Tours, stats, author access: Yes, all three of things make me go "huh?"

I have never had a publisher ask me about statistics or any of those other things. Ever. And I get more than enough books; and continue to have publishers ask me about recieving ARCs/ finished books.

Tours: it's easy. You email the author. You ask the questions. All these arbitrary rules? And for -- author access? Frankly, I'm puzzled. And I feel badly for the authors being charged that much money.

This type of thing is why I say it is so hard to judge a readership/impact of a blog; and that it is impossible to judge the impact of book purchasing. Buzz doesn't matter if it doesn't translate to sales, and I have no idea how that could be measured.

Well, I'm not eligible for that blog tour thing (sob sob). Not only is my statcounter untrustworthy, I don't get an average of three comments on my reviews. Comments on reviews are hard to come by...and I'm guilty myself for not taking enough time to say "Interesting!" or "Sounds good!" Sigh.

Well, great Colleen, now I feel guilty for doing blog tours too! :)

I've never heard of the Traveling to Teens site but I must admit that I've never seen a policy like that before. It does seem a bit crazy. Perhaps because it's a teen thing? I don't know.

I do think that authors can successfully put together their own blog tour without using a tour company. But frankly, a lot of them would rather have the work done for them. And what's wrong with that? There are a few authors who are unapproachable if it weren't for the fact that they were on tour. For me, this is a plus. I do tours. But only for books that I think I'd read anyways. It is a lot of work. But if we were compensated, then wouldn't we get into this whole paying per review controversy? That's a whole other animal.

Second, I contact A LOT of authors from books that I just read from the library, my own collection, etc. and ask if they would be willing to do an interview. Most of the time, they are more than willing! I'd say 1/2 of my interviews are one's that I arranged myself. But the plus of blog tours for me, is the opportunity to interview the author. If I couldn't, then it probably wouldn't be worth it.

As for the whole popularity thing. I do not think that blog tours bring in traffic. If anything it drives traffic the other way around.

I don't think blog tours bring traffic to the blog either. I've never seen my stats go up. A blog with a good number of visitors will help promote a book, IMO, but that whole thing about proving stats is bonkers. I've never had to beg to be on a blog tour, in fact, most tour organizers send me polite emails offering books they believe I'd be interested in. I don't mind blog tours but I try not to be in too many and only books I think I'd like.

Blog tours - as an avid reader of both blogs and books, I find them to range from 'mildly irritating' to 'extremely annoying google reader spam'. That's my personal opinion and certainly not an opinion shared by many.

The tours that make the rounds over a few weeks or months are the least annoying. I'll usually read the first few, but by then I've decided whether or not I'm going to read the book. If a blogger is posting about a book I've already read 6 reviews for, I'm not going to read any more. By then the book is either on my TBR list or not.

Those blog tours where the same book is reviewed on a long list of blogs on the same day are the ones that I never ever read (either the reviews or the books. When I open my google reader and see multiple posts about the same book on the same day, I just automatically mark them all as read and don't read a single one. I know this marketing strategy must work for some people, but for me it's a complete turnoff. Rather than making me interested in the book, it makes me more likely to avoid the book.

I am the evil person who charges money to authors and publishers for coordinating blog tours. Why do my partner and I charge so much? Because it takes a LOT of time to identify and recruit 10 or 15 bloggers who are interested in reading and reviewing a book on a particular date during the tour, not to mention staying on top of all the details. Frankly, my prices are lower than many other tour companies.

Could an author put a tour together on their own? Definitely, and many of them do. But there are plenty of other authors/publishers who don't have the time or the connections to do this on their own, so they hire me, and judging from the repeat business and testimonials I've received I guess they think it's worth the money.

Natasha - it's not about feeling guilty and I know you guys do blog tours (heck tons of folks around the blogosphere do including me) so please don't think that. I'm just surprised by how some of them are put together.

Lisa - Never said you were evil. My point was that someone gets paid a lot of money and it's not the bloggers who writer the reviews. I'm just pointing it out, everyone can come to their own conclusions.

This brief(and it is brief) mention of blog tours was not about the authors either but the bloggers and how it appears from that perspective.

There are plenty of quick tools you can use to assess whether or not a blog is getting read. These are what we tried to talk about at our panel....mentioning things like comments, technorati, and alexa as being an "at a glance" way to measure if the blog is being read. The moment you try to put definite measurements on it, it gets tricky. None of these things are an exact science, they have inconsistencies and errors...like Liz said it's hard to measure a blog's reach, but it does make sense to at least try to use the tools that are available.

