Declarations of Interest and why you should

So this email has been going round on Twitter shared by @lotte_le:


interest


Let’s have a refresher course on basic ethics, shall we? As follows:


DECLARE YOUR INTEREST.


That was quick, eh? See you next week!


 


Okay, we have space for a bit more.


Declaring interest is a bedrock principle of functional communities. If you are a councillor who awards the contract for rubbish collection services, you must declare that your brother-in-law runs the bidding garbage truck company. If you are asked to be in charge of an inquiry, you need to say that one of the accused is a family friend. If you run a website that reviews cosmetics, you should mention that you run your own cosmetics company under a different name.


It may be that your brother-in-law’s company is the best by miles, or that you would apply the law no matter what it cost your personal life, or that you scrupulously avoided ever plugging your own product on your site. Conflicts of interests happen all the time; we all live in small worlds. If I review an m/m romance, it’s quite likely that I will have interacted with the author on social media, and as a freelance editor it’s not outside the realms of possibility I have or will have worked with them.


But the only way to deal with interests is transparency. You put your interest out there, and let people take a good hard look at your behaviour and your opinions in the light of what they know.


And if you don’t declare interests, people have the right to draw their own conclusions as to what motivated your decisions, which may well be worse than the reality. You might get your brother-in-law the contract because you really think his is the best company, but the voting public is entitled to assume you’re taking a backhander because you hid your interest. Your family friend might be innocent, but who will believe it when the inquiry stinks of cover-up? What value do your genuine negative lipstick reviews have when people decide you were trashing your rivals?


There are laws about this stuff. The Federal Trade Commission in the US requires that you disclose any ‘material connection’ such as payment or free product accepted in return for a review, because your review is endorsing the product. If I might decide to buy a book on the basis of your five-star rave, I have a right to know if you actually spent money on it or not. I definitely have the right to know if you were morally blackmailed into leaving it by big sad kitten eyes and pleas of ‘but bad reviews hurt authors!’


The free book business is a tricky one. The whole point of the ARC (advance reading copy) is that the author gives the reviewer something (a free book), and in return gets a benefit (a review). You might well feel this teeters on the edge of dodgy by its very nature. Let’s be honest, it kind of does.


I have been contacted by readers who have offered to leave five-star reviews if I give them a free copy. Blog tour companies have been known to ask the bloggers to suppress 1 or 2* reviews. Goodreads is full of books that have been five-star-spammed by hardcore fans in return for freebies. And, as we see here, there are authors who feel that the act of giving a free book entitles them not just to a review but to a good review. (There are also, needless to say, vast numbers of authors who would never dream of policing reviewers, and reviewers who are scrupulous in declaring interests. There is nothing wrong with the ARC system except when it’s abused. But it’s basically an honour system, and any honour system is open to abuse by the dishonourable.)


This hurts everyone in every direction. It bumps the unethical author up the rankings, it disappoints the reader suckered into buying overpraised books; it damages the authors who don’t game the system; it devalues the honest reviews that people slave over. It undermines the reading community. It stops the system working. 


A declaration of interest does not “discredit a review” as the email says. It does the opposite, by demonstrating that you have considered basic ethical principles. Hiding that interest discredits the reviewer, the author, the book, and the whole damn system. No author should ever ask for that, and no reviewer should ever feel obliged to agree.


A quick checklist for the ethically challenged:



It is fine to offer an ARC in return for a review.
It is never okay to ask for only a positive review.
It is never, ever okay to ask for a negative review to be suppressed.
It is never, ever, ever okay to ask a reviewer not to declare her interest. You are asking her to be dishonest and possibly to break the law.
If you are prepared to violate your personal integrity and the law, you should probably set your price higher than a free e-book. Have some self-respect.

The post Declarations of Interest and why you should appeared first on KJ Charles.

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Published on September 09, 2015 05:21
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message 1: by Jeannie (new)

Jeannie Zelos I'm a reviewer, mainly of books but I also receive free products. I have a bog for each and my reviews get added to places like here and Amazon. I ALWAYS write ARC received for review, or Product supplied for review. I wouldn't dream of leaving it off and I'd just avoid reading a book with the above message. I have been on blog tours where three stars or below have been asked to be suppressed until after the tour and a promo post supplied for the tour date. Its seems to be happening more and more and is one of the reasons I rarely do tours now.
Integrity is essential - there's no point in reviews without transparency and honesty and Amazon stipulates that reviews say if they're received free products.
I try to choose books carefully - I hate leaving one or two star reviews but sometimes when ARC's ahead of publication and I can't get much other than brief description I get it wrong. I always state that its just my opinion and others will see differently but - as when I'm buying books and I see reviews from those whose taste in reads I know we share - those who like similar books to me may well share my opinion.
The three star review is classed as Good on most sites and yet authors (some) seem fixated on 4 and 5 stars. A five star read is great but I've still really enjoyed some three star reads, they just haven't been the sort that stay with you or that I would re read. Three stars is not a bad review IMO.
I know authors need promo, but posts/emails like that one you've added do no-one any favours. If I buy a book with a slew of false five stars I'm not going to enhoy it better and may even dislike/hate it in which case I'm more liely to leavve a one/two star reveiw which could have been avoided if I'd had honest ratings to help me choose so I wouldn't have bought the book.
Good authors recognise that not all books suit all readers and I've felt really bad about two starring some books - it's not something I do that often, trying to avoid ones I know I'm not likely to enjoy but sometimes it has to be done :-( and I've had a couple of emails from authors actually thanking me for my honesty, and that makes me feel better! Or even more guilty....but I don't write things like " this book is cr*p" I try to simply explain what it was that didn't work for me. I've bought books that were 1 or 2 stars when reviewers have done that knowing that their taste and mine differ so much that what they don't like is exactly what makes it right for me.
I've had on one memorable occasion someone berate me and tell me I need to go back a re read a book I'd 2 starred as I'd missed the point. well, life is too short and if I've time to re read a book I want it to be one I've enjoyed ;-)


message 2: by K.J. (new)

K.J. Charles Jeannie wrote: "I'm a reviewer, mainly of books but I also receive free products. I have a bog for each and my reviews get added to places like here and Amazon. I ALWAYS write ARC received for review, or Product s..."

This is what makes me tear my hair out when I hear about authors stropping out about reviews. The amount of effort some reviewers and bloggers put in, the amount of thought and consideration--frankly more than I would; if a book deserves 2* then just give it--and the sheer volume of unpaid hard work and dedication that keeps the book world afloat...it's really amazing. And then some unprofessional idiot with a book their mum said was great throws a toddler tantrum because they haven't been sufficiently praise-fellated. *Argh.*


message 3: by E (new)

E I just saw this post and GOOD LORD that email makes me so ragey. How rude, presumptuous, unethical, and just plain fucked up is that author to even think it's ok to do that?? This is why I tend to stay away from any book that only has reviews where everyone is all OMG SQUEEEE IT'S SO GOOD AND PERFECT!! I don't trust those reviews and you couldn't pay me to read those books. To me, those reviews at the least say that this author is dishonest, and I'm not referring to reviews where you can tell many people genuinely liked th book.

As for these blog hop practices: smh. No wonder I stopped going to review sites. That's just ugly. I tend to only look at reviews from people I trust first, then I scroll down further and look at negative reviews and then I try to weed out the obvious sycophants and/or super fans with ulterior motives. I mean, I'm a super fan of some authors but if you look at my review average, it's in the 3 range for a reason: because I'm always honest.

So yeah, obviously I agree with everything you wrote here. I particularly hate those authors that think they deserve all 5 star ratings just because they worked hard and wrote a book. It's like, dude! Anyone can write a book. I managed to write 2 long books when I was a teenager, by hand even. But guess what? I know they suck lol. I'm not trying to publish them and I'm not asking for nice reviews.

The hard part is writing a good book, with minimal typos and all that good stuff ( and then getting it sold and noticed, etc). A good book will, with proper promotion and word of mouth, eventually garner its own 5 star reviews. It might not happen right away (look at authors like Lois McMaster Bujold for examples) but it WILL hopefully happen.

Just....ugh! I've been reading avidly since I was a kid, so this type of thing is such a perversion of an industry that makes me happy that I could scream.


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