Hired Guns

Here's some interesting reading: The Best Reviews Money Can Buy.  Read this before you proceed any further with this post.

______________________________________
Welcome back.  How do you feel after reading that article?  Are you for or against hired guns reviewing an an ebook, your own or someone else's.  Whether you agree with the practice of paid reviews is neither here nor there.  I have my opinion and you have yours.  The point is that we have started (or perhaps joined) a very interesting debate.

For my part, here is my pledge as an independent writer: I promise to never pay for nor solicit, from friends or family, reviews of any kind.  Any reviews that appear on any ebook retail site will be from genuine, flesh and blood readers.

When an independent author pays for or solicits reviews, favourable or otherwise, he or she does the work a  great disservice and discredits whatever innate talent he or she possesses.  Such authors put themselves in the same category as performance-enhanced athletes.  I understand the fear independent authors feel when they put their work "out there".  They are taking a huge risk that the piece of writing they worked so hard on will be poorly received and people will criticize it harshly and result in poor sales.  I'm afraid of that, too, but you have to accept the risk.

Final verdict: Paying for positive reviews to drum up sales?  Cheap.