I review the books that I want to read whether they come to me through a blog tour or otherwise. When another blogger brought this up about a year ago (I'm sorry, I can't remember who it was), there were authors who echoed what Lisa said....they had oganized their own tours but the sheer amount of time it took made them willing to pay someone else to coordinate it in the future.

Looking forward to the roundtable!

Natasha does bring up an interesting point that if bloggers did see money from this then they would be paid to review directly from the author which is sticky. But not paying bloggers anything while asking they do the most work (reading the book and then reviewing it or interviewing the author) is also sticky (at least to me).

The blog tour seems to be sold to bloggers on the fallacy that their site numbers will increase and while that might be true for a day, I have never heard of a benefit beyond that (And as Suzi points out the bloggers at the end of the tour will likely see a drop in numbers as readers are bored with that book/author.) In the end, the only true return in these instances is a book you might or might not like and an email exchange with an author you might never have heard of. It's something for bloggers to think about is all I'm saying.

Lisa: Bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. You're running a scam and you know it.

For what it's worth, I single-handedly organized the above-linked roundtable discussion with emails and phone calls. I found out how many books were available to send, and wrangled together a group of bloggers who were a good fit (without badgering them for stats or any of the other nonsense and requirements listed on that damn site) and that represented variegated perspectives and backgrounds. I'm the guy handling all the admin stuff. And there's no pressure for the roundtable participants to post every goddam day like that. That's simply insulting of people's spare time. The publisher only sends out the books.

This took less than half a day. By your rates, I made $898 in one day. Thought and consideration, yes. It certainly didn't take the time you're claiming. And I didn't need a partner.

So either you're blowing all this money on overhead or you're just simply inefficient or, honey, you just ain't got the smarts.

One other thing I should point out. I don't charge for roundtable discussions because I very much believe in editorial integrity, not crass profit along the lines of Ms. Munley. No money exchanges hands in my roundtable discussions. If the author is available to participate, not only do I feature an accompanying podcast interview, but I insulate the author from the participants so that the participants can talk freely without the author peering over their shoulders. I encourage all the participants to be open and candid about the books so that editorial ethics can flourish and the whole operation doesn't exist to market a book.

To look upon books strictly as a commercial enterprise is, to my mind, akin to handing over your soul to a CEO. It's the kind of despicable betrayal that people were once nailed to walls for.

Colleen says, "The blog tour seems to be sold to bloggers on the fallacy that their site numbers will increase." Blog tours have, well at least to me, never been sold on this premise. I've always thought of it the other way around. Start with good bloggers with decent traffic and you send that traffic to the author. It's more about promoting the book, not the blog.

I got that idea from the blog tour sites themselves Natasha - here's the quote from one of them: "This kind of exposure can increase your blog traffic as well as create interest in the author’s book, so it’s a win/win for everyone!"

Blog tours & numbers: I have a problem with using a quantitative method to judge a blog. (Hmm...I cannot get into the blog at the moment. Marked private? Probably my computer acting up, but now I'll have to go on memory.) As I recollect, the site in question was pure data. No "show us your best interview so we can see if your interview skills are up to snuff" or "submit your three best reviews". Then, "you must comment", creates the illusion that people are commenting because they want to, if the reader doesn't know these are 'mandatory'.

I don't have a problem with blog tours -- far from it! I have an issue with hard numbers being the only judge (ie "popularity" rather than quality of reviews/interviews), especially (with this specific tour example) of the numbers being inflated through mandatory commenting. A circular logic is created (join if your numbers are high/this makes the number higher/ the 'best' bloggers are the ones with the 'most' numbers) with nothing addressing the actually quality involved, whether its a review, an analysis, an interview.

During my hour and a half drive home tonight, I considered the different types of tours. For me, it boils down to this: is it 'reporting'? Or is it a commercial/infomercial? One of my fave magazines is Lucky, which is basically an entire mag of commercials/infomercials, so that does not turn me off but it's important to know the difference. If the author/publisher is paying for it, then it veers into infomerical/commercial territory. I confess to not having read enough to know, but my next question is then, do the blog readers know this? Does the tour state it's the result of payment from the author/publisher? Which has nothing to do with whether a review is "bad" or "good" but has everything to do with what the motivation is for the buzz being created.

Edward, I am absolutely not running a scam. Talk to any of my clients. Talk to any of my tour hosts. No one is unhappy and no one is being scammed.

