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What's the general opinion of paid book reviews?

I paid Reader's Choice less than $100 and got a great review from someone who chose to read my non-fiction book. I paid Clarion Reviews (part of Foreword) over $300 and got a terrible review from someone assigned to the book. It was so bad I chose to "kill" the review.

Are they generally worth it?

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Dear Alan:

Reviews are always worth it. Even terrible ones can be watered out by countless other positive ones.

The reason book publishers pay for book reviews is to get something together before publication that can be used in promotions prior to as well as on the book to attract readers.

I would question someone who would need more than $100 dollars to perform a review. If you are truly stuck and need to find someone economical in the future, consider going to Guru.com and hiring a writer off of that site.

Good luck.
I would recommend getting one.

What you can do with it is when you are advertising your book beit in a flyer or whatever, you can have a piece of review in quotes at the top. You can add the endorsement to your website. This kind of thing does inspire people to have the confidence to buy your book.

The easiest place is guru.com but you can also go through book writers associations. But stick with 100 as the ballpark price you want to hear.
Hello
Does anyone have experience with GetBookReviews.com ? They offer reviews and media press releases.

Thanks!
Stephanie
Personally, I would never pay to have someone review my book. I'd give it to friends, family, co-workers ~ "here! read this please and write what you think of it". If I were getting paid I'd certainly give a good one so people would send more people to me.
Any review can be good. Sometimes there are sites with book reviews to be performed for free but to get the exposure to a wider audience the site offers promotional opportunities. This can be considered by some to be a paid review but you are actually paying for the promotional services. Positive or negative does not matter as it involves exposure for your book.
You should never and I repeat...never have to pay to have your book reviewed. I have used a few review services and been very pleased with them. One is on myspace. Their address is myspace.com/booksvilleliteraryreviews and the other is lighthouse reviews.

Good luck
Tiva
Tiva,
Thanks for the suggestion! Sent a note to myspace site but having trouble locating lighthouse reviews. Do you have their site?
Alan
just copy/paste in the address Tiva gave you. Oh here: http://myspace.com/booksvilleliteraryreviews

< grin >

Revvell
http://podcast.TheBookCrawler.com
Has anyone heard of Xavier House Reviews? If so, have you done anything with them? Below is the link. Please check it out if you would and let me know what you think of it. Thank you!

http://www.xavier-house.com/review
Revvell,
THAT one I found and they've already agreed to take a look at it. It's the Lighthouse Reviews I'm having trouble tracking down. Any ideas?
Alan
Hi, Alan. I'd never pay anyone to review my book, precisely for the reasons your post implies. If you were to pay me to review your book, I'd feel compelled to make the review as positive as possible. If my review were negative, you might feel as though you'd wasted money. I think that if money is part of the review process, both parties' objectivity may be compromised.

Others, of course, feel differently, but that's my take on it.

Jack
www.jdixon.net

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