Hello, good people of the blogosphere! Today, I'm gonna talk about something you may or may not know: FTC Guidelines when posting an endorsement or testimonial.
Did you know:
When you give someone a review, these guidelines say you're supposed to fully disclose your relationship and method of procurement of the product in question clearly?
Neither did I. Not until I was on Goodreads and checked out the link to the FTC guidelines.
If you were given a free copy of a book in exchange for a review, you're supposed to state that in your endorsement/testimonial.
I didn't see anything on the site that said you had to disclose that information when slamming something with a bad review, but I think it should be common courtesy either way.
This raises the following:
How many authors give their books to readers in exchange for a review and have had the review come back with negative tones, a bad rating, or anything else that's critical and not say where they got the reviewed material? Wouldn't it be safer to simply purchase the books and have it be a verified purchase review? Or to gift them?
I don't have an answer. Just food for thought today. If you're a reviewer, you might consider adding whether or not you were paid for the review in your copy.
Today's questions:
Did you know these guidelines existed? Have you ever paid for a review? Did your reviewer mention they were paid?
Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!
Jo
Good info to share since these rules are fairly new. By the way, Amazon is cracking down on reviews as well. They are even starting to remove reviews from fellow authors since they are considered in direct competition.
ReplyDeleteWhat baffles me about that is: I'm a reader, too. So it's almost like Amazon is saying, "If you write, you can't read/review." That's a problem because most of the writers I know are voracious readers, you know? Thanks for the comment and for stopping by :)
DeleteI didn't know that Amazon was removing posts from other authors, but I did know that they're increasing their guidelines for review posts. I've noticed a few reviews have randomly disappeared from some of my books, and I've also heard from other reviewers that their posts sometimes get deleted...hmmm...
DeleteYou can also have a disclosure page on your blog, which is what many product reviewers do so you don't have to add the disclosure at the end of each blog post. :)
ReplyDeleteTrue. For bloggers like me who rarely do paid posts, I don't mind disclosing individually. But good information for those that do. Thanks for adding that, Beth! :)
Delete