You clearly don't understand my business and I have no idea why you're feeling so hostile towards me, or why you'd be comparing what I do to your roundtable discussions.

We're talking about two different things. Can an author call you and ask you to hold a roundtable discussion of their book, for free? Or do YOU choose the title? And what's in it for the author? Are they gaining online exposure? Increased visibility and/or promotion of their book? And let's suppose you had 10 authors this month wanting to do your roundtable discussions. Now you need a bigger pool of people for your discussions, unless you're going to use the same ones again and again.

You're talking about a literary discussion. I'm talking about publicity. Blog tours are for publicity of a book and that is what the authors and publishers are paying for. The bloggers get to read a book (which they would do anyway) and, if they choose, interview an author or invite the author to guest post- many bloggers love that kind of author interaction. Who, exactly, is getting hurt by that?

I'm a book blogger too and I don't charge for reviews or the discussions we're doing this summer or anything at all on my personal blog. I don't have any advertising. Heck, I'm not even an amazon associate like most of the book bloggers out there. I do it because I love to read, plain and simple.
I read 8-10 books a month and post reviews on my blog. I know the time involved in that. Bloggers aren't reading for profit, they're reading because they love it.

Paying a blog tour company to coordinate the tour doesn't ensure good reviews for a book. NO one is required to give a good review, and by the same token no one is being promised a good review. No one is being bought. There is no 'payola'. If the reviewer likes the book, great. If they don't, fine. It's about exposure, not glowing reviews.

What do you suggest, that I pay the reviewers for their time? Or are you suggesting that I work for free? Do book PR people and publicists work for free? How is this different?

You say you could put a tour together in half a day. TO THAT, I say- bullshit. At least, not if you want a quality tour. I actually screen the blogs I recruit for these tours, I don't just contact my blogging friends. I might have to look through 50 blogs to identify 10 that would be a good fit, and of those 10, maybe a 3rd will agree to review the book. So to say I don't work hard is again, bullshit.

Ok, I'm getting sick of defending myself. I know that I am a person of integrity and your little hissy fit doesn't change that.

Have a nice day.

I have occasionally had a publisher ask me for an idea of my stats, and I've given a ballpark number on that (though even then it's a set of numbers, really). Having to prove something with snapshots of my stats. Um, no.

My views on large blog tours around the same book on the same day are pretty much the same as SuziQ's above - maybe a little less harsh, but these tours definitely don't make me want to read a book.

Oh, and to comment on a couple of other things from the original post, Colleen, I loved that link to the Twilight post (how it created an avid young reader). And you've made me want to re-read Down a Dark Hall, too.

I think one publishing company asked for our stats... after approaching us. We never answered them. I prefer to receive books from people who've actually been to our site and like our reviews and/or know we review for a certain age group and ask if we're interested.


As a writer myself, I'm grateful for all blog and print mentions of my books, but I think a book of itself needs to attract positive attention -- I can't see buying that attention, because it does seem to be a slippery slope there with determining for what the author is paying. Some interesting points made.

Okay, WOW, to that Emerging Writers blog. Just... wow. Twilight... really does rock some worlds.

Lisa Munley: Let us be clear on this. You're nothing more than a lobbyist by your own admission, more interested in taking money than offering anything even close to editorial integrity.

You take money from publishers. They expect you to set up a blog tour. Let us be clear. They BUY coverage from you. BUY. You view the blog as a billboard, when it is a legitimate outlet run by a feeling and thinking person. And even when we take away the ethics, you don't even have the decency to spread the wealth.

That you cannot see anything wrong or ethically suspicious with this is vaguely sociopathic, to say the least.

You are everything that is wrong with the publishing industry. And your type will fail. Your type will lose.

An author can indeed contact me (through a publicist) and attempt to pitch me for a review, an interview, or a roundtable discussion. But there is no quid pro quo. You view a blog as nothing more than a shilling opportunity, and your sleazy motivations make me sick.

Actually, I do shift the names and I do check out the blogs and I do match the names to suit the book. And in all cases, I have put organized and put forth thoughtful and intelligent discussions in less than half a day.

Exhibit 1: Eric Kraft's FLYING
http://www.edrants.com/flying-roundtable-stage-one/

Exhibit 2: Nicholson Baker's HUMAN SMOKE (which proved so successful that Simon Winchester lifted many of the observations and even the exact same passage for his talk with Baker at the NYPL)
http://www.edrants.com/human-smoke-part-one/

Exhibit 3: Richard Price's ECHO MAKER (which went on to win a National Book Award)
http://www.edrants.com/echo-maker-roundtable-1/

The simple fact is this. Some gunslingers draw faster than you ever will, and they can do so without the $599 payola.

