Review swaps and conflicts of interest

Soon the United States will have a president with business dealings all over the world. Half the country is convinced that he can avoid conflicts of interest by having his children run these businesses. This president will continue to be an executive producer on a TV show that he used to star in, for a network that has to report news about him. Half the country sees no problem with that either.

At the same time, a bunch of self published authors are struggling to get customer reviews for their books.

Every time I buy something on Amazon, I review it. Somehow I got the idea that this would help Amazon's customers find my own offerings, but so far it has not. What it has done is attract authors in need of reviews. They generally offer me a free copy of the e-book in exchange for this review.

The problem with this is, there are an awful lot of free e-books out there. I used to subscribe to Book Gorilla, a newsletter that tells you about free and discounted books. I gave up on it because I found it depressing to see so many free e-books offered day after day.

Even if there weren't so many struggling authors offering free e-books in exchange for reviews, there are thousands of public domain e-books at sites like Project Gutenberg. Why should I care about a free e-book from an unknown author when I can read a great novel by a famous author for the same price?

I might review your book if I check out the preview and it looks like something I'd enjoy reading, but I have a reading pile and it isn't likely that your book will go to the top of that pile any time soon.

The one thing that could change that would be your willingness to give an honest review to one of my books.

Amazon is trying to enforce some new rules about reviews. You can't get a free or discounted product in exchange for a review. (I used to get an offer like that every week, but they've stopped). The one exception is books, since free books for review purposes is a standard practice in publishing.

What is less clear is their policy on authors reviewing each other's books. They may or may not have one.

Established authors do review each other's books. Raymond Chandler wrote a review of an Ian Fleming novel with this famous quote:

“Bond is what every man would like to be and what every woman would like to have between her sheets.”

Some more recent examples:

Tom Clancy: "A new Clive Cussler novel is like a visit from your best friend."

Stephen Coonts: "Nobody does it better than Clive Cussler, nobody."

The objection to a review swap would be that if I give your book four stars you'll feel uncomfortable giving my book any less than that. Maybe you would. In practice, I think authors would generally give honest reviews. Enlightened self interest would make them do the right thing more often than not.

Now when a stockbroker or a politician talks about enlightened self interest it's time to count the silverware, but for authors there really is an incentive to be honest. Authors need their opinions on things to matter. I can't give a glowing review to a lousy book without hurting my own reputation.

Would I give an author who reviewed my book a break that I wouldn't give another author? Yes, in one very specific way: if I think the book is two stars or worse I won't review it. I'll send my comments on the book to the author in an email but I won't post a review.

If the review is three stars or better, I'll send it to the author before posting it and give him the option to not post it. He can try to change my mind about some point in my review, but ultimately I have to stand behind what I write. If I don't post a review he's no worse off than he was to begin with, and he might benefit from my feedback.

I generally don't give one star reviews to anything unless I think the author is morally reprehensible in some way. A good example of this are people that take books in the public domain that are already transcribed by Project Gutenberg volunteers and available for free and do some quick and dirty repackaging on them so they can be sold on Amazon. I've done some one star reviews on these reprobates.

I don't give two star reviews because I don't read two star books. I can spot a two star book in the free preview. Anyone can.

What do you think about review swaps? Leave comments below.