Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake
Call me silly for thinking like this, but I have a suspicion that as self publishing grows, as well as the number of indie authors, someone (or several someone's) is going to appear on the horizon that will become that "gatekeeper" by creating a certificate/title/sticker/whatever system that only gets awarded to good books.
Sorta like having the "Good Housekeeping" seal of approval, but for books. It may not happen right away, but give it time and I bet you'll find that someone does step up and fill that void. Will they be a pay service that indie authors submit their books to for review? Yeah, they probably would. But if they're anything like these couple of pay to review groups I've seen who take the book, and regardless of the fact that they were paid to review it, they give the best and most honest score the book deserves. I forget their name, but there's a couple like that out there.
Heck, I saw one of them one time give a book a one star rating even though he'd paid for their review. So if they'll do that, I know they produce good, honest ratings. So who knows, they may end up being the future gatekeepers you talk about.
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I think the question that has to be asked is, how will the volume be handled? I read the NY Times Book Review, but that obviously represents only a small fraction of the books out there. I don't think having even several
dozen reviewers that you look to will be enough to tell you if a particular book is any good. The book might be great, but it might just have never gotten on any particular reviewer's radar.
As for paid reviews: I don't see how they're reliable. Money is a pretty good incentive to give a good (or at least kind) review. The question always would need to be asked: How would the book be reviewed if it
wasn't being paid for? Think about this for a minute: If you're an author looking to have your book reviewed, and you just got done reading a review where the writer basically excoriated a book, would you be lining up to have that reviewer assess
your book? You might do it if you'd read the book yourself, and thought the reviewer was fair, but what if you hadn't? I think that if your business model relies on authors paying you to review their books, then bad reviews are bad for business. How many one star reviews will a reviewer be able to hand out before people stop sending him/her books?