TCM reviews

Judi Bee said:

I received the following e-mail from TCM reviews and would like to know if they are legit. I'd take it at face value, but I've been phished twice this year already (at least they tried to phish my accounts). If anybody knows anything about them, please let me know. I don't even know why I got it, since I'm not a writer, but if it's legit I'll pass it along to a friend who writes.
I looked on Preditors & Editors, and on the index here and didn't see anything on reviewers.
JB

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THE MESSAGE:
"I am founder and editor for a book/ebook/audio book review site called TCM
Reviews at http://tcm-ca.com. We average 150,000 hits per month (and growing) and have sixty reviewers from Canada, the United States, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Our policy is to complete reviews in a reasonable amount of time (weeks not months)and provide quality reviews written by individuals who understand the target audiences of their particular area(s)of expertise.
Tami Brady
TCM Reviews
http://tcm-ca.com

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The website looks reasonable, and they do review and publish reviews FREE. There charges for other services seem reasonably price. I'd say if you have a mainstream publisher, you do not need them, but it might be usedful if you are PODing or otherwise self-publishing.

Regards,
Scott

TCM is one of many, many, many online review sites. They don't take your money, they do post a review of your book. If you have an e-copy there isn't anything to lose. They seem to be active and growing--the website is improving with each upgrade. If you want to limit how many review sites you use (e.g. if you are sending paper copies) then its a matter of looking at them all and asking around to see which pull in the most readers and generate some sales.

If you want to send them your book it isn't going to hurt, but I can't imagine anyone coming to the site to read the reviews. You've never heard of it, right? Neither has anyone else. So to answer your question: it looks perfectly harmless.

They do *not* charge for reviews and must aim to get readers for their google ads at least. I see no way for this to be a scam at all if you just submit a book for free review. The book with reviews posted range from self-published to moderately sized traditional publishers.

ETA: This is just to relate my own experience with Tami Brady.

Tami Brady used to write reviews for Round Table Reviews. Last year I requested that a review she had written for a title I published be removed as it was obvious that she had not read the e-book at all. She had reviewed a couple of other e-books I had published and the reviews were poorly written. I'd suggest reading a sampling of the reviews that are posted before submitting your book for review.

CaoPaux said:

Such online "reviewers" don't come up much because 1) most folks recognize they're worthless because they don't reach the people who actually buys books. 2) Those that don't recognize that aren't savvy enough to ask about them before they buy into the “I’ll be seen by millions!” hype.

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That's not true of all on-line review sites, though. The quality varies widely, but some of them have been around a long while and have a great reputation. OK, I'll admit a bias as I'm associated with All About Romance, although I no longer write reviews for the site. But like AAR, a lot of the on-line review sites have a lot of regular visitors, repeat visitors who not only read the reviews but discuss them, etc. And even the well established sites like AAR, The Romance Reader, etc. had to start somewhere.

Do these sites have an effect on sales? It's hard to say. A lot of people have pointed out that the typical on-line reader isn't really like the typical book buyer. (The typical reader doesn't write lengthy posts about things like headhopping.) On top of that, there are some books that people will buy no matter what the reviews say. And some books will have low sales despite the reviews and buzz on the message board -- but that could be because of bad covers, bad distribution, unpopular settings, etc. Still, a good review can help, and even a bad review can help.

CaoPaux said:

Also, why would a publisher visit a review site for POD and ebooks? This is bait for the self-published author to think they might be Discovered by a Big Publisher. You’d have a greater chance of being stuck by lightning, since the only "publishers" who troll such sites are vanities looking for marks to spam.

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But a review site is supposed to be for readers, not a way to pick up a publisher. Also, as far as readers go, there are definitely readers who visit ebook review sites. I certainly have, when I was looking for ebook reviews -- particularly in the erotic romance field. It's a hot market, and there are lots of sites geared to reviewing erotic romances and nothing else.

As far as the quality of the reviews, well, I've noticed that a some of the sites reviewing erotic romance suck (pun not intended). (rimshot) According to some sites, every book great, and the most you will learn is how many times the hero and heroine play hide the sausage. Still, many of those sites have a lot of visitors. I'll confess -- I've visited some review sites because I wanted to know how many times the hero and heroine play hide the sausage.

AnneMarble said:

Do these sites have an effect on sales? It's hard to say. A lot of people have pointed out that the typical on-line reader isn't really like the typical book buyer. (The typical reader doesn't write lengthy posts about things like headhopping.) On top of that, there are some books that people will buy no matter what the reviews say. And some books will have low sales despite the reviews and buzz on the message board -- but that could be because of bad covers, bad distribution, unpopular settings, etc. Still, a good review can help, and even a bad review can help.

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I found that reviews (whether from online or print publications) helped indirectly with sales in that if I got the reviews early enough I could include them in the title description when listing titles with various e-vendors (Fictionwise.com, etc.). It seemed that the webmasters of the e-vendor would see the number of reviews and would then put a spotlight on the title, which in turn brought the title to the attention of buyers.

So they can help, although by how much is a question that I don't think can be easily answered.

Personal to Tami Brady: I tried to respond to your e-mail to me this morning. However, you are not set up to receive e-mails via Absolute Write's WaterCooler, and my response to your e-mail address bounced. If you would like to receive a response you will have to provide me with a new address or set up your profile here to receive e-mails. You can also PM me.

They advertise by spam.

Even if they had a useful service that would be enough for me to cross them permanently off my list.

We got a review from them a while back for a travel/humour book. It's so long ago that I can't remember whether I contacted them or they contacted me to request a review copy. No money changed hands for the review, I didn't know anything at the time about paying for their other services. Whether it helped sales or not, I'm not sure, but at least there was something to put on the book's page under reviews