Authors Looking to Review

I agree with that. I think the money exchanging hands, assuming it exists, wherever it may be from, is the result of book vloggers receiving endless stacks of ARC's so vast that nothing being sent their way actually stands out in the crowd or gets talked about for very long- and so someone decides to buy extra 'air time' on their channels.

Fuchsia Groan said:

Self-published authors pay for Kirkus reviews. Publishers don't. Those are two completely separate categories of review, IIRC. (Publishers also don't have the option of suppressing negative reviews, of which Kirkus offers quite a few!)

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That's right. Publishers don't pay, and it's these reviews which influence various stages of the book trade, such as book buyers at retail outlets, and librarians with budgets. Self publishers can submit for a paid-for review, but those paid-for reviews appear in a different publication which buyers etc. don't really bother with, so they don't have the same impact on sales that the free reviews have.

Fuchsia Groan said:

Hmmm. I just watched the video. The Booktuber in question definitely says money changes hands. She names a specific amount she received for a video: $150. She says in her experience a couple hundred is typical, and people who think Booktubers receive thousands of dollars per video are way off.

She also reads from a "sponsored video contract" she says she received from a "company" (publisher? PR company?). It stipulates that the company has the right to edit her ("the influencer's") video, but only to remove factual errors and spoilers, not to censor her opinion.

To me as a reviewer and author, this is surprising. I know of authors who have paid for Booktubers' coverage independently of their publishers. I don't have experience with publishers doing this. My guess is, if this indeed happens, it's a phenomenon of the YA realm, where Booktubers hold a great deal of sway.

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It's surprising to me too. But I note from your comment that the Booktuber doesn't say she's paid by the publisher, which is what's been assumed in this thread. And adding that to the comments I received from my publishing PR friends, I am becoming more skeptical that it's trade publishers paying for these reviews. I'll see if I can find out more.

From what I've heard, these fees are paid by author-hired publicists. So the book is at St. Martin's or Dutton or whatever, but the PR budget and activity is independent of the company.

MiloMilo said:

From what I've heard, these fees are paid by author-hired publicists. So the book is at St. Martin's or Dutton or whatever, but the PR budget and activity is independent of the company.

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I wondered if that might be the case. But upthread, people specified that publishers were paying.

Old Hack said:

I wondered if that might be the case. But upthread, people specified that publishers were paying.

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It's an interesting video.... The quote from the video on sponsored videos from publishers is:

"Generally... this is something that the publisher invites you to do. They'll ask you to film some kind of video that centers around this new release, whether that means filming a full review for the book, or doing a tag or a video inspired by that release... they've always sent me a copy of the book to the hold in the video and then also offered me some kind of monetary compensation for just creating the video. You'll sign a contract, you get a book, you film a video, you'll post it, you'll get paid... but the publishers have no say in what you post." But -- she goes on to read from a contract to her from a publisher, and here it states the publisher retains the right to edit any factual information that may not be right, or spoilers that reveal the ending etc, but not cut her style or her opinion. Sometimes it does look like a general promo post that the reviewer does: Author, title, blurb (brief mention), sometimes a review.

I've never heard about this before. I've seen book bloggers (non-youtube) come in and say they have to send publishers copies of reviews for them to decide on whether that reviewing company is experienced and the right fit for the publisher to regularly send review copies, but sponsoring on youtube? *Scratches head*

Something new I've noticed on authors and reviews is that one or two who have arc teams will offer gift voucher giveaways once the reviews are posted on Amazon etc. I saw one author go from 0 to 65 reviews in a few days. I don't think I could sleep comfortably knowing money at any stage had been offered.

Thank you for asking around about this, Old Hack! I'm interested to know what you turn up.

Old Hack said:

I wondered if that might be the case. But upthread, people specified that publishers were paying.

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I think the videos do sometimes come with tags like "sponsored by Harper Collins," which then also appear in the vloggers' Goodreads reviews. But I don't know as much about BookTube as I should. I only found out about this because there were criticisms on Twitter of the content of reviews of a certain highly hyped YA book, which, IIRC, led to the BookTuber making her video to explain how sponsorship works.

