Verified Purchase vs unverified Amazon reviews: does the badge matter?

Some reviews on your book carry an orange 'Verified Purchase' label and some do not. Authors worry that the unlabelled ones do not count. They do. Here is what the badge means, what it changes, and the mistake authors make chasing it.

What the badge means

Verified Purchase means Amazon can see that the reviewer's account bought the item on Amazon, at a price that was not heavily discounted, or borrowed it through Kindle Unlimited. That is all. It says nothing about whether the reviewer read the book, and its absence says nothing about whether they did.

A reader who received an advance copy, bought the paperback in a shop, or borrowed it from a library can still review on Amazon, provided their account meets Amazon's spending requirement. Their review appears without the badge.

Do unverified reviews count?

Yes. They count toward the review total shown under your title, they appear on the page, and shoppers read them. Amazon has said its star rating is calculated by a model that considers, among other things, how recent a review is and whether it is a verified purchase, so a verified review may carry somewhat more weight in the average. It does not make unverified reviews worthless, and a book with twenty honest unverified reviews converts far better than a book with two verified ones.

Amazon is also quicker to remove unverified reviews when a pattern looks wrong: many in one day, similar wording, accounts that review nothing else. That is an argument for reviewers who are real readers with real accounts, not for chasing the badge.

The mistake: paying people to buy your book

Some services sell 'verified' reviews by having reviewers purchase the book, sometimes with the price refunded by the author. Reimbursing a purchase in exchange for a review is exactly what Amazon's guidelines prohibit, and the pattern is easy for Amazon to see: a spike of purchases at one price, each followed by a review, from accounts linked to the same service. It is the fastest way to lose every review at once.

The honest ways to get verified reviews are the obvious ones. Readers who buy the book and like it. Kindle Unlimited borrowers. A free or $0.99 promotion with a review request in the back matter. None of them can be bought.

What to do instead

1. Get ten to twenty honest reviews from advance readers before or during launch week. They will be unverified, and that is fine.
2. Launch. Sales and KU borrows now happen on a page that has reviews, which is what makes them happen at all.
3. Put a review request with the direct link in your back matter. Buyers who finish become your verified reviews, a few a month, for the life of the book.
4. Never ask anyone to buy the book in order to review it.

ReadRipple readers receive an advance copy, so their reviews are unverified by design. What we verify is that the review exists on your Amazon page, which is a different thing from Amazon's badge.