How to get malicious book reviews removed from Amazon

One of the keys to the success of your book is reviews, especially those written by "real people" on Amazon.com. Positive reviews on Amazon encourages browsers to buy your book at both Amazon and in brick-and-mortar bookstores. But what happens when your book receives a bad review, one that you believe is inappropriate?

Authors should keep a close eye on the reviews appearing on Amazon. In most cases the company promptly removes reviews that don't conform with its guidelines:

Review content must not be "illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing of intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious to third parties or objectionable and does not consist of or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings, or any form of 'spam.'"

Reviewers are prohibited from using false e-mail addresses, impersonating other persons or entities. Also prohibited are profanity, obscenities, spiteful remarks, phone numbers, mail addresses, URLs, product pricing information or availability, alternative ordering or shipping information, or solicitations for helpful votes.

Amazon has also deleted negative reviews posted by competing authors, reviews that contain inaccurate information about the author or publisher, and off-topic reviews that don't discuss the book.

How can you protest an inappopriate review on Amazon? Send an e-mail to community-help@amazon.com and succinctly state the facts. You should receive a reply within a few days. If you receive a boilerplate response that the review conforms to Amazon's guidelines and will not be deleted, feel free to write back until you reach someone willing to carefully assess the situation.

Product reviews are one of the most useful and popular of Amazon's features. But since Amazon doesn't verify the identity of reviewers, the system can be abused. In one well-publicized case, a prankster posed as Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and posted review trashing Windows. Around the same time, Amazon promised it would prevent such abuses in the future by allowing only persons who had actually purchased a book with their Amazon account to post a review. But the crackdown never came, apparently Amazon sees too many benefits from its open reviewing system.