Amazon appears to have drastically slashed the number of one-star reviews of Megyn Kelly’s new book, after reports of many low ratings linked to a Reddit forum from supporters of President-elect Donald Trump.
A whopping 76 percent of reviewers had rated Settle For More worthy of just one-star on the site, Slate reported on Monday.
By early Wednesday, only 21 percent of 288 Amazon reviewers had rated the book with one star, and 61 percent had given it five stars. By the end of the day, a total of 496 reviewers had rated the memoir, with 38 percent giving five stars and 49 percent giving 1 star.
An influx of negative reviews emerged hours after HarperCollins released the book on Nov. 15. The publisher’s executives brought the issue to the attention of Amazon, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Even with Amazon’s apparent intervention, some of the negative reviews are still vicious. Others accuse Kelly of trying to smear the president-elect. Some people seemed to notice their reviews had been deleted and reposted their negative statements.
Kelly has described in detail how Trump treated her during in the lead-up to the Nov. 8 election during her promotion of her book in recent weeks.
The memoir opens with a prologue about the first Republican presidential primary debate of the campaign in 2015, where she became a fixation of Trump and his supporters for asking the then candidate about his treatment of women.
The journalist details how Trump threatened her before the debate, when he called to complain about a segment she had done on her show a week earlier. She also writes that Trump tried to sway her with gifts for positive coverage and outlines how Fox News executives defended her against senior members of his campaign.
Amazon said its customer reviews “must be product reviews and are designed to help customers make purchase decisions.”
“There are many other forums available across the internet to discuss topics of interest which are not product reviews,” the retailer said in a statement to HuffPost.