Lately there has been a theme within several online reading communities where Amazon has yanked the review privileges of dedicated readers who spend a ton of money and time reading and revieiwng various books.

This has been particularly evident in the indie author community where not only are the readers very dedicated to the subject matter, but the authors rely on those reviews to get their names out their as talented artists. In an e-commerce society, the only way that we readers can continue getting the books we crave is if the authors we love are able to gain enough popularity (and therefore revenue) to continue publishing.

Amazon has instituted a recent policy that seems to be targeting these indie authors and their readers. There have always been guidelines about how many reviews you may post per week (which is annoying to an avid reader, but understandable) but now many readers are unable to leave reviews at all on Amazon.

Some readers are not able to leave reviews for books they "didn't purchase on Amazon because they have a link to the author."

In the indie author community, there are reader groups where authors do giveaways. Amazon, we know this makes sense to you because it's a fantastic business avenue. A game thread is started on Facebook... A free book is given away to one of those players.. and that person should absolutely be able to review the works they were gifted.

This policy has gotten so far out of hand that I'm unable to even review books that were gifted to me *through Amazon's gift service* now! This same thing has happened to countless readers and it is ridiculous.

We spend plenty of money on Amazon, allow us to review what we want, when we want, within the weekly guidelines.