Publicists Slipping Bloggers Money? More Thoughts

Book designer Stephen Tiano, whose blog I just discovered over the weekend, has an interesting response to yesterday’s post about authors promoting themselves on blogs, specifically the passing reference in a NY Times article to “blog tour” promoters who said they’d paid bloggers to review their clients’ books, something I’d never seen verified and which I thought deserved further discussion.

“I was thinking the same thing about bloggers being paid for reviews when I read that,” Stephen emails. “For all the baseless whining by print writers about blogs that review books—and blogger journalism, in general—here’s a genuine issue that bears some discussion … at the very least. I mean, it does seem to strike right at the heart of the integrity of people doing such reviews. Or,
considering how many writers who are employees of newspapers and magazines, and also have signed contracts with book publishers, does it?”

Individual reviewers probably have their own solutions for that, if they even view it as a dilemma: One obvious solution would be to avoid reviewing books from the publisher with whom you have a contract. Any others come to mind?

3 September 2007 | uncategorized |