Many of you remember the fairly recent scandal around paid reviews, right?
If not here’s an article the New York Times did. 
In short, the whole publishing world was up in arms, no one knew what was true and what wasn’t, books were supposedly becoming best sellers thanks to massive amounts of overwhelmingly positive reviews; it was just another wrench in traditional publishing’s losing battle against technology. Then you had the authors, many stuck between a rock and a hard place, not knowing how to compete for attention in the new world of self-publishing, but perhaps not ready to go as far as paying for praise – especially not after the media backlash.
But no matter what role you play in the big scheme of things it’s likely we all agree that paying for positive reviews is not ideal, organic referrals and genuinely positive assessments and feedback are still the best validation you can get.
So how do we classify someone who charges others to read her reviews?
Confused? I was too when I first found her on Amazon.
As far as I can tell this woman has no prior history or qualifications to charge so much for her opinion, if anything at all, and for the life of me I can’t imagine she’s making money providing a “service” or “product” (depending on how you look at it) that Amazon offers for free…are her reviews that much better than the tens, or sometimes hundreds, of reader reviews books have listed for free?
If you’re like me you’re trying to figure out what you’re looking at. Let me help. What you’re seeing is this woman’s reviews of a number of books, that she’s decided to publish on Amazon, and charge $9.95 for.
Again, I can’t imagine how she makes money doing this.
As an author, how would you feel about someone else making money off of a review they wrote of your book? Better yet, how would you feel not knowing what the review said unless you were willing to fork over the cash??
This is one of the more bizarre things I’ve seen as technology started to play a bigger role in how books are published, found, received and reviewed.
If you’re an author, I’d love your feedback on this!
as a book blogger, I can honestly say I get at least 3 offers a month from authors willing to pay for a positive review…even after all the hubbub the offers still come in which is insane and gross and yuck…for the record, I’ve never taken money and I never will, like I said, yuck! (i don’t even sell ad space on my blog bc even that feels like a tacit recommendation and again, yuck) As crazy as all of that is, the idea of charging someone to read my reviews or any review is straight up ridiculous and I think you may’ve just blown my mind with that one.
Yet another aspect of the business that baffles me.
I can see where the temptation is there. Getting reviews can be difficult, since there are so many books out there.
I’ve given out free ebooks for honest reviews, but I’d never pay for one, or pay for a good one. A dishonestly good review damages everyone’s credibility. If somebody buys my books because of a five start glowing review, and finds it to be amateurish and poorly edited, how will they ever trust a review again?
This hurts all of us.
Better to do the slow struggle for reviews.
Hey Scandal, good for you. There are so many places that will take an author’s money. Good for you.
Patrick you know what —- that’s fantastic. Have you ever thought about asking your readers for reviews? I get emails from readers telling me they liked my book (or hated it – gasp!) and I always ask them to review it on Amazon. Thanks for the response!