Robert

It's an online book store. I read some of the reviews lately. Some are even entertaining, in their own way, of course.

Point taken Andrea (ha ha). I knew things like this went on, but what is surprising is that people who do this stuff really have no compunction about it. I might have guessed a lot of fudging, but this is really nonsense. Guess I'm the one who is naive.

I have to wonder if the book reviews on certain sites are phony. I recently saw an ad soliciting book reviewers (see this ad below). The ad read that book reviewers are to review 50-100 books per day. They are instructed to give 3 to 5 stars for a review. One or two stars (poor or fair) is not allowed. The reviewer is given a list of sites to "research" the book. The reviewer quickly scans information ABOUT the book. The reviewer is never asked to actually READ the book. The reviewer works 8 hours per days. If you do the math, this would mean that an enitre review is researched and written in less than 9 minutes. I know that phony product reviewing is an industry, but this really takes the cake. The ad for reviewers appeared on a website. This is how it reads: "We are looking for multiple freelancers interested in writing short book reviews for us on a weekly basis. Reviews should between 80-150 words and you need to post them on our website at the corresponding bookpage, including clicking a 3-5 start ranking for the book. We will provide excel sheet with links to bookpages, you just have to research the book and write a short review. We need approx. 50-100 reviews per day per person which should take you approx. 8 hours per day."

I really worded my first post incorrectly. I meant to say that Kirkus pays reviewers to review their books. I have worked with them. My question is do you know anyone else who pays reviewers? I apologize for the vagueness.

There was a thread that prompted me to think of this question. Kirkus pays to review books, but does anybody know of any company that pays for reviews? I have the background and have professionally reviewed, but am still exhausting all review sources. P.S. I'm in the U.S., but I'm looking internationally too.

I suppose I would have to know the reviewer and the approach before investing too much. A lot of reviews are often more descriptive than evaluative. The ones that evaluate will say things that are not helpful like THIS BOOK REALLY SUCKS. That is really not a review to me. Kirkus claims they are some kind of cream of the crop in reviewing but they don't really seem to be. Their reviews often just describe the book. Their review editors seem very elitist when a lot of their paid reviewers are simply taking information off the dust jacket.

Heh he, you'd have to add Anthony Hopkins to that.

Read very few books twice. Keep the reference books.

I remember when computer people and others were predicting the end of paper by the year 2000. Seems that with all the computers and their printers that we have more paper than ever. Books and similar items are a big part of that.

It was a dark and stormy night. Charles Schulz writing as Snoopy.