See Kevin Tumlinson’s video about the changing tides of Amazon reviews, and how the rule changes have been influenced by—you guessed it—AI.
I recently opined about the topic of review begging. Although Kevin Tumlinson approaches the issue from a different angle, he also seems to believe that obsessive review farming is no longer a productive practice for authors and publishers…if it ever was.
I can’t say this enough. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a book review culture existing online, as something that readers do among themselves.
By all means let readers talk about the books they’ve read. And leave them alone while they’re doing it.
The problem arises when authors and publishers begin to see random internet reviews—written by random people—as a key pillar of their marketing strategy.
-ET