I would be one of the “peeps.” Great post/rant/infomercial, whatever you want to call it, I enjoyed it. Back to looking for new victims.

But this is not a problem exclusive to self-publishers by any means. (As Nathan Bransford pointed out in a great post on Aug 29th) One third of ALL online reviews (not just books) are paid for–mostly by corporations.

And R J Ellory, who admitted today that he faked his own reviews and panned his rivals with sockpuppet accounts is a long-time traditionally published author. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9515593/RJ-Ellory-detected-crime-writer-who-faked-his-own-glowing-reviews.html

I’m traditionally published myself, and I think the growing phenomenon of amateurs self-publishing unpolished work is a bad one, but putting the problem of review abuse on the shoulders of self-publishers is unfair–and also minimalizes a much bigger problem.

The idea of reviews for cash of any kind makes me wary. I get wanting to have a review, but spend a little effort to try and find readers who will write them honestly. And for free. And give them great ratings because they love them. Not because they were paid to do so.

If I were a writer I would much rather spend the day grinning over one genuine positive review that perhaps generated one honest sale then fifty bought and paid for reviews which mean absolutely nothing and that potentially lead to sales which I would never really know were genuine or based on the false praise.

There are other ways to market than to pay someone to say something nice.

I know there’s some review service – Kirkus maybe? – that you can pay to have one of their reviewers review. But they’ll likely be honest reviews. And they cost much more than $50. And probably do little for those Amazon sales numbers.

But no, I don’t think it’s right to buy your way to higher Amazon ratings. Though it doesn’t really matter for me, personally, as I’ve never read a single Amazon review when making a decision about a book to purchase as I’ve personally known of people having friends boost a book and have been asked to do so myself before I became a blogger.

But where is the pride and faith in the work/creation? Where is the integrity? Where is the willingness to throw some effort behind marketing efforts that would lead to honest reviews?

If you take the easy road out to get positive reviews, does that mean you took the easy road when writing your book and gave it less than 100%? Took words and ideas that weren’t your own?

Sorry for the comment ramble… yep, this still makes me so mad.

I review books mostly from indie/self pubs on my blog. That change happened when I realized how good many self pubs are.

Also in emails please be friendly and not rude, it goes a long way with getting someone to read your review. Providing some info so it shows that you put effort into looking into this bloggers website and not just spamming every blogger you find.

Even if you just want to talk about your book and having it featured. If your friendly and genuine I usually grant the requests. The authors I work with even the ones who’s novels are not my favorite gain advice and good criticism in my reviews.

I know a lot of the reviewers whose reviews I read from @goodreads – I interact with them, know what they like, and know that I can trust their review honesty, even if we don’t always agree about a book’s merits.

I have a stack of to-read books based on people’s reviews from @goodreads. I don’t think I’ve ever decided to read a book because of an AMZ review (or even one anywhere else).

And that’s because the anonymity of AMZ as well as the fact that I can’t determine whether it’s a good/bad review from a vested interest, as Pam points out, means I take it with grain of salt.

I review books only on goodreads in several genres for both children, adults, as well as non-fiction.