Quote:
Originally Posted by neilmarr
An aside:
I just got a wee kick in the teeth at Smashwords, Groovy, when I went in to post a 600-word rave of a Smashwords book I'd been sent by its author to review. I was not allowed to post my piece because I had not 'bought' my copy from Smashwords.
Now THAT is nonsense.
|
Neil, in your specific case it might be nonsense, but in the overall scheme of things, I think it is a terrific requirement. It helps avoid those who axes to grind distorting the review process unless they want to ante up for the book. I think one of the things that really hurt Amazon's review system was all the 1 star reviews that were protests against the higher-than-$9.99 pricing even though many of the protestors hadn't bought the book.
I happen to be one of those people who thinks that before a review is posted there should be some method of verifying that the reviewer both bought the book and read it (or at least attempted to read it). I wrote about this on my blog:
Finding the Needle in a Haystack of Needles (I): Reader Reviews. I've been so disgusted with the current review system that I rarely ever post a review of a book.