Once again, the publishing landscape has changed. Amazon no longer lets you leave a review just because you’ve read a book – you now need to spend money with them: either buy the book off them directly (and to be honest, I’m not even sure this counts), or spend at least $50 a year with Amazon (definitely counts).
If you purchased the book from Amazon and leave a review, you get a ‘verified purchase’ notation on your review, making it appear that much more valuable to future readers.
While I can see that they needed to make some changes to reduce the number of bogus reviews, this new policy makes it that much harder for authors to gain traction, even if they’ve got a great book. An exceptional book. 
I wish I had some answers for new authors, but I don’t. Persistence is a great quality. So is being open to learning new techniques to get your book in front of people.
While none of this relates directly to editing, the point is to get your book published and in front of people.
Amazon have just made that harder to do.
