Action Pulp!

Yesterday I came across a Paid review group online. Third party group paying for reviews left on the major market platform.

As an author and publisher, I had heard of people paying for reviews, but I had never seen it in the wild.

First of all, I’m not going to post the name of the group. But I took a look around and I was shocked to find people posting about signing up to review books, and getting paid for their reviews. They had to sign up through the service, select a book to review, and had to submit a link to their review in order to get paid.

Several people posted they were not able to leave reviews, to which replies stated their account might be too new.

One person posted their major market account was flagged and no longer able to leave any reviews.

One person posted their account was banned from the third party and didn’t know why. Someone replied it was because they named the third party in the major market review, and stated the third party requirements was to only leave a 5 star review in the review. They left a 4 star review. A few comments were stating along the line of ruining it for everyone else.

The whole sham and shame of this is rigging the system. Leaving a review as a paid reviewer is dishonest and misleading.

Sadly, there are a lot of predatory scams out there who operate like this. Shame on them.

It takes two to tango. Three really. The “readers” who leave reviews and are getting paid should disclose it is a paid endorsement, just the same with any other advertising. Essentially they are misleading other consumers into believing they left a review in good faith.

And the “authors” who pay for this service are doing an injustice to themselves and others.

Enough of that.

I have never paid for a review, and never will. I have given away promotional copies of my books, review copies, and ask them to leave an honest review if they would like to do so.

But I will never pay anyone for a review. Ever!