Amazon KDP Review Guidelines CHANGED - What You MUST Know

About this video

Sean explains an update to Amazon KDP community guidelines on reviews. He first outlines the three popular review sources — your own email list (which he calls best), a social media audience, and review sites such as Pubby and Get Books Reviewed, where authors earn points reviewing others’ books and spend them to request reviews, with direct swaps prevented. He then shows two lines KDP added, covering a customer who is a member of a review club where sellers or brands give ratings or refer the customer to other sellers based on their review, and a club where members are asked to register their Amazon public profile so sellers can monitor their reviews. Sean notes he does not work for KDP and this is his interpretation, shared with others: the problem is not review sites themselves, but features letting an author see who reviewed them, report a reviewer, or block them, because fear of being blocked or kicked out biases reviews positive. The compliant fix, he argues, is a site that prevents authors seeing, reporting or controlling reviewers. He presents Book Bounty as the service he currently uses that follows this: the process is similar, but reviewer identity is blurred to just ‘Bounty Hunter’ and a number. He cites its price as $25 a month monthly or $15 a month if paid yearly, with a 15-day free trial, and says the long-term plan should still be building your own email list and social audience.

Key takeaways

• KDP added two review-club clauses: clubs that rate/refer members based on reviews, and clubs that ask members to register their Amazon public profile so sellers can monitor reviews.
• Sean’s interpretation — not an official KDP statement — is that visibility and control create bias: if reviewers can be seen, reported or blocked for a negative review, their reviews are not unbiased.
• Review sites themselves are not banned in his reading; a compliant site must prevent the author from seeing who reviewed, reporting that review, or choosing who can review.
• He names Book Bounty as his current compliant example, with blurred reviewer identity, priced at $25/month monthly or $15/month yearly with a 15-day free trial.
• Beginners rely on review sites because they lack an audience, but Sean says the long-term solution is to build your own email list and social media audience for reviews.

Episode details: published January 24, 2025 · 5:33 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Sean Dollwet’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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