I follow 350 people on Twitter and there are thousands of blogs in my feed reader. And that's just standard operating procedure. This all comes in addition to a freelance writing career, a daily blog that generally features an 800 to 1,000 word essay every weekday, a podcast that will reach 300 shows very soon, and numerous other tasks. And all this to promote literature in an ethical manner -- without getting the clap you can't seem to shake.

You work hard? Bullshit, lady. You'd be more at home managing a sweathouse in an export processing zone without wiping the sweat off your brow. You've never known what hard work really is. You've never known what decency is. And you'll never understand what the blogosphere really is.

Stats, comments, whatever. There are separate camps on this and I doubt everyone will ever agree.
I do think that the roundtables bring a lot of publicity to the authors and books. It's interesting - if bloggers organize it as book lovers then it's a literary discussion but if publicists (whether indy or working for publishers) organize then it is publicity only. Do readers know the difference? And should we give it a different name depending on who organizes it? I never thought of this for the SBBT & WBBT but clearly Lisa has. It's interesting to see the drop of the term payola which was "pay to play" in the music industry. It was wrong because the listeners did not know that the djs were being paid to spin the records. So - if an author is on a paid blog tour (even if the blogger is not getting the money) should each tour stop note that this is a paid tour?
Now there's an interesting question. (And it makes me think of how publishers pay to have their books fronted on displays at B&N, Borders, etc.)
As to the Twilight post at Dan Wickett's - yes it is awesome. Read the comments, they are really cool as well.
And Jen I'm tempted to read Down a Dark Hall again as well but I'm really worried it won't stand up that well - seems that Lizzie had a bit of trouble with it.

It seems to me there are two different ways of thinking at war here: the commerce-driven (blog tours for the sake of increasing sales and driving blog traffic), and the content-driven (blog tours for the sake of getting the word out and providing a good read).

Hosting a blog tour isn't about bringing traffic to your blog, and unless your special guest is Stephane Meyer, it's not likely to do much in that department. The point of hosting a blog tour (on the blogger's side) is to give those readers a reason to stay. It's about providing quality content to keep them coming back. Pay-per-blogging and spam-touring isn't going to accomplish that goal in the long term.

From the author/publicist side, a blog tour may or may not directly generate sales. In many cases, it probably won't in any significant way. But in order to get people to buy the book, you first have to get them to HEAR about it. I disagree about buzz not mattering if it doesn't translate to sales. The authors I publicize are often first-time authors whose books have a high likelihood of disappearing into obscurity. Buzz, even just a little bit, matters quite a lot to them, and to me.

But then, I'm not in the business of selling books. I'm in the business of getting people to talk about them.

Oh I do agree with you about buzz Nicole because I have seen it. In fact, I think we are starting to see it with Jacqueline Kelly's The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate right now. I love it, Betsy at Fuse Number 8 loves it, Jen Robinson loves it and we have all blogged about it - and people are letting us know they are seeking it out and so it will grow from there. What I don't know is how far this buzz extends - does it stretch beyond our own corner of the lit blogosphere? Probably just because it is a good book but that's not something I could or would track (that is where you fine publicists come in!)

I think Liz is right (several comments back), it's whether or not you are sincere about what you are writing. Paid reviewers in the print media answer only to their editors - they are honest in their opinions and their readers know it. So, if you're reading an interview between an author and blogger is it going to change your opinion to know that the author paid for that interview? Will you be suspicious about the blogger's sincerity? We've had huge discussions about whether or not to state that a review comes from an ARC on our blogs - this is one step beyond that and a new area of discussion.

Well I can tell you, in many if not most cases those print media reviewers are working off ARCs or complimentary copies too. In fact, my guess would be that more bloggers buy their own copies than paid reviewers. Sometimes it's out of necessity (the need to read the book in advance of publication) and sometimes out of convenience. The ethical waters can get just as murky in print media -- publicists fall all over themselves to give free crap to journalists, most of it unwanted.

Getting free crap might influence whether or not a review is printed at all, but does it influence what the review says? Not usually.

I draw the line at the free book, though. A copy of the book is a necessity in order to write a thoughtful review or interview, and dickering about whether the publisher or the reviewer should foot the bill seems silly to me. But a $10 gift card or some other such payment? Not so much. If you're accepting payment for your writing services, then you're compromised, whether you think so or not. You can mitigate that by offering full disclosure (ethically, it's the least you can do) but chances are you'll still be compromised in the reader's eyes. Well, in the discerning reader's eyes, anyway.

