Why I don’t give away free books to readers in exchange for reviews

Today I’m going to republish a post I originally wrote for the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), an industry body for authors who for various reasons have decided to publish our books independently.

The post concerns the practice of giving readers free books in exchange for a review on Amazon. It’s something I don’t do for reasons I describe in the post, but the practice is widespread among fellow authors and even commercial publishers, many of whom consider it perfectly legitimate.

Rev...