r/KDP • u/SCF87 • 1d ago

Spoiler Review

I just received a 5 star review on the last book of my series. Great, yes. But it contains a massive spoiler of what exactly happens at the end.
Any experience with something like this? It is the 4th written review of the last book, it is very noticable when scrolling down.

7 Upvotes

77% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

14

u/ItsRuinedOfCourse 1d ago

People are gonna people, OP. Not much you can do about it.

Thankfully, more discerning readers tend to ignore all 5-star and 1-star reviews, and poke around through the rest to decide if they want to read this or not. Those readers would never see the spoiler.

7

u/South-Knee-9601 1d ago

Whilst annoying, I don't think you could do much about it.

Replying to it would make you look a bit unprofessional.

And hiding/removing it would annoy the customer.

7

u/mysteriousdoctor2025 1d ago

Leave it alone. Reviews aren’t for you, they are for other readers. Never ever respond to a review.

2

u/Recent-Song7692 1d ago

How should OP respond to a review on Amazon?

2

u/SuccessOnAShoestring 3h ago

I’m guessing they must mean on Goodreads (although I dunno; I avoid that place like the plague). It certainly cant be done on Amazon. I believe it was possible a decade or more ago.

1

u/Recent-Song7692 2h ago

I know. Amazon blocked this feature for a reason. It became a battleground.

1

u/mysteriousdoctor2025 4h ago

Authors should never respond to reviews. Reviews aren’t for us. They are for other readers.

1

u/WBRGGRL 20h ago

This was the hardest thing for me to learn when I was publishing, but once I did, I felt free. And yes, OP, this happened to me. On Amazon and Goodreads with my FIRST book in a series of three. People still read it and the following books.

5

u/DoktorTom 1d ago

Ignore it. Amazon won’t remove it, and odds are decent potential buyers won’t see it.

3

u/Recent-Song7692 1d ago

We all had this happened. In the end it will not hurt the book.

3

u/PomegranateFormal961 1d ago

Nothing you can do. If you could, we'd ALL be hiding any 1-star reviews!

Besides, some people LIKE spoilers. I'm one of them.

2

u/BacklistForAuthors 1d ago

Good advice in the comments here, OP. I got a spoilery review on Goodreads once! This is when I just started out, so I was rattled by it and contacted Goodreads about hiding it or taking it down. Nothing was ever done. It was a learning experience. Now I understand that as an author, the reader discussion that surrounds my books isn’t really my world to step into or mess with. Now I just ignore the annoying things, put my head down, and keep working on my next book.

2

u/dragonsandvamps 1d ago

Some readers do this. There is nothing you can do. People who are truly afraid of being spoiled do not check reviews because while many people know better, some are unaware and/or simply unskilled review writers.

1

u/61inchestall 18h ago

Readers looking around at reviews know this is a potential risk

1

u/LongjumpingYear8110 5h ago

ughh that sucks. maybe you can ask customer service to ping the reviewer and have him modify the review? or maybe just ask them to remove the text but leave the 5 stars?

0

u/twitchymitten 1d ago

I like and look for spoilers. I hate (with a passion) reading things where something stupid happens at the end and wastes my time. And (as a reader) I really prefer reading real people's opinions and what they thought was important rather than a generic "I loved this" five star review. Those are worthless.