❓Are We at a Turning Point with Reviews? · Royalty Guild. Amazon KDP Kit

❓Are We at a Turning Point with Reviews?

Last month, I saw increasing evidence that the November and December review sweep could be more than just a campaign.

In very simple words, probably every book has gathered reviews in a non-organic manner in the crosshairs of Amazon's bots.

Obviously, Amazon is prioritizing marketplace integrity and authentic reader feedback. This has led to increased scrutiny of practices like certain ARC teams, bulk review solicitation, and "book pulsing," as these may deviate from "organic" review rates.

If you were a member of Amazon's marketplace integrity team and you saw a book, published two weeks ago, with 50 reviews. It's not J. K. Rowling's book, nor even Alex Hormozi's. Can you believe they're genuine, unsolicited reviews? How PROBABLE is it that it's just a regular, but lucky book?

So, it seems every book with an atypical number or velocity of reviews could now be a target. We know that on Amazon, 1-2% of sales result in reviews. This means that for every 100 books sold, you could get 1-2 reviews. If a book has 20 sales and 17 reviews, is it really probable?

I remember times when we could stuff keywords in white text on a white background, and it worked. After some time, Google penalized it. Okay, let's add the right proportion of keywords to the text, but don't worry about text flow for human readers. After some time, Google penalized it. Amazon: add major keywords to the title, subtitle, and seven keyword fields whenever possible. It worked until it didn't.

"If your book has fewer than 50 reviews, do not even try to promote it." Maybe it still works, but maybe tomorrow you will read the "Account Suspended for Review Manipulation" email.

What are your thoughts on this?

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