How I found out a lengthy review means I must have gotten paid…
I was going through my email today, and to my delight, I saw one from Amazon saying someone commented on one of the reviews I posted over there. I’m sure a lot of us in the book blogging community cross post to various sites, and I make a point to post my full reviews to Amazon for a book. I like that I can help people by doing so, and they give me other recommendations based on things I review, so it works out well for me. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, and it’s just part of my process when I put a review up these days.
I click to the comment and sadly, I see it’s someone complaining about the length of my review, and then wondering if I got paid for the review as an incentive to write so much about the book. I was confused by the comment, mostly because, well, I’ve been writing lengthy reviews for years. It’s just how I work. Most of the time, I write long reviews.
My first thought was that whoever this person is, they are probably not involved in the book blogging community. Because I’ve never gotten the feedback from anyone within our community that my reviews have ever been too long. We all have our own reviewing style, but I’ve honestly never seen a complaint about a lengthy review. Honestly, if I’m finding myself uninterested in a book or review, I move on.
I made a point to respond to the comment and explain that I did not receive compensation for my review, and that I just write a lot much of the time. That I personally prefer a long review if it lists specific points about the book that the reviewer liked or didn’t like, and so I do the same with my own reviews. Also, in trying to learn more about the commenter, I looked at their Amazon profile and I saw that they write one sentence reviews much of the time. Obviously, this person and I have opposite ways of expressing things, cuz I always overlook the one sentence reviews on pretty much every product I look at!
I’m cool with people having their opinions about my reviews, I wouldn’t post if I was opposed to receiving feedback. But I’m still confused about why they thought I must have received payment for my review. It would be awesome to get paid for reviews, but I write what I write because I like to. I love seeing what other people thought of a book I really enjoyed, or hated, and I also adore the ability to go back and reread a review to see what I thought, and wonder how that has potentially changed over time.
Has anyone ever assumed you were paid for a review when you weren’t?
Tuesday, February 26th 2013 at 5:33 pm |
I can’t believe they complained about length! I also always skip over the one sentence, short reviews because I like more detailed ones that give me plenty of information to help decide if I might want the book.
Bookworm1858 recently posted..Eleanor and Park
Tuesday, February 26th 2013 at 5:39 pm |
I’m the same way! Pretty much any time I’m looking to buy something, I look at the longer reviews of the product. If someone liked a book, or whatever the item is, I want to know why! It helps me make a better decision.
To each their own, I guess?
Sunday, March 10th 2013 at 3:31 pm |
In the last little while there was a big to do about people getting paid to write glowing reviews on books just to increase sales. And it was all over the book blogging community about how people got paid to do so and it made bloggers look bad.
I think it’s interesting that this person accused of this, yet they only write one sentence reviews themselves?!? How is that even a review? “It was a great story, you should read it.” Ya that doesn’t fly with me.
I say keep on writing your reviews the way you like to and don’t worry about what others think, because it’s really your thoughts about it and no one else.
Chrystal @ Snowdrop Dreams of Books recently posted..Personal Reading Challenge: March 2013
Sunday, March 10th 2013 at 5:50 pm |
Hmm, well that’s definitely not something I’m on board with…but I still think it’s a bit ridiculous that they seemed to read just one of my reviews and made that determination. Plus it was a really mixed review…I gave the book a 4 rating, but at least half of my review was about things I didn’t like, and it said that I felt the book was really well written but that the subject matter was not at all my kind of thing.
The one sentence reviews on their part made me all the more frustrated too. It just doesn’t seem like that’s a valid way to review, and then to criticize my reviews makes it really silly. Part of me really wanted to tell them that when they have an 80% helpful rating on Amazon like I do, they could come back and critique me again, lol.
I definitely don’t plan on changing my reviewing style because of this one person, I was more amused than anything else.