The internet is more negative every year; that's going to translate to reviews too. Amzn should switch to the thumbs up / thumbs down system like Netflix and other sites have done. There is a stigma that a 2.7 rated book is bad, but... think about it. That means 55% of  the readers liked it. If readers only look for 4 and 5 star books, that means it has to be like by 80% to 99% of the people. That's a hard ask these days, especially with promo junkies 1-starring every 99 c or free gift they get.  I don't worry about reviews. One of my books has been hammered to death (seems 45% hate it) but... it still sells well. So, I guess readers care less and less about this stuff.  Maybe some take the negative nature of the Net into account?

First off, haven't noticed this but honestly haven't been paying attention. When I go on Amazon it's to check something on my own books or to download books to read. I'm not looking at other authors' books or AMS ads, etc. I'm not sure how the ratings falling is Amazon's fault. If your book is popular that means more people are reading them which means you can end up having lower ratings. This has always been the case. Some of my books have hundreds of reviews and the more reviews they got, the worse the rating got. And bad reviews have always seemed to hold more weight than good ones, anyway. I have numerous books in the 3 ratings due good reviews not being the same weight as bad ones but what can you do? Hasn't hurt me any bit. Authors read way too much into reviews and ratings than readers ever will. Most readers are going to read what they want to read regardless. One of my must-buy authors is a bestseller and her average ratings aren't that great for every book but she sells.

If you are concerned because of promo sites, yes, some will mention ratings but a lot don't. Many don't care about the overall rating. I use promo sites all the time and if a book I wanna promote doesn't fit the guidelines, I just skip it and go to another site. Thing is, whatever is going on with Amazon, whether is natural or not is nothing we can control. Me, I don't think anything has changed. Amazon has always put more weight to verified purchases which screw KU authors but if you are in KU, that can be a reason for lower ratings. Most our reviews don't count. Same as with ARC reviews.

My advice, is to not let this bother you. It's really not worth worrying about. Authors get more up in arms about this stuff than readers do. Just write the best books you can and that's all you can do. If you can't promote on a certain site due to your ratings falling, then use another site or other way to promote. Worrying about it will only make things harder for you. We can't control what goes on on Amazon, Goodreads, etc. And we never will.

Also, honest reviews make your books look more authentic, anyway. It's better to have a variety of reviews (even lower ones) than just glowing five stars because most people don't put stock in books with only good reviews. It's not fair but it's true. A lot of readers have said this. They find it suspicious if an author only has good reviews or a great rating on every book because no matter how good you write, that isn't gonna be a realistic outcome.

Looking forward to giving this a try! I currently use Jutoh.

I don't do any of that stuff for the eBook.
I use styles in Word. That's it.

If your workflow works for you, no need to complicate it! I like putting a personal flair on ebooks, so I liked the flexibility dedicated tools like Atticus and Vellum provided.

Nifty.  You beat me to it.  Actually, maybe I'll still do mine at some point.  I have a series of Perl scripts I use that shouldn't be too difficult to make into an actual application when I actually sit down and commit to getting it done.  I sort of started but then put it on the backburner.

Do you mind sharing what IDE you used?  I'm probably going to do mine in Xojo.

Command-line tools still have their place. I actually started years ago with that, with the thought that I might make it some online service. But for sure, the average person wants some kind of GUI. In any case, building your own tool lets you customize it to your specific needs and workflow.

The software is written in Java with JavaFX as the UI toolkit, using the IntelliJ Idea Community IDE. The UI is created using a mix of code and XML created in the WYSIWYG editor "SceneBuilder."

Oh, trust me, I've been all over on researching options for making cross-platform applications. To put it mildly, everything is a matter of compromises. Nothing will be as good as a platform-specific codebase, and all cross-platform tools have their quirks and limitations.

I'm exclusive to Amazon.

I don't do any of that stuff for the eBook. I have inserted small images into a few books with chapter changes, but it wasn't a chore.

The paperbacks I do using a standard D2D template. I tried a lot of them, and rejected them all. The plain works just fine for me.

I don't see the point in doing fancy things, either in the eBook or the paperback. In fact, I dislike things like giant first letter on the first paragraph. It bounces me as a disconnect.

I use styles in Word. That's it.