I receive a lot of review books, but I have never once told lies about the book just because I got a free copy of it. However, some authors seem to feel that if they send you a copy of their book for free, you should give it a positive review.
Do you think reviewers are obligated to put up a good review of a book, even if they don’t like it? Have we come to a point where reviewers *need* to put up disclaimers to (hopefully) save themselves from being harassed by unhappy authors who get negative reviews?
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I haven’t posted a response on “Booking Through Thursday” for awhile, but this caught my eye. I don’t receive review books–they’ve never been offered! Considering the problems some people have had I don’t want to receive them.
If a reviewer does receive a book from an author to read and review the author should realize the reviewer needs to write an honest review. That does not necessarily mean it’s a terrible book–we all have our likes and dislikes, things we can tolerate in a book and things we can’t. If I’m going to take the time to read a book and write a review I want to say what I liked and disliked. Few of us who write book blogs are professional reviewers. We love to read and we love to write about the books we read. Authors who don’t want to read negative reviews should probably not read reviews of their books.
However, here’s the thing for me–I don’t finish reading books I dislike. I have so many wonderful books to read I know I’ll never have a long enough life to finish them all. I don’t want to take the time to read books that don’t interest me, that are badly written or come to me at a time I don’t want to read them. Feeling obligated to read a book, write a review and then get harassed by an author or the author’s fans…those aren’t the reasons I read or write a review blog. I’m not paid to write and post reviews. I do it for my own pleasure. Most of my reviews have been favorable reviews because I read and write about the books I enjoy. I’ve never had an author (to my knowledge!) read my blog or post a response–and that’s fine!
How do you feel? If you review books on a blog and you receive books from an author to review do you feel obliged to give a favorable review? Has this been a problem for any of you?
You are not obliged to write a favorable review –
What reviews should do is give an honest account what you (as the reviewer) think about the book.
Your judgement in return helps the author to improve the next version of the material. We have book reviews on our site and everyone is encouraged to send in honest and unbiased account of the material.
Good luck and have a nice review
–
Evans
http://www.jroller.com/bookreview
Do I feel obligated to give a good review? Kind of… but ultimately, to me, my credibility is more important. If I start giving good reviews because I got the book from an author, then I’m doing a disservice to everyone and in the end, people won’t be able to trust my reviews and I would feel really sad about it.
I think that in the end, if you give clear explanation as to why the book didn’t work for you or why exactly you loved it, then it’s better than just gushing to gush.
You know, it’s fun to get a book from an author once in a while… especially if they are signed… but I’m happy it doesn’t happen very often
I’m with you. I’ve never received an ARC, though I’ve been asked if I would like to receive them. I don’t think there will ever be a time when I will.
If a book isn’t working for me, whatever the reason, I usually stop reading it and move on to another. It’s rare that I will complete a book that isn’t holding my interest — and it’s becoming rarer now that I’ve started blogging and joined so many challenges.
One review, good or bad, is just one person’s opinion. People have commented across the blogsphere that they’ve picked up books based on one person’s well-written, but negative, review. It’s a matter of taste and tastes vary.
(Hmm. I must remember to copy/paste this comment as my entry….)
I don’t feel obligated to give positive reviews but I do feel obligated to write a review. Which is why I’ve stopped accepting review books. Too much hassle.
Well said. It really is just one person’s opinion, and when I write my reviews, I definitely don’t expect everyone to agree with me. That would be most unusual! I rely on other people’s reviews to help me decide what books get priority – if I couldn’t trust these reviews, it would be rather pointless reading them!
If I don’t like the copy I’m supposed to be reviewing, I’ll normally let the author/agent know. There have been a couple of times where I’ve been told NOT to post a negative review. This works out well for everyone because I don’t have to review a book I dislike, and the author’s reputation isn’t tarnished.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again–you have to be really careful about what you say on your blog. I’ve had well-known authors e-mail me and thank me for my positive reviews, and this is for novels that were published quite awhile ago! I’ve also had a kind of running e-mail battle with a fanatical Christian individual who thinks I’m evil incarnate because I appreciate “American Psycho.” The internet really is transparent! “Nuff said.
“To thine own self be true” is an axiom I stand by. Come see my answer.
I had a couple of offers for books, but I refused, well, mostly because I live in the UK and I know it isn’t cheap for an author to pay overseas postage, and it probably costs as much as the book itself.
I admit most of my reviews are positive, but it’s because I can’t be bothered to review meh books, and therefore I only post about books I really really like. Except for TBR Day reviews – they can go either way because I don’t have a choice about what book I review (and that in turn is because my reviews are normally done at the very last minute).
I do remember squeeing about Diana Peterfreund’s book, and she posted a response, and it totally made my day
Thank you all for commenting. I enjoyed reading your comments and what many of you wrote about this on your blogs. The Internet has certainly changed the way many of us find out about books.