Pay You to Review My Books? Dude, Get Bent

I’ve found a number of other reviewing sites out there that will only check out an app/book/etc. if you pay them. They’re using the reasoning that they have too many items in the queue to review and that the fee is for “priority reviewing”. Are you kidding me?

I won’t fault folks for trying to make a buck but I can’t help but wonder how legitimate the reviews are if reviewers are being paid off.

For example, if the reviewers received $100 from an author/developer and they trashed the resource, how many more authors/developers do you think would pay them in the future?

Furthermore, if you were a visitor on the reviewer’s web site, how much trust would you put into the reviews if you knew they had to be paid for? It’s a blatant conflict of interest and it's rubbish.

The worst cases of these shams are the bait and switch web sites. What these guys do is have a contact form on their web site for authors/developers to submit their request for review - mind you, they don't say ANYTHING about having to pay for the review. Upon receiving your request, the reviewers send out an obvious auto responder message that indicates that they have so many resources to review that they'll do they're best to get to yours but might not until 2099. But, if you're desperate enough...and you pay enough money they'll somehow, through the grace of the Divine, be able to squeeze you into their schedule - it's a miracle.

I even had one guy that told me after a couple of months after I'd provided him with evaluation copies of my books that he had over 900 resources in the queue, and that's why he hadn't reviewed what I sent him. Although he did hint that he might be able to move me up if some Andrew Jackson's and Ben Franklin's appeared in his bank account.

Come on, what a joke.

Look, if you're a freelancer that's looking into getting some insider advice on how to really take hold of your business and gain a competitive edge, I can assure you that I've never, nor will I ever pay someone to review the books I've put together.

The testimonials are real, and they're from real people - anything short of this would be a discredit to you and me, and I won't do that in order to boost sales. 

Comments

[freelance management]

Nice post!!
Thanks for sharing.