I am a NetGalley.com member; as such I have promised you honest reviews. It hurts and makes me sick to think someone would not want to read these reviews, or not want to review ARC copies themselves because people wouldn't trust them.
If, as a reviewer, I lied and said I liked a book I hated, you would loose trust in my reviews. You would go to other reviewers, and see what they thought of these books. I think of you all as friends, if I recommend a book here, you can bet I'm recommending it to my family and friends who read and I see face to face.
This whole rant started when I saw a few videos on YouTube of BookTubers saying how they weren't going to review ARC copies because they didn't want people to not trust them. Just because I'm reviewing an ARC copy does not mean the resulting review should not be trusted! If I think the book stunk, I will tell you to stay away from the book, or to approach at your own risk. If I think a book is good, I'm going to tell you to try it.
It makes zero sense for someone who wants to review books, to give a fluffed review. If they do a fluffed review, they will probably do it again. Readers that see these reviews, read the books, and realize at a minimum, their tastes do not match and will stop watching the reviews. At worst, they will figure out the reviews are fluffed, and never believe a single word out of your mouth. People are smart, they will get on to you if you fluff reviews. They will stop reading your reviews, and publishers will stop sending those free books for review because no one reads your reviews!
To put it bluntly, you may be successful at a few fluff reviews, but ultimately your reign will end.
I think of you all as friends, reading buddies; and I hope you feel, or one day can feel, the same way. I tell you a book I despise is fantastic, and you shouldn't wait to go read it will break your trust with me and you won't consider me a friend back.
In short, anyone who falsifies their reviews is stupid, and I will never falsify a review. Anyways, thanks for listening to me rant.
I've always figured honesty/sincerity is always the way to go. Stick to it. Now it's time for my ignorant question: what's an ARC copy?
ReplyDeleteThanks for asking; I was apparently so flustered, I didn't think to explain. ARC is short for Advanced Reader Copy. These are provided for free to reviewers in exchange for the reviewer to publish a review of the book on their medium - Vlog, Blog, magazine, Newspaper, etc.
DeleteThanks, I had the idea right, just couldn't guess what each letter stood for.
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