Adding to the Conversation on Amazon Vine

I've been home sick for three days now, which has given me entirely too much time to read blogs and now, some time to ponder over the Amazon VINE program.

Amazon.com has a program in which they get a whole bunch of books, often advance reader copies, from publishers and offer these to what they call "select reviewers," which I expect are people who have posted lots of reviews on the site that have been voted as helpful.  People who participate in this program get a newsletter once a month and ...