Re the rumour that Amazon will not publish book reviews unless the said book has been bought from them, I put this straight to them, and got this reply:

"No it is not true that we have instituted a policy of not accepting reviews for books which the reviewer has got elsewhere. You do not have to have purchased the book from Amazon to write a review on it. Once your review is specific to the book and does not breach any of our guidelines it will appear on our website."

That sounds clear enough. Did that piece of mythology come, maybe, from Amazon.com, which is the US end of the operation? Seems that Amazon.co.uk is still open to stuff from anywhere and everywhere, so long as you have an Amazon account and so long as you do not do blatant advertising.