Amazon’s Early Reviewer program: you might get paid a small amount to write an Amazon review
Thanks to long time reader and commenter Lady Galaxy for calling my attention to the
Amazon’s Early Reviewer program (at AmazonSmile: benefit a non-profit of your choice by shopping*)
Customer reviews are clearly important to Amazon. Honestly, it’s one of the first things I check. I’m influenced by a high average, but there also has to be quite a few of them. A 5.0 average with 10 reviews isn’t as impressively to me as a 4.8 average with 200 reviews.
Authors know this, and often ask for reviews.
That’s fine with me…but it should be without compensation.
I have turned down people offering to send me a free copy of the book in exchange for an “honest review”. I feel obligated to reveal if someone has sent me a product and I’m writing about it…my understanding is that is actually how the IRS feels about it as well.
That said, it’s fine with me that people get paid for writing reviews…some book and movie reviewers in traditional media have had some of my favorite writing, and they deserve to be paid for it!
That’s different, though, from an author or publisher paying somebody to review their own book. That seems…I’m going to go with distasteful to me. If it’s revealed, I guess it’s ethical, but I don’t like the idea of it.
Amazon clearly thought a lot about this in designing the Early Reviewer Program.
You can’t choose to be part of it. Eligible people are chosen at random. What would make you ineligible? Having a history of having written reviews which don’t follow Amazon’s community guidelines.
You can’t even buy particular items hoping to be picked: it’s not revealed on an item’s product page that the seller had chosen to be part of the program.
Sellers, by the way, are prohibited from contacting reviewers…so they can’t influence them, either.
What happens if you do get picked and you do write a review?
You get compensated…they say it would be something small, like a $1-$3 Amazon gift card. Since it says it’s a random draw, it shouldn’t matter whether you’ve written an Early Reviewer review in the past.
Reviews will be badged as such, but I tried to search Amazon based on Early Reviewer reviews, and didn’t find anything.
Will this significantly increase the number of reviews? Well, they’d have to this a lot…that’s not that there are thousands of reviews on every product, but there are quite a few.
I have one major reservation which they don’t address on that page: I just don’t want this to apply to Amazon branded products. I don’t want them paying for reviews for Kindles, for example, or for Amazon-published books.
Outside of that, I’m fine with this.
What do you think? Does this seem reasonable to you? Would it influence your decision if a product had positive Early Reviewers review? What if it had negative ones? Have you been invited to write one of these reviews? If so, I’d be interested in what the product was, but don’t reveal anything you don’t want to reveal! I’d be particularly curious if it was a book, and if so, if it was a tradpub (traditionally published) book or an indie (independently published book)…
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* I am linking to the same thing at the regular Amazon site, and at AmazonSmile. When you shop at AmazonSmile, half a percent of your purchase price on eligible items goes to a non-profit you choose. It will feel just like shopping at Amazon: you’ll be using your same account. The one thing for you that is different is that you pick a non-profit the first time you go (which you can change whenever you want)…and the good feeling you’ll get. 
Shop ’til you help!
This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.
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