What do you all think?

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll tell you all, I’ve never been paid for a review. Ever. I’ve never been paid to set a blog tour, either. I spend about two thousand dollars a year on this tour and forty hours a month. The reason I’ve not charged for this is that the people who have contacted me wanting to pay for tours are people who have self published and when I look at their product I’m pretty sure that they will not get good reviews. I don’t want to take their money and then have everyone shred them in the reviews.

I still am open to setting up paid tours and if I start running more than one tour a month regularly, I’ll have to charge. I can’t put any more time or money into the tour than I’m putting in now.

The only part of the equation that I think might change in the future is this part:

Are bloggers paid to participate in the blog tour?

No — paying anyone to cover any books would be unethical.  (Paying for ads is a perfectly ethical practice, of course, but with PR, coverage — good or bad — should come free).   To clarify — since this can get confusing – with blog tours (or with radio or TV tours), publishing houses aren’t paying bloggers (or radio or TV hosts) to cover a book; we’re paying someone to schedule the tour:

I do agree that it is unethical for publishers to pay bloggers to review their books. I do, however, know that reviewers for School Library Journal and PW and The Horn Book are paid. They don’t write their reviews for free. These magazines charge for advertising, but they do not charge for reviews. The magazines hire and pay their reviewers,  so the publishers don’t directly pay for reviews.

So if a group of bloggers banded together to create an online reviewing “magazine” they would expect to get paid and it wouldn’t be unethical for them to get paid. In that case, they would have to work like the print magazines. The blog review company would make money off the ads they ran and then the company would pay the reviewers they hired. The publishing company would not pay reviewers directly, and they would have to accept that some of their books would receive no reviews and others would receive less than stellar recommendations.

So while I think that most book bloggers will never get paid for their reviews, I do think that a few quality Internet sites will rise up and sell advertising and pay their reviewers.

The thing that makes the Internet so exciting and so unpredictable is that everyone can afford to publish here. What will set apart the bloggers that make money from the rest, will be quality of content and traffic. If you have an eye for setting up an attractive site that is easy to navigate and filled with great content, you are likely to rise to the top. You will build up a community of readers. We have some blogs on our tour that are in the top one percent of blogs (of all blogs in all genres)  in regards to traffic. Publishers are going to start looking at those numbers, I think. and start picking and choosing which blogs they send their advance reading copies to and which blogs they want to advertise with.

Not that we have to make money off our blogs. Blogs are fun and don’t have to make money. But for those who want to make money, I think more opportunities are going to open up.

That’s the thing about blogs. They are interactive, they encourage community, and they get added value when readers pipe in with added thought. I often read newspaper articles online but spend more time in the comments section than on the original article. News is now delivered as a conversation. This is a good thing. This helps us to think things through instead of just accepting one person’s view.

When an author enters the discussion on a book blog it makes it interesting for everyone. Why is that wrong? Who makes up the rules that bind us? I think authors should view blogs as a community of readers. We aren’t a bunch of paid reviewers. We blog for free because we love to read and discuss books. Read and DISCUSS. To not comment, I think, is to lose out on a chance to shake the readers’ hands and give them a reason to like you and remember your name.  

If you, dear Author, comment on my blog you won’t cast a shadow on my credibility. I’m just spouting my opinion on books I’ve read and if my readers think I”m logical and thoughtful, they’ll come back. My regular readers know whether I’m honest or not. I’m quite sure of that.

When I read blogs I don’t care if the blogger got the book for free. I don’t care if the author takes the blogger to dinner after she reviews the book. All I care about is if I share her taste in books. Are her reviews and interviews interesting? Does she have a sense of humor? Is she thoughtful? Does she discuss whether the book has anything to say about society or morals or life or death or anything that matters? Those are the things I care about.

So I think author comments add value to the blog. I like the discussion.

This is new territory. Old rules don’t apply.

One rule will always apply–if you aren’t honest people are going to stop reading you and your blog will be worthless. You’ll just be talking to yourself. 

But I think all other rules should be open for discussion.

What about guest blogging? When you actually open not just your comment section to an author, you give her an entire blog post from which to speak? Do people object to that, too?

In it she says:

I’m not usually comfortable responding directly to reviewers; the etiquette rules are fuzzy on this, I think. As far as I know, it is rarely if ever considered appropriate for authors to respond to print reviews, but some authors do seem to feel okay about responding to online reviews. I still feel odd about that, though…

I had never thought about this before. I have been used to seeing authors thanking bloggers for reviews and interviews and I had not idea that this was considered by some to be problematic.

In the comments section of the post, Michelle says:

Part of it is concern about impacting a reviewer’s objectivity (or even just creating the perception of that happening). It just seems like interaction between the reviewer and the reviewee would complicate the whole system, somehow.

I have to admit, it’s harder for me to add in the negatives when someone has been hanging out at my blog than it is if I’ve never had any contact with someone. It’s even harder still for me to make negative comments when I’ve met the author in person at conferences.

But what are we going to do in this world where we are so connected? I’ve either met or I’m likely to meet almost every author I’ve reviewed. Don’t paid print reviewers meet authors are BEA and ALA parties just like blogger reviewers do? Does that compromise the reviews? Are reviewers never to go to wine and cheese meet and greets paid for by publishers?

Here’s what I think about reviews, whether the reviewer is paid or an amateur or a bookstore clerk hand-selling a book to customers who come into the store: We all have reputations at stake. We can’t lie for an author no matter how much we  like him. We need our readers/customers to trust us. We are working for the reader, not the author.

If I have a really good friend who has written a book I don’t like, I won’t review the book at all. But for every book I do review, I look for positives and negatives that I can tell my readers about.

If authors don’t want me scouring the books looking for negatives to talk about, they shouldn’t send their books to me. I have had authors write unhappy emails to me because they didn’t get the kind of review they wanted. I have had authors send me gifts thanking me for the wonderful reviews I gave. None of that is going to change my next review.

But what do you think? Have you heard that authors shouldn’t thank reviewers for reviews and interviews and promotion efforts? Do you think that if an author thanks a reviewer in the comments section of a blog it looks bad? Do you blogger reviewers have a “no gift” policy? If an author asks for your address because they want to send you a signed copy of their book or a signed cover art print, do you explain that you don’t accept gratuities?

I’m willing to be educated on this.  I had never even considered that it might be a problem.