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Amazon is Merging Book Reviews From Its International Sites Into Amazon.com

For the longest time Amazon has kept the book reviews on its various websites in separate silos, but now the retailer is copying review from one site to another.

Anthony Wessel, owner and oeprator of the ebook deals site Digital Book Today, confirmed something I had been hearing from authors for a few days now. Book reviews posted on Amazon’s UK and Canadian websites are now showing up on Amazon.com. (There’s no word yet on whether reviews from Amazon Australia were also impacted).

The Canadian and UK reviews are now listed on Amazon.com under the section "Top International Reviews", and the ratings left by reviewers are factored into each book’s overall star rating.

Judging by reports from KBoards, it would appear Amazon is still working out the bugs. Not all books are showing international reviews, and I am told the old review counts are still being shown on series lists and the also-bought section.

While I am seeing only reviews from the UK and Canada, what I found especially interesting was that there’s an option to "Translate all reviews to English". Clearly Amazon is planning to integrate all book reviews from all of its sites.  Given the limitations of translation software, this plan is doomed, but it’s going to be fun to read the gibberish generated by Amazon’s auto-translators.

Have you spotted any new reviews yet?

 

 

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Comments


Name December 19, 2019 um 5:54 am

Amazon had reviews from amazon.com show up on amazon.de for a long time already, and if I’m mot wrong, also on amazon.co.uk. There were not merged with the regional ones though, but marked as originating from amazon.com.

Nate Hoffelder December 19, 2019 um 7:05 am

Thanks for the clarification about Amazon.de. I did not know that, but I can tell you that people are saying over at KBoards that the UK integration is new.


Jim Heskett December 19, 2019 um 9:02 am

I really hope they’re not planning on integrating Goodreads reviews


Lindsay Buroker December 19, 2019 um 11:31 am

From what I saw, the .com reviews would show up on the international stores until local reviews went up, and then they would disappear, so this is definitely something different.


Xavier Basora December 21, 2019 um 7:09 am

Nate

Good news. A lot of American authours asked me if the Amazon Canada reviews showed up. They were disappointed at first when I said no.

Translating non English reviews is really counterproductive. There are many books I can’t buy due to geographical restrictions. So what’s the point?

xavier


Weekly News: 30th December 2019 – Author Help December 30, 2019 um 4:00 am

[…] is copying reviews from its UK & Canada sites to display on the US […]


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