Would you trust a review that was paid for?

[ficbot]

I am trying really hard not to let my Indie Hall of Fame website get bogged down by too many rules, but it seems that lately I keep needing to clarify things with authors that I had not anticipated. First it was the sampling issue, and now it's paid for reviews.

An author submitted a listing to me where one of the blogs was one which was new to me, so as usual I went to check it out just to make sure it was a blog and not a vendor website or aggregator-type thing or whatever. And under submission guidelines, the blog owner has the usual about what genres she will review etc. and then a note about the different 'tiers' available. Tier 1 was I think $25 and would get you a basic book review. Tier 2 was slightly more and would get you an author interview as well. Unless I am misunderstanding, the blog owner is basically saying that she is charging the authors for the review!

I'm not sure whether or not I should disqualify reviews from blogs such as this one. I am not sure how wide-spread a practice this is---most indie bloggers I know, myself included, do ask authors to provide the book for us, but other than that we do not charge the authors! To be fair to this blogger, she did say that the reviews would be honest and she did seem reasonably comprehensive in the remarks she made about the books. But...charging authors for a review?

So, what do you think, should a paid-for review have equal weight to a non-paid-for one? As I said, I hate to blog down the site with hundreds of rules, but the site---useful a promo tool thought it might be for authors---is really geared toward the reader, toward directing them to books which have the 'seal of approval' from a larger community (the book must have three positive reviews to be considered for addition). Should a paid-for review count?

[susan_cassidy]

No, there shouldn't even be paid-for reviews. That's just a commercial.

[Yolina]

For me they're fairly equal in the sense that I don't pay attention to reviews anyway I wouldn't get a book because it has good reviews and not get one because it has bad reviews - I'll buy a book if I think it's going to interest me and that's what the synopsis is there for.

[CallOfCth'reader]

I would only 'trust it' if the review stated the book was poor.

[Worldwalker]

It's not just blogs. I've read about newspapers doing this sort of thing now, too. And it's old news in the computer game industry -- magazine articles on games aren't "paid for" specifically, but they're tied to advertising buys.

Reviews should be just that: reviews. They should not be contingent on whether someone has paid for them, or how much advertising they've bought, or anything else. If they are, they're advertisements, and calling them reviews is utterly dishonest.

So no, I wouldn't include reviews from any place that demands (or even accepts) payment for them, and I'd make it clear why I'm rejecting their reviews -- to the public at large, as they're in danger of being tricked into believing that's a real review, as well as the pay-to-play "reviewer".

[ClairePMR]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

It's not just blogs. I've read about newspapers doing this sort of thing now, too. And it's old news in the computer game industry -- magazine articles on games aren't "paid for" specifically, but they're tied to advertising buys.

Reviews should be just that: reviews. They should not be contingent on whether someone has paid for them, or how much advertising they've bought, or anything else. If they are, they're advertisements, and calling them reviews is utterly dishonest.

So no, I wouldn't include reviews from any place that demands (or even accepts) payment for them, and I'd make it clear why I'm rejecting their reviews -- to the public at large, as they're in danger of being tricked into believing that's a real review, as well as the pay-to-play "reviewer".

Yup - I posted something about this several days ago, when an author friend of mine told me that he was asked by a local paper to pay for a review that a reporter had proposed to do.

I've since spoken with the reporter, whom I met through a mutual friend, and he says this is a new policy at his paper. Within the last week, they have also asked their music reporter to ask bands for review payments. The reporter is furious, and is considering how to respond. He feels it calls his journalistic integrity into question and completely subverts the whole idea of reviews.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by cklls

He feels it calls his journalistic integrity into question and completely subverts the whole idea of reviews.

It absolutely does.

The freedom of a reviewer to base his review on what he sees, rather than on how much (or whether) the subject pays, is what the reader of the review wants in the first place. Readers have creator-designed, creator-paid descriptions of products. They're called advertisements. And they certainly have their place ... but they are not reviews.

If the reviewer is no longer delivering what the reader wants -- a review not influenced by outside forces -- the reader has no reason to buy it, whether he "buys" with coins in a newspaper box or eyeballs on a banner ad. This is why publications which charge for reviews try to hide that fact from their readership. Who would want to buy commercials in the guise of reviews?

I don't know what to tell your friend. This is a terrible economy to try to find a job in. But I don't think I'd be comfortable working for those folks.

[BrentKnowles]

If I knew the review had been paid for I would disregard it. And the author and the reviewer... probably forever.

[ClairePMR]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

I don't know what to tell your friend. This is a terrible economy to try to find a job in. But I don't think I'd be comfortable working for those folks.

Funny you mention that... Just this morning, he hired me to help him put together an executive search strategy.

[Penforhire]

Anything more than a free copy and possibly interview access to the author is suspicious for me. Even that is over-the-top for some items (e.g. cars) but feels about right for books. The tiers the OP describes sound too close to vanity press.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

The tiers the OP describes sound too close to vanity press.

So… "vanity praise"?

Also, I'd entirely disregard a paid review, unless it were something due to something like a donation payment to someone like Roger Ebert to get him to watch and comment upon someone's horrible home movie with as much snark as he wished, as part of some sort of charity fundraising contest.

[Giggleton]

lol, here's ten bucks, tell me I'm good.

But seriously, payola by any other name.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

So… "vanity praise"?

I am so stealing that!

Also, I'd entirely disregard a paid review...

Everyone would, which is why the people selling them don't want the readers to know that's what those "reviews" actually are. I have to wonder, if there are this many that we know about, how many purported reviews are really just paid advertising?

[Darqref]

I have two separate points here:

1. The whole issue of reviewer's integrity vs payola. I too believe that it calls into question the reviewer's integrity to know that the review was paid for. But I don't think this is absolute. If *I* were to review books, then the question might become how much time do I have for this activity, which includes both critical reading plus remembering details plus writing a coherent account of what I liked or disliked. If then my reviews became more popular than my allowed time, I might be willing to consider a fee to move a book up in the list, so that it got read sooner, and I could equally consider a fee to spend the time necessary to conduct an interview with the author. And last, I could consider a fee to read a book that didn't really interest me.
My reading interests are limited, so I'm unlikely to be popular enough as a reviewer to make such fees feasible, let alone necessary.

2. Would a paid review be useful to me? That's more open. If I *know* that the reviews are paid, AND I have some other reason to trust the consistency of the review, then yes, the review is useful. Why? Because all I need from a review is to be able to gauge my response to the reviewer's response, so that I can tell if *I* want to read the book. If if the reviewer's writing is consistent, and specific enough for me to form an opinion, then should I care how the selection of what to review was made? OK, yes, this might mean that authors who can't or won't pay for the review won't get mentioned, but that doesn't leave me any worse off - there are already lots of books in my genre from Smashwords or Amazon that don't have a review I've seen.


For the original poster's question about whether to allow paid reviews to be counted in his hall of fame, I dunno. I think yes, but only if sufficient work is done to investigate the reviewer, and judge the consistency. If you can't take time to read through a buncha reviews and evaluate if they are consistent, then no, disallow them. But you do need to realize that it doesn't take payola to make a review inconsistent and/or biased.

[tompe]

Reviewers usually get sent a lot of books for free. And they do not review all of them. So in a sense they get paid by the publisher by not having to buy any books.