Publishing geeks everywhere are buzzing over the news that people have been paying cash for good reviews on Amazon as a way to “promote” their self-publshed novels.
Of course, I’m not entirely sure how this is too much different than getting on the NYT Bestseller list. Sure, the route that the indie authors are taking is pretty nakedly unethical. Simply put “I’ll give you $15 for a positive review of my book” makes you a cheater. I think that’s obvious to most people.
But then there’s that NYT Bestseller List. Granted, many of the books I’ve read from there have been better than most of the Indie Pub stuff I’ve read. Having copy editors and fact-checkers and not having to worry about the business end of writing as much as an Indie author tends to give you more time to generate a better product. But, really, the books that end up topping the recognised lists do so not necessarily on quality.
The list-makers do pay particular attention to certain bookstores (most certainly not just independents, although most indies report sales to the NYT), so publishers tend to focus promotional efforts on those stores. Which stores are in the mix is unknown to the general public, but I gather that publishers are well aware of which stores count and are counted.
When you have millions of dollars riding on a book’s success, as the Big Houses often do, you are going to make it your business to know how to squeeze the most sales out of the thing. Why do you think the Big Houses have been so generous with frontlist discounts for booksellers for the last decade and a half? Sure, it’s not outright saying “I’ll pay you $15 for a good review”. But it is saying “I will only charge you $10 for this $25 book if you buy enough copies to make sure it ends up in the top 10 bestsellers.”
Yes, the books have to be good enough to sustain the model. There has to be enough demand for the bookstores to know they won’t end up with a million unsold copies of Her Heart Belongs To The Duke Of Transylvania and there has to be enough demand so that when you approach them next quarter with The Pantone Chips Of Sadomasochistic Erotica the bookstores’ buyers take you somewhat seriously. It helps if you dump another few million dollars into magazine ads, big posters and–heaven forfend–the book trailer. And don’t forget to send out a few thousand Advanced Reader Copies (ARCs) so that the reviews can already be up on Amazon when the $10 book hits the shelves under the big poster. Those reviews always skew heavily positive if for no other reason than people enjoy feeling like insiders and are predisposed to like a book if they feel favoured by the publisher enough to get an early peek. That’s why the day the book comes out for us plebes you can go to Amazon and read a hundred gushing reviews about how I Am A Teenage Ghost With Cancer is The Book Of The Summer.
So is it somehow less okay for Susy Nobody to cut through all the hedgemazes and just say “here’s $15. Review my book on Amazon positively”? I honestly don’t think I know for sure.
IMO, it’s a question of degree here. (or decimal points) Big Houses have have bigger Marketing Budgets, that’s all.
On a similar note, someone suggested I give money to fifty friends and have them all buy an e-copy the same week. It would boost my visibility, prompt more sales, and I’d get 70% back the following month.
Call me naive, but that plan was too sketchy for me.
And I doubt I even have fifty friends.
Have a good day.
As an indie author, I watch big press authors get the spotlight shelf at B&N and I know the publisher paid good money to put those books there. If I had the money to put my book someplace prominent I might just do so. BUT, I could not, ever, feel right about paying for a review.
There’s a big difference to me between paying to advertise something and paying for an opinion (possibly untrue) on a product. The advertising just puts it in the customer’s face, it doesn’t falsify that customer’s reaction to it, or even make them buy it. You can bring a horse to water (or in this case, water to a horse), but you can’t make him drink. Much less like it. And if the books don’t sell, the bookstore can return them to the publisher.
That said, there is the factor of peer pressure. The “everyone must be reading this, so I better read it too!” factor. And a lot of readers only keep an eye out for the best-sellers, assuming that if they’re bestsellers, or prominently displayed at B&N, or that if everyone is reading them, that’s the test that proves they’re good. So many readers don’t bother looking past the big names. We indies get lost in the shadows. Just being out where people can see you at least gives them a chance to read your books–a chance a lot of indies don’t have because we don’t have that big marketing budget. So yeah, in many ways, that is just as unfair as paying for reviews–it’s attention that has not necessarily been earned nor deserved.
But it’s the system. It’s “marketing.” Because it’s not falsifying opinions. It’s not paying the *consumer*. That’s the difference to me, no matter how frustrating I find it. Because, at the end of the day, I also know that word of mouth is the strongest marketing force out there. One kid saying to her friend with a wild gleam in her eye, “You have GOT to read this!” is more convincing than advertisements, magazine reviews, and B&N displays. It just takes longer, at least at first.