Photo from iStock Photo

I had an interesting conversation a couple of weeks ago with a friend about whether or not you should consider paying for book reviews. She wanted to, she's an indie author trying to make book sales, but is having a hard time getting reviews because so many of the review places are glutted. There are a number of companies out there now that are charging authors in exchange for a review. Authors can pay for a review for as little as $5 per review and as much as nearly $500 for a review. Honestly, I was stunned because more and more of these types of services are being offered now  and I had to ask myself, "Would I pay for a book review?" Honestly, I would never pay for a book review. I have several issues with this and while I know it can be more difficult to get reviews right now since there are so many new authors, I still would be more likely to hit up book bloggers, and free review websites than I would to pay for a review.

My biggest concern is that I don't feel like a pay for book reviews place would give me an honest review. Personally, I'd rather have an honest review even if the review wasn't saying my book was fantastic. Another issue is when you pay for a review you can never be certain that the reviewer actually read the entire book, after all the more books they read and review the more they'll be paid.While most of these companies claim to give an honest review, if their reviewers started writing reviews such that they didn't like certain books, it would be bad for the pay for review company's business. So you most likely would always get a good review. While this might seem cool to some authors, personally I'm of the mind that if a book has nothing but 5 star reviews then there's something wrong. This isn't to suggest that there aren't books out that are just that darned good, because there are, but rather that even those kinds of books have detractors. There is always going to be someone who doesn't like your book, always. And in most cases there will always be someone who is not afraid to write a review that is less than stellar. So the point I'm making is that books that only have 5 star reviews? I tend to think at least some of those reviews has been paid for. As an author I do not want other readers or even other authors thinking that so I'll take my free honest reviews any day over a paid for review.

Don't believe me or don't think there's anything wrong with paid for reviews? Check out this article, it might change your mind!

This is just my opinion of course but feel free to chime in if you have a different thought or even if you agree. I'd b interested in hearing what other authors and readers think about this!