Dear Readers,
Has this happened to you? You submit a customer review to Amazon, and it gets tossed. "Hello," reads the email with the bad news. "We couldn't post your review because it doesn't meet our community guidelines. Please edit and resubmit your review. Before you do, make sure it meets all of our guidelines."
This happened to me a while back when I attempted to post a notice on the Paul Griffiths novel Mr. Beethoven. A few days ago, my comments on Mary Lou Falcone's book I Didn't See It Coming: Scenes of Love, Loss, and Lewy Body Dementia. Okay, so I post my samizdat here instead. For the Griffiths review, click here; for the Falcone review, click here.
For what it's worth, here's a list of what Amazon prohibits.
- Seller, order, or shipping feedback
- Comments about pricing or availability
- Content written in unsupported languages
- Repetitive text, spam, or pictures created with symbols
- Private information
- Profanity or harassment
- Hate speech
- Sexual content
- External links
- Ads, conflicts of interest, promotional content
- Compensated reviews
- Plagiarism, infringement, or impersonation
- Illegal activities
I'll refrain from parading my track record, but what am I missing? And what recourse is there? A protest to PEN? A #gagged-on-amazon campaign on The Platform Formerly Known As Twitter? Hey, gang, let's go viral!