[...] the comments. Then Johanna pulls the blog equivalent of bringing all of her friends to a debate by making her response to NeilAlien into another post on her blog. NeilAlien then responds on his blog wrapping the whole thing up in a [...]

[...] ethics of accepting free things for review is being debated amongst comic reviewers. Can you give an unbiased opinion about a book or comic or DVD or whatever if it’s a freebie? [...]

I know that making people aware that your work exists is the first battle, but one of the things one might get if someone reviews your work just because a complimentary copy was received (and not because the complimentary copy inspired commentary) is a review that pretty much says “This comic exists.”

Since that clearly isn’t workable in a lot of cases, though, informing your audience where the material came from when you didn’t seems like a good compromise.

I write a lot of book reviews, and I’ve gotten my share of unsolicited review copies (not many, but more than I’d expected). They tend to get moved to the bottom of the reading stack, simply because I feel obligated to read and review things that I’ve asked about, or things people have actually asked me if I’d review. When I get the chance, I review unsolicited stuff.

Review copies are promotional pieces, and should be factored into the cost of advertising. Nobody should feel obligated at all to read and review unsolicited material.

I wanted to add that things I choose to review – and I can only imagine other people work like this, but have no hard proof – get chosen in regard to how interesting it will be to read a review about it, positive or negative. Reviewers aren’t producing catalogs, they are writers and, as with any writers, they want their piece to be good. Now, in some cases, people are assigned to write reviews for specific things and they make of it what they will, but if you have the autonomy to do so, you are likely to cover things that interest you, just as the creators sending the work write and draw what interests them. Maybe they need to stop looking at reviewers as fans or press agents and understand that they are writers and creative people, as well.

Great point, Colleen. The internet revolution should be exciting for creators, that they can get publicity and review in so many more places than they used to when TPTB and five big publications/editors controlled nearly all public discussion.

[...] I don’t want to beat the review copy discussion to death, but in comments for the most recent post, myk had some concrete advice I wanted to [...]

[...] thing that struck me as odd during the “review copies or no review copies” debabte over at Johanna´s is that nobody thought of something that´s a given in the music industry – at [...]

DC sends me a box of books every few months from both their CMX and Vertigo lines, and while there’s a lot in the mix that ends up going to the back of the shelf, there’ve been several titles when on a rainy day, sitting bored at my desk with nothing better to do than procrastinate, I’ve read a few that have actually managed to get me hooked and looking forward to the rest.

Honestly, the cover and the pitch of a book often don’t give it due justice, so it’s nice to find those unexpected surprises every now and then and to be able to share them with others. :)

To earn the right for these comics, Johanna has to put the labor of reviewing these comics and the costs of hosting this site. Johanna’s obviously happy to do it, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no cost to her.

I think you’ve been quite thoughtful in how you’ve handled this, Johanna. I like that you’re disclosing whether the book is given to you as a comp, but I’m not sure if that’s a necessary step, or if that will lead you to getting less comp copies. I’d hate for that to happen, because I like seeing your reviews. You’ve steered me to a few books I wouldn’t have otherwise tried (like Iron Wok Jan).

And while hardly anyone read it, it still got to me. I think you provide an excellent service. Which is to have a great deal of interesting things to say. My friend and I often discuss how prolific your entries are. And I, for one, appreciate it.

There is something for everyone… to like and to dislike.

A fairly big discussion went on in the lit blogosphere late last year (and then spilled over to the kid lit bloggers) over review copies and whether or not reviewers/blogger were required to tell readers where the books came from. The insinuation was that if you received free books and gave positive reviews of said books then perhaps you were doing those reviews only to keep getting free books – and weren’t being sincere about your opinon.

Well, you can imagine how a lot of folks responded to that.

The main difference I saw in that discussion (and it spread from metaxucafe where everyone weighed in to Ed Rants where Ed really wasted a bunch of people and on and on) was between reviewers who receive hundreds (or in the case of you comics reviewers probably thousands) of review copies a year vs bloggers who get maybe a dozen free titles annually. The motivations for the guys who get only a few are anyone’s guess, although I can’t imagine reading a bad book and giving it a positive review in the hopes of receiving more bad books. (And I said as much at the time.)

For me, between Bookslut and Booklist (and two other smaller sites I write for) I received over 500 books last year. The Booklist titles come to me from the ALA and I am bound to review them or refuse to review and explain why. For Bookslut, the game is wide open though. If I request the book then I will read it (or read enough to know I hate it) – I try to be very careful about books I request though so I usually only hate about a dozen a year. If it arrives unrequested then I do give it a look (sometimes only a minute is enough if it’s totally not in my areas of interest) and I might very well review it (this just happened recently with two books that will run in my April column). Otherwise, the books go to family, friends or the local thrift shop run by some very nice church ladies. And maybe once a reader finds one of those books they get turned on to the author and go buy more titles of the author’s work – who knows. I have to keep moving them out the door though or I would be buried and that is just how it is.

I find these questions about reviewing books – and what a reviewer is morally bound to do – and accepting review copies to be very naive. I am sure it is frustrating for creators to know their books (or comics) are being sent out there and then not hear anything from reviewers, but it is just one more step in the long frustrating game of publication. Honestly, I think writers should be glad that there are so many more venues for their books to be reviewed now then in the past – at least with the web you can get your work reviewed by literally hundreds of places, rather than relying on a very few the way it was twenty years ago. At least you have a decent shot to get some publicity.

And as far as being grateful for these review copies, well if the book is one I like then I show my gratitude for reading it with a thoughtful and positive review that will hopefully bring the author new fans. And if that is not enough, then I am sorry – it is, after all, the only thing I am bound to do.

Neilalien’s contention that Johanna’s not exhibiting a sense of joy about the free comics she gets is unprofessional seems a bit off to me, though. I’d argue the opposite; that it’s the “fan” reviewer who comes off as unprofessional, sounding more like a cheerleader for their favorite supplier publisher who loads them up with freebies with the implicit understanding that rave reviews are the payoff.

If anything, my experience has shown that a positive review from Johanna is a lot more credible than one from some other similarly prominent reviewers, especially when it comes to certain publishers.