I have heard of trade-published authors creating review incentives, such as posting bonus content once they get a particular number of reviews. But I think there's an increasing concern that even this could get an author in trouble with Amazon. I have run giveaways and sent off the books with a note saying that, while I don't expect a review as a quid pro quo, I'd certainly be happy to have one. So far it hasn't netted me any reviews. Most of them came early via NetGalley and a blog tour that the bloggers kindly ran for free.

I noticed she had replied to almost every question on her video, and she was kind enough to answer ours, just for the record:

Emma, I was curious, do the paid sponsorships come directly from the publishers? Or are they coming from author-hired publicists / 3rd party marketers working on behalf of the publishers? When someone says 'sponsored by HarperCollins', is there another entity involved between them and the Booktuber?

Justin sometimes!!! It depends but even if you are being contacted by a company that's hired by the publisher, the sponsorship (books, materials, the actual payment) is still from the publishers, so the sponsor is the publisher. It can really be either!

For anyone not familiar with the booktube community, it's really a small group of around 10 to 20 book vloggers who have sponsored content (their followers ranging in amounts from about 10k to 300k), and probably a few hundred more without as much influence. It's a different realm than written blog reviews, but there is overlap on social media, and their opinions on books are consistent across the board.

Justin K said:

Emma, I was curious, do the paid sponsorships come directly from the publishers? Or are they coming from author-hired publicists / 3rd party marketers working on behalf of the publishers? When someone says 'sponsored by HarperCollins', is there another entity involved between them and the Booktuber?

Justin sometimes!!! It depends but even if you are being contacted by a company that's hired by the publisher, the sponsorship (books, materials, the actual payment) is still from the publishers, so the sponsor is the publisher. It can really be either!

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My bold.

Doesn't this suggest that the sponsorship they receive can come in the form of books? In which case, it's just being given the books to review. I do a lot of sewing, and some of the blogs I read about that are sponsored by fabric companies etc which provide the materials to make the pretty things featured, which is the same.

Of course, it could be that the reviewers are given money by publishers; and they could get round the "don't pay for reviews" thing by paying for other things.

I've asked a few people about this now: marketing and publicity people in the US and UK, both employed by publishers and freelancers. Not one of them knows about paying for reviews in the way this suggests, so I'm not getting anywhere--yet--in finding out more.

So I'd like to re-ignite this thread with a recent happening pertaining to sponsored reviews organized by big name publishers. And this is the first time I've heard of something like this, but I was waiting for it to happen, and it's worth knowing about.

Basically, upon hearing that Veronica Roth's 'Carve the Mark' would be given an unfavorable review by Booktuber Riley Marie (who was taking part in a sponsored review campaign), Harper decided to cut their partnership with her. Now in addition to claims that the book is racist, Harper is undoubtedly going to get burned for trying to disregard that review, and for sponsoring only positive reviews.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1789138449

Just wanted to chime in and say that I'm open to reviews. Just need a copy of the book, but I don't accept cash - though I do take donations. But no matter what, my reviews are honest and mine alone - though I admit to probably liking more books than I should, I'm a voracious reader of all genres. Hell, any book I can get my hands on works. I've recently started my book blog over as it was time for a change, and I was paying too much for very little service.

I've heard of publishers paying reviewers, but that was more in regards to reviewing being more or less a full time job rather than paying for reviews. I've never been offered payment for a review by a publisher, at least not yet.

RaiscaraAvalon said:

I've heard of publishers paying reviewers, but that was more in regards to reviewing being more or less a full time job rather than paying for reviews. I've never been offered payment for a review by a publisher, at least not yet.

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It's unlikely to happen if you're a book blogger, as the standard for written reviews is a copy of the book. Blogs are more likely to make money through things like affiliate schemes and unconnected advertising. This is how I make money from my blog.

It's people making videos who are getting paid directly for their reviews. The current situation shows the issue with that, as there's always going to be the worry that a bad review means the money will stop. Which is exactly what happened the moment the review went from "I liked it with a few criticisms" to "Wow, this book was offensive". People making videos about books can't be too negative if they want to be paid.