- Description of steps you have taken to prevent product review manipulation within your books and how this will prevent future violations. -- After reinstatement, review your catalog and unpublish any titles or reviews that do not comply with Amazon's Community Guidelines. Once we receive your plan, we will review it and decide whether you may publish on Amazon again. If you do not send an acceptable plan within two weeks, we may permanently terminate your account. As a reminder, finding additional violations of Amazon's Community Guidelines may negatively impact your account status, and could result in the suspension or termination of your KDP account. If you have questions or believe you've received this email in error, please reply to this message.

This is how it looks. Odd pages are really hard to read…

I am positively surprised at how fast Amazon US approved the last two updates of my books. It took ten minutes or so. Did this change happen in other markets?