It's all about what kind of reputation you want to have as a blogger.

You don't know me. You don't know the first thing about me.

Let me be the first to pat you on the back for all your Twitter followers and all the things you do in a day. Question: why should I care? How is that relevant? Again, YOU DON'T KNOW ME. YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I DO.

Why are you so hostile? There is no point in my trying to have any sort of meaningful dialogue with an irrational, belligerent tyrant. Sociopathic? Whatever.

Ummm - Lisa, I'm thinking this is between you and Ed and I'll leave it at that. He does have his own blog though, if you want to find him over there.

The larger conversation used your company as a jumping off point because what you are doing is something a lot of us have been wondering about ethically. What should be disclosed - as Nicole points out above.

Nicole, I think we all realize that most reviewers are getting ARCs (print or otherwise) and I do agree with what you say about that...it is pretty necessary to do the review. And I do think that it's not that big of a deal. Reviewing for the NYT (for example) would be impossible otherwise. (And unrealistic.)

Everyone makes their own decision about what they think is the right thing to do but just like everything else having to do with reviewing on line (as far as reviewing where you receive ARCs or money or gifts) the lit blogosphere is in a major point of flux where things will change to some degree. Publishers will seek to gain more control and ARCs aren't going to be flying around so easily - it's just too expensive. And authors are going to realize that investing time in the blogosphere - their own time like Justine Larbelestier or Cherie Priest or Neil Gaiman (the gold standard in this level of communication) is worth it. It takes time (before you get published) but the return is huge and it's the direction I would advise any author to take in the long term.

As folks seem to be wondering why I have not closed comments or stopped the discussion, I will say it's mostly because I don't like to tell people how to conduct themselves. You are using your names, linking to your sites, sharing your opinions. And clearly Ed and Lisa don't agree. But the theory is that everyone is grown up enough to sort it out on their own.

However, it's late and I'm going to assume that everyone is done with this anyway. So my suggestion to Lisa about speaking direct to Ed was simply because it had gotten to the point where I think that's all that's left between the two of them and she was the last commenter. So I directed it to her.

If you guys are too polarized to speak about this anymore than let it go. As I said in my last comment, I think things are going to change just because too many questions are being raised about ARCs, tours, etc. But that's for authors and publishers to work out on their own and for bloggers to decide what path they wish to take.

Good Night.

Hi Colleen.

I think you bring up a good point about how publishers are trying to take more control. I actually received an email a few weeks ago that outright said blatantly negative reviews would not be tolerated.

Man was I bummed. I love said publisher's books but that turned me off faster than you can imagine. It's not that I'm ever particularly harsh in my reviews, it's that I want to maintain full ownership over and control over what I say. So that means I can't really review for them from their review copies which means I won't really be reading their books because I get so many review requests.

I sort of wrote about this awhile back if you're interested. If not, that's okay, too!

http://www.myfriendamysblog.com/2009/04/which-american-idol-judge-are-you-book.html

Oh man Amy - that is just wrong! And I can't believe how lame a publisher would be to do this .....but I'm not surprised. There is a pervading opinion/notion that the lit blogosphere in general can be bought.

Dang.

I'll go read your post now.........

Amy: I am appalled that a publisher would even suggest to you that negative reviews would not be tolerated. For what it's worth, I realize that I have been forceful with my comments, leaving some people mystified by my passion. I suppose that I am more of a Simon Cowell type according to Amy's hierarchy.

But I think that my overall point here is that a blogger should never be asked to compromise or settle, when the blogger is, in most cases, offering her services for free. I stand up in the name of ethics and rail against the financial shadiness because I fundamentally believe in the possibilities of blogging -- in part because I've seen it cause tremendous waves. I've seen books that nobody cared about gain a new and much deserved life thanks to the bloggers. So when that possibility is diminished and besmirched by pecuniary interests instead of the sheer passion for books, you better believe that I will be noisy. Bloggers, no matter where they come from, are independent minds that have the capacity to make grand undulations that nobody could possibly predict.

I am in SuziQ and Jen's camps in regrads to blogger tours. If an author is interviewed @ 5 different blogs in one week, it makes me not want to read the book. If I've read the book and loved it I won't post about it, figure they have enough exposure. (and my stat numbers are not up to par) I just don't trust