There are some lines that if I find an author, actor, director, musician, store owner (Chic-fil-A, for example) etc., has crossed, then I certainly will fire back a volley by not supporting them financially.
I believe it was proven that some of those authors had not bought reviews. I can't remember the details but there was a lot of comments and some of those authors were pretty irate about being included on that list. The Andrews, Ilona and Gordon, were adamant they had never bought reviews and I believe them.
That's what I understood, too. Plus one reason I believed the Andrews was how the review site responded to their protests with the weirdest worded "we used them as an example" types of back pedaling comments liked one upon the other and never making sense.
The paid reviews are illegal on U.S. sites if masking as customer reviews. It is a serious issue/problem, just take the lists of authors with a grain of salt. Look for author posts (or screen captures of) where they incriminate themselves. The list in this particular article is a repeat of one that's been making the rounds attached to various articles. It started with a review site listing up what at the time they claimed were authors who endorsed their services then later back pedaled saying just examples of some good reviews to go by crap.
I have no idea why the FTC has not been actively fining or shutting down paid review sites that post reviews on consumer sites without disclosing the fees received for the reviews. (I know why the reviewers don't disclose the fees because even amazon and goodreads will not leave up a review that discloses it was paid for; just not sure why FTC takes no action to enforce the disclosure of fees in consumer reviews.)
Fivver and other sites offer listopia and other feature voting also, which is equally annoying. It's weird when they advertise goodreads librarian status as if librarians have anything to do with reviews.
I absolutely do not believe Ilona Andrews would buy reviews. Forget the morality question and just consider practicality: why would they bother? They're NYT bestsellers with hardcore devoted fans. If, for some reason, they didn't think the thousands of unsolicited reviews were enough, all they'd need to do is give out free review copies.
And that name being on there makes me doubt the entire list.
Gee, and I never even accepted offers of free-to-review books from authors I helped as a librarian because I felt the whole librarian business needed to be completely separate from everything else. Paid reviews, yuck! (not offers from bba; rather from authors I politely said something about how their book looked interesting or shelved to help get them put in a genre who then offered. I also rather worried they might have thought I was fishing for a freebie by saying it looked interesting or that it would mean something that a librarian reviewed.)
"I absolutely do not believe Ilona Andrews would buy reviews." — I agree. Plus, if I remember the original posting of this author list it was a paid review site started well after they became NYT best selling authors that had grabbed Andrews and others currently rising in popularity in a few genres of interest to the indie authors the review site was marketing their services to. Like all lists, just poke around for any posts, screenshots, etc. that are about the only "facts" you can really get online.
It is a very real problem, though. And there are so many authors and sites posting about all kinds of ways to game the systems, paid reviews, sockpuppeted, up/down voting, listopia vandalization and spamming, awarding themselves seals for book covers and all kinds of indie author creates a site to grant indie authors awards awards ...
Augh. They accused Sanderson too? Jeez. Because he *clearly* needs more reviews.
Her reasoning--that Sanderson, Andrews, etc would be a few token unpaid reviews--makes a lot of sense.
I never look at product reviews... and as far as book reviews, I only consider them when I am looking at the self-published works for my Kindle and Nook. Even then I don't take them at face value... I take into consideration that there are a fair number of those ratings that are fake- either they were sock-puppets used to boost the ratings, or they were carpet-bombed for some reason (outside of the piece actually being crap).
It is a multi-thousand dollar fine-able offense to receive payment (money/fees, free product, or even review exchange) for a review ostensibly from a customer/just-a-reader without disclosing what you received in the review itself — for any site online subject to U.S. rules. Please do file a complaint with FTC when you find these. Or if from someone you know, tell them to add the disclosure or they could face fines as a result of a complaint to FTC or an investigation by FTC.
The paid reviews are illegal on U.S. sites if masking as customer reviews. It is a serious issue/problem, just take the lists of authors with a grain of salt. Look for author posts (or screen captures of) where they incriminate themselves. The list in this particular article is a repeat of one that's been making the rounds attached to various articles. It started with a review site listing up what at the time they claimed were authors who endorsed their services then later back pedaled saying just examples of some good reviews to go by crap.
I have no idea why the FTC has not been actively fining or shutting down paid review sites that post reviews on consumer sites without disclosing the fees received for the reviews. (I know why the reviewers don't disclose the fees because even amazon and goodreads will not leave up a review that discloses it was paid for; just not sure why FTC takes no action to enforce the disclosure of fees in consumer reviews.)
Fivver and other sites offer listopia and other feature voting also, which is equally annoying. It's weird when they advertise goodreads librarian status as if librarians have anything to do with reviews.
And that name being on there makes me doubt the entire list.
It is a very real problem, though. And there are so many authors and sites posting about all kinds of ways to game the systems, paid reviews, sockpuppeted, up/down voting, listopia vandalization and spamming, awarding themselves seals for book covers and all kinds of indie author creates a site to grant indie authors awards awards ...
Her reasoning--that Sanderson, Andrews, etc would be a few token unpaid reviews--makes a lot of sense.