{"id":674,"date":"2017-12-15T15:42:04","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T14:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"http;\/\/matsvederhus.com\/?p=674"},"modified":"2017-12-15T15:42:04","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T14:42:04","slug":"paid-book-review-rant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/2017\/12\/15\/paid-book-review-rant\/","title":{"rendered":"Paid book review: rant"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I was emailed by the proprietor of this<\/a> blog. The conversation went a little something like this:<\/p>\n

Proprietor:<\/strong>\u00a0 Hi! I’d like to review your book on my website. Are you willing to shell out 75$ for my services<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> Uhm, I’d rather not. I can pay you 10$ now, and 65$ once I’ve made that much in book sales. That shouldn’t be any trouble for you if you’re actually confident in your own product.<\/p>\n

Proprietor:<\/strong> I’ve done this with three authors before, and not one of them fulfilled on the promised deal.\u00a0 They made the money back and more and still they did not pay me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point, I am sceptical. How did she know that the authors “made the money back and more”? Clicks does not<\/em> equal sales. The conversation continued:<\/p>\n

Me:<\/strong> Fine. I guess it’s fair that we should split the risk. I’ll pay you 35$ now, and then 35$ later.<\/p>\n

Proprietor:<\/strong> I’d like to go through with this. You’ll pay me 35$ now, and then 35$ when I prove I’ve written a review, before I publish it.<\/p>\n

Me:\u00a0<\/strong>I’m not sure you understand. My risk is that I won’t make back the money in sales. I have no doubt that you’ll actually write the review. I’ll pay you the remaining 35$ once I’ve made 75$ in sales.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I haven’t heard from her since. Here’s the thing – and I can’t believe I have to state this again:<\/p>\n

Clicks and\/or pageviews does not equal sales!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u00a0 have no problems paying maybe 10$ or so for a review now and again when someone contacts me, even though they usually never equate to any sales (maybe one or two). Mostly, they build my ego, even if I prefer reviews that are not paid for (I have some of them as well). I’m an author, my job is not to be a financial advisor to myself.<\/p>\n

However, I’m also not stupid. If I were to shell out 75$ for every review without expecting a return on my investment, I’d be financially ruined.<\/p>\n

If you read this, and you’re a book blogger, you need to understand that from a business perspective,\u00a0 your review is essentially worthless if it doesn’t generate sales. I’m sure some of you will be thinking “it’s a hobby, you shouldn’t expect to be making money off of it”.<\/p>\n

But that’s exactly the problem – there are a million and one of not just reviewers out there, but publishers<\/a>, proof readers etc. who are doing everything they can to make a quick buck off of people’s hobbies. And it’s a real shame, because for every genuine hobbyist out there, there are two more secretly wishing to reach the New York Time’s\u00a0 best seller list<\/a>. I can tell you right now – you don’t get there by paying for reviews.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago, I was emailed by the proprietor of this blog. The conversation went a little something like this: Proprietor:\u00a0 Hi! I’d like…<\/p>\n

\u0427\u0438\u0442\u0430\u0442\u044c \u0434\u0430\u043b\u044c\u0448\u0435Paid book review: rant<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[172,15,16,171,169,170,83,168],"class_list":["post-674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-best-seller","tag-book","tag-books","tag-new-york-times","tag-pay","tag-payment","tag-review","tag-reviews","entry"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"ru","enabled_languages":["en","ru","no"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"ru":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"no":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/matsvederhus.com\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}