. . . I have received no free materials, no payment, and no promised service in exchange for blogging. Others, like Daniel Kalder may end up having to splash nonsense like the start of this post across all their book reviews posted online:
In a fascinating interview conducted with Richard Cleland of the FTC, books blogger Edward Champion exposed the manifold incoherencies in the guidelines. Read the whole thing, for yea verily, it abounds in absurdity. What leapt out at me was the blanket assertion made by Cleland that “when a publisher sends a book to a blogger, there is the expectation of a good review”.
To which Champion replies: “I informed him that this was not always the case and observed that some bloggers often receive 20 to 50 books a week. In such cases, the publisher hopes for a review, good or bad. Cleland didn’t see it that way.”
“If a blogger received enough books,” said Cleland, “he could open up a used bookstore.”
Got that? Good Lord, the man’s a genius! I never realised this criticism lark could be so lucrative! Yes indeed, in Cleland’s brave new world a review copy is compensation, and a review from a blogger is a priori an endorsement, even if negative. Mysteriously the FTC does not require newspapers to disclose how they come by the books they review, or any other freebies their journalists might receive. And yet to pick one obvious example, almost all travel journalism actually is built on the kind of payola/payback system Cleland ascribes to book reviewing, so I can’t see why not.
