New Amazon Review Guidelines

I do my best to keep updated with review policies, and when I do, I like to share them with the authors, so they are aware of what is new.

Rules Quoted from Community Guidelines on Amazon.com

Amazon.com: "Eligibility To contribute to Customer Reviews or Customer Answers, Spark, or to follow other contributors, you must have spent at least $50 on Amazon.com using a valid credit or debit card. Prime subscriptions and promotional discounts don't qualify towards the $50 minimum. In addition, to contribute to Spark you must also have a paid Prime subscription (free trials do no qualify). You do not need to meet this requirement to read content posted by other contributors or post Customer Questions, create or modify Profile pages, Lists, or Registries."

Amy's Bookshelf Reviews: I have already met this eligibility factor a long time ago.

Amazon.com "Additional Guidelines for Customer Reviews The following guidelines apply to Customer Reviews in addition to the other guidelines set forth above:

• If your review is removed or rejected because it does not comply with our guidelines concerning promotional content, you may not resubmit a review on the same product, even if the resubmitted review includes different content.

• Reviews may only include URLs or links to other products sold on Amazon.

• Customers in the same household may not post multiple reviews of the same product.

• Customers can submit 5 non-Amazon Verified Purchase reviews each week. Non-Amazon Verified Purchase review counts are calculated each week from Sunday at 12:00am GMT through Saturday 11:59pm GMT. This policy does not apply to Vine reviews or reviews on digital and physical books, music, and video.

• When we find unusually high numbers of reviews for a product posted in a short period of time, we may restrict the number of non-Amazon Verified Purchase reviews on that product.

• You may not manipulate the Amazon Verified Purchase badge, such as by offering special pricing to reviewers or reimbursing reviewers."

Amy's Bookshelf Reviews: I keep track of the amount of "non-verified" reviews that I post.

Some authors are concerned about the gifting of books or sending amazon gift cards. This is acceptable to amazon.com as long as the "gift" is sent PRIOR to the review being posted. All of my reviews are posted after the receipt of the gifts. I also use donations to purchase books, and there is no obligation to make a donation. As I cannot be gifted a book prior to release, I accept gift cards to purchase that book on pre-order or on the day of release, but will not post my review until after the purchase.

Also, just because we are connected on social media does not mean that we have what amazon used to call a relationship.

Amazon doesn't allow review swapping, which some authors may still do to get reviews. They feel that with review swapping, that authors feel obligated (or coerced) to give the other author the same type of review. I do not do review swaps. If some

one reads my work and posts a review, it has nothing to do with me reading their work and reviewing. I often offer free books as gifts and promotions.

If anyone has any questions about amazon's review policy, they can check out Amazon's community guidelines. I do my best to keep up with amazon's (and any other site's rules and regulations). If there is soemthing I don't understand, I ask. So, if you have any questions about this, you can always ask me.