TheTempornaut

Hey Tommy. Your website is great —very helpful in theory but can be misleading in practice. I'm the author of a self published book on Amazon and have 73 5* reviews that admittedly surpassed my greatest expectations in their positivity. But my book reviews completely fail your tests even though not 1 review is solicited, nor 1 reviewer known by me.

As a result my reviews are measured as fake (70% removed) even though they're all genuine. Is there anything I can do about this? Or what precautions can you take to not to "penalise" the true reviews.

Thank you very much for your reply Tommy, much appreciated. In my case, I have not given a single copy away for free in return for reviews. I have done nothing in return for reviews - absolutely nothing. Nor do I chase them. I live in Greece and the reviews, I can only assume, are largely US-based.

The only copies I have given away are to family & friends without any reviews from them. I am simply stating the facts that every review is genuine - I have also received sub-5 star reviews.

My book became known via my website and hence I had a reader platform without needing an external publisher. But again, I do not know any of the reviewers, yet 70% are deemed unnatural. Just a thought.

As an author, admittedly, it saddened me but I have tried to ignore it. The more successful your site becomes, however, the more impact it will have on potential sales. I personally understand the plethora of fake reviews on Amazon has distorted the market, but to be lumped together with people who intentionally go out to distort their sales is unfair.

I wish you all of the best nevertheless.

Edit: added some extra information

I have sent it to you as a private message. I think the main 'false signal' comes from limitations in the use of human language, meaning that humans tend to use the same language when praising a product, and their vocabulary is probably also influenced by reading other reviews, whether consciously or not.

Edit: for your information, the few unverified purchases I can only conclude are reviewers who have read the Kindle version of the book, which is available on my website only at this stage.