Thank you for your article about republishing book reviews from Amazon.com. As a professional writer who often posts reviews there, I would be very annoyed if another author lifted my work without asking me first! Obviously, I hold the copyright to my review. I have never given Amazon the right to hand my work to anyone else.

Although I don’t get paid for those reviews, I enjoy writing them as a favor to other authors. It would be a real slap in the face if one of those authors stole my writing and published it without my permission!

Keep up the good work, Angela. Your newsletter has been quite helpful to me over the years.

PUBLISHER RESPONDS:

You should know that some employees at Amazon are indeed giving authors the right to republish book reviews in their entirety.

Here’s an email from an Amazon employee that was forwarded to us last week –

On Jul 16, 2012, at 6:57 AM:

Hello (author),

You can certainly use your book’s Amazon reviews on your website. While the Terms and Conditions allows for adding those reviews on your website, it does not allow you to use Amazon trademarks on your website. For more information, please review our Terms and Conditions…