Paid for reviews

For the record.

Amazon offer a service that's been in place for at least three years. If you have a product you want reviewed then you pay Amazon a set fee of several hundred pound/dollars. You also supply Amazon free review copies of your product, often books or technology. They will then send the product for free to select reviewers who will read or use it and write a review. If the reviewers don't write reviews they don't get more free products. Simples. There is no guarantee on the quality of the review or of the rating although being a reviewer is by invitation only. The program is called Amazon Vine and reviewers get a badge displayed with their name above all reviews they post, an indication of status within the reviewing community. I've been a Vine reviewer for three years. I have shelves of free books and boxes of seldom used gadgets. Occasionally you discover something that stays with you forever, as I did with Mathilda Savitch.

That's paid for reviews. It's not evil.

It is not perfect either. A reviewer may not like a big publisher's next great thing and end up with a legion of pseudo Amazon accounts disliking their review and lowering its standing. Other Vine reviewers sometimes dislike your review to get theirs higher in the listings and get more votes. Amazon have changed their whole ranking system to try and reward honest reviews and intent. Wherever you go though, there are people who for some reason are hellbent on manipulating outcomes. I guess that's just the diversity of humanity.

As an independent author I don't currently have the budget for a paid review service, but it is something I may consider down the line when launching a book. I'm not sure I'll ever be in a position to pay Amazon Vine. Whoever I chose I would carefully consider their standing and the service and how it's presented. I consider myself to be mostly moral and honourable. I don't consider paying for a professional review service to be immoral. I whole heartedly believe the best way to avoid bad reviews and the need to manipulate review outcomes, is to create something that's good in the first place.