THE Group for Authors! discussion

I write (honest) reviews for Fantasy & Sci-Fi on my blog, which I also post to Goodreads and Amazon. If you'd like me to review your book please take a look at my submission guidelines here... http://www.talesofthewilderwood.com/#...

J.W. wrote: "I write (honest) reviews for Fantasy & Sci-Fi on my blog, which I also post to Goodreads and Amazon. If you'd like me to review your book please take a look at my submission guidelines here... htt..."

And, of course, since according to those submission guidelines this is a review exchange program--you disclose on all U.S. sites you post in among the consumer reviews (including goodreads and amazon.com) that book was received free and is part of an author-to-author review exchange.

Yeah, this:
"2. I review books under the proviso that authors I review will review my books..."

would seem to indicate you are look for author review exchanges, which never end well.

How so? I'm quite relaxed with an honour system kind of thing,

My reviews aren't necessarily positive, nor do I expect positive reviews back (unless you actually like it), which negates the amazon/goodreads rule.

An artist posts a positive review on a peer's album in exchange for receiving a positive review from them

I do make a specific point in the guidelines, that if I don't like the book then I won't post a positive review. That was my interpretation of the rule. If anyone thinks that I've interpreted incorrectly then let me know and I'll remove that from the submission guidelines.

Thinking about it, I've just gone and removed that rule, I haven't even got any books out, this isn't a review exchange programme,

D.A. - missing my author friends lost to new follow button issues wrote: "J.W. wrote: "I write (honest) reviews for Fantasy & Sci-Fi on my blog, which I also post to Goodreads and Amazon. If you'd like me to review your book please take a look at my submission guideline..."

I'm just replying to your author name, D.A. - I miss my Goodreads Friends too.

J.W. wrote: "...I haven't even got any books out, this isn't a review exchange programme,"

Goodreads has mistakenly assigned you an author profile with id 10338683 at J.W. Hawkins and thinks you wrote or contributed to work #23679161, Tales of the Wilderwood: Gerald the Mangy Fox.

You may want to email [email protected] to get that taken care of. Only staff can remove books and unconvert author profiles back to a generic member profile (librarians are not staff and cannot help with that although they can correct the book data if credited to the wrong J.W. Hawkins to credit it to the correct J.W. Hawkins profile; likely since your blog matches the book title a librarian would toss it staff's way to confirm even that because it sure makes it look like that's your book).

If looking for free-for-review books, another route is to check out book pages of books you might be interested in reading/reviewing. Scroll to bottom and checkout the discussions in case any were free-for-review/R4R ones. Click to author page and check their recent posts in case they were making any R4R discussions/offers. Visit author and publisher site for book to see if any promotions there. Join ARC programs, enter giveaways...

(edited for clarity)

J.W. wrote: "Thinking about it, I've just gone and removed that rule, I haven't even got any books out, this isn't a review exchange programme,"

I wasn't saying anything was wrong with author review exchanges. Same as any other review from people-we-likely-don't-know and we can decide for ourselves when everything outside of retail-customer-bought/borrowed-random-book is disclosed including any conditions of the review. (Your review conditions were very clear that you were writing honest reviews so not promising only 5-star things.)

You seemed relatively new to reviewing because only have one review here on goodreads. I just wanted to make sure you knew that that needed to be disclosed in your review.

[Or else put in the editorial description section rather than customer product opinion review sections (on sites requiring exchanged reviews go in editorial descriptions, usually you'll need to get the author to do that for your review).]

Basically, the law is just that anything behind a review not readily apparent to other customers reading your customer product opinions needs to be disclosed. Different sites may have additional terms of service regarding what disclosures are in a review are fine and which mean review is no longer considered "consumer"-enough to be allowed on their site.

The consumer fraud laws mean you need to disclose if you (a) got the book for free, particularly if got free-for-review (unless offered retail to any member of the general public for free) or (b) received any payment or services for your review (including but not limited to a review in exchange, purchasing advertising space, outright payment ...one of the reviewers no longer here used to review authors badly if they wouldn't purchase her editing and marketing services...).

Most site Terms of service either spell that out or say that they are subject to federal/state laws which spell it out. Goodreads terms do both plus prohibit commercial use (their review guidelines and actual policy make an exception for commercial use if the payment is just a free-for-review properly disclosed). I have no idea what amazon.com's policies on authors reviewing are nowadays -- they confuse me where best I can make out they are evaluated on a case by case basis with negative reviews getting priority removal.

There's a couple of other tidbits to know when running a U.S. blog hosting what might be or might look to be consumer/customer/reader reviews. Mostly involving where and how to disclose any advertising and purchase link considerations if your blog has. I'm less familiar with that because I don't blog; zip over to the FTC site for some blog guidelines (and/or chat up some other bloggers).

Anna wrote: "...I'm just replying to your author name, D.A. - I miss my Goodreads Friends too...."

Off topic for this thread, but, boy do I hear you. Probably a conversation to continue on https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... thread.

It's just really making zero sense to me why goodreads (particularly now owned by retailer amazon) would want to break opt-in connections to authors and authors' posts. Most retailers want more connections and promotional opportunities. Totally bizarre that they would then hide the menu choices on author's pages to discourage connections other than follow -- and staff sort of denies that it was done in response to authors lobbying to gain follower statistics (even if meant butchering connections) because a lot of the more effective marketing/advertising sites want a minimum number of followers before an author can participate.

Staff says it was done in response to the the overwhelming number of readers wanting more author connections (apparently follow, friend, favorite/fan wasn't sufficient for them in current form?). (My friends mostly want fixes to things that were broken and various additional features or feature tweaks but apparently an overwhelming number of other readers on goodreads are concerned with author connections).

D.A. - missing my author friends lost to new follow button issues wrote: "Anna wrote: "...I'm just replying to your author name, D.A. - I miss my Goodreads Friends too...."

Off topic for this thread, but, boy do I hear you. Probably a conversation to continue on https:..."

Hear hear

That book was a limited edition short story, kind of pre-release promo rather than a full book.