The Problem With Paid Reviews and Self Pubs

[sparkindarkness]

We’ve spoken before about reviewers charging for book reviews - as well as guaranteeing positive reviews - and the many reasons why we consider this to be both unacceptable and damaging to online reviewing.

And I don’t think we can discount just how very important reviewing has become, especially as ebooks become more and more dominant in the

Comments

[mrmeval]

The person will make a living. The fanatics that post 12,000 reviews on Amazon for no pay are well fanatics and I judge their criticism about the same as I do robots. I know a reviewer of products who will not give a bad review by refusing to give any review for bad products. He does not get paid by the company whose product he reviews.. He gets paid by his publisher to write reviews about new and interesting stuff. A lot of the product the company does not want to pay to return and he's allowed to keep it or in most cases pitch it. Other reviewers live a precarious existence dependent on ad revenue. The are in essence doing all of what a review magazine does with none of the guarantees of pay.

I agree with disdane for paid to astroturf shills and I out them where I can. I'd say Amazon is one of the worst places to get a review from due to this activity. The New York Times best seller list is actively gamed, it doesn't take much at all and a big publisher can send out a horde of shills to buy the right number of books in the right areas in the right time frame.

My best source of reviews? The publisher of a single man publishing house. If they're willing to spend money on a book it's likely worth of reading. One I trusted immensely died recently and I'm kind of adrift since they would pick science fiction, hard science fiction and fantasy I adored. I read less now as every other publishing house puts out garbage with the replacement publisher for the one who died being almost but not quite good enough for me.

I suspect it will be a while before another comes along.