Connecting Readers and Writers discussion

Andrea,

Many novice authors are unaware of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulation that makes it illegal to obtain a book or movie review through an offer of compensation (cash, gift card, or free product) or guaranteed reciprocal review.

It is important to remember that a review is nothing more than a personal opinion. One reader's "Best book ever!" could very well be another reader's "Worst book ever!".

The primary problem with review swaps (reciprocation) is that very few authors will post a negative review in fear that the other party will retaliate in-kind. Therefore, astute readers place little credibility in the honesty of such reviews and choose to ignore them.

Sales drive reviews, not the other way around. One will be better served by focusing more upon self and commercial promotion and marketing venues instead of solicitation.

The odds against a novice author attaining commercial success within this extremely competitive field are great. That said; a few have succeeded. There is no reason why you could not eventually become one of them. I wish you success.

While it's been years since I've heard reference to this, I'd say that it is fundamentally bogus. Publicity over this about eleven years ago is just one of countless instances of attempted legal intimidation with no real substance behind it. If you can point me to one actual case in which someone was penalized either in criminal or civil court for merely exchanging reviews with someone, you *might* be on your way to changing my mind.

I think this statement is inaccurate: "Many novice authors are unaware of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulation that makes it illegal to obtain a book or movie review through an offer of compensation (cash, gift card, or free product) or guaranteed reciprocal review."

I can't find evidence of such a regulation. What exists is a law, the FTC Act, which bars deceptive advertising, and there exist FTC "guides" to indicate the FTC's attitude towards prosecuting this law with regards to social media behavior. Their own guides specify that their real interest is in corporate deceptive practices, and the only cases that I've been able to find include such phenomena as prominent social-media influencers who routinely promoted an online gambling site without disclosing that they *owned* the site.

If you're some kind of power-blogger or prominent YouTuber receiving substantial gifts of cash and merchandise from publishers to promote their products without disclosing the relationship, and if you plan to do this even after receiving warning letter after warning letter after warning letter from the FTC, you might get yourself in some trouble. If you're a writer saying "you read my book and I'll read yours," you have an approximately 0% of facing any legal consequence.

The question is really one of ethics and site policy. Goodreads culture doesn't seem to support such things, and writers are all uptight about issues of "fairness" and such. While Goodreads doesn't allow "you scratch my back; I'll scratch yours," there have been plenty of review groups which arrange reading and review without a one-to-one exchange relationship.

Personally I don't care much. I've never participated in any such exchange, but if someone wants to do it, heck, have at it. I'm just too lazy to read a book nowadays unless it already comes highly recommended by people I trust--which is part of the conundrum. Writers are aiming to get to that point of having readers out there to recommend them and get the ball rolling. I don't blame them for that.

Zadignose wrote: "While it's been years since I've heard reference to this, I'd say that it is fundamentally bogus. Publicity over this about eleven years ago is just one of countless instances of attempted legal in..."

The main point here, which you seemed to have missed, is not only that it is unethical: it is mainly INEFFECTIVE. An author using such review swaps will be in danger of undermining his credibility for good. Once your credibility is gone, then good luck in ever building it back.

Michel wrote: "... it is mainly INEFFECTIVE. An author using such review swaps will be in danger of undermining his credibility for good. Once your credibility is gone, then good luck in ever building it back. ..."

Yep, ditto all that.

I'd add one other point that hasn't been mentioned already: what's the plan here? An author offers to swap reviews to a random group of @ 3800 people and gets, let's just throw out a random #, a 10% response rate. S/he is going to then read 380 books and write reviews for each one? Sounds like a massive waste of an author's time to me. Taking a look at the title, I can see this isn't the only group in which this offer was made. So...don't want to besmirch a fellow group member, but I call bullshit.

Michel wrote: "The main point here, which you seemed to have missed, is not only that it is unethical: it is mainly INEFFECTIVE. An author using such review swaps will be in danger of undermining his credibility for good. Once your credibility is gone, then good luck in ever building it back."

You can do your best to redefine what the "main point" is, but the original assertion is that one should not do a review swap because it's illegal, and that's not well supported.

As for credibility, the most credible thing an author can do, as far as I'm concerned, is write a good book. The rest is trivia.

Zadignose wrote: "Michel wrote: "The main point here, which you seemed to have missed, is not only that it is unethical: it is mainly INEFFECTIVE. An author using such review swaps will be in danger of undermining h..."

Zadignose,

You are partially correct. The FTC regulation in question does state that disregard of the regulation is legal if the review includes a clearly stated disclaimer describing whatever compensation was received in exchange. Thus the stated disclaimers at the end of any product endorsement, commercial or advertisement.