Amazon’s new policy on book reviews did not impact me thanks to the quality of my friends and family.

You may have heard that Amazon has a new policy when it comes to online book reviews. From a piece in The New York Times:

Giving raves to family members is no longer acceptable. Neither is writers’ reviewing other writers. But showering five stars on a book you admittedly have not read is fine.

After several well-publicized cases involving writers buying or manipulating their reviews, Amazon is cracking down. Writers say thousands of reviews have been deleted from the shopping site in recent months.

Upon reading this,I immediately clicked over to Amazon to see the damage that this new policy had inflicted upon the reviews of my books.

Then I remembered: 

My friends and family don’t review my books on Amazon. Or anywhere else.

MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND currently has 131 reviews (a 4.3 average), and with the exception of my mother-in-law, I don’t think a single review came from a personal friend or family member.

SOMETHING MISSING currently has 81 reviews (a 4.1 average), and I don’t think  any of my friends or family members, including my mother-in-law, reviewed this book.

UNEXPEXTEDLY, MILO currently has a slightly anemic 25 reviews (a 4.2 average), but since there were so few reviews, I took the time to scroll through them all and did not recognize any of the names as being friends or family. 

While it may seem like I’m complaining about the loyalty and support of friends and family (and I sort of am), I also take a lot of pride in the fact that none of the reviews of my books on Amazon, Goodreads or anywhere else have been given by friends or family members, nor have I ever solicited a review from anyone.

It’s great to know that I’m doing just fine on my own, since I am apparently doing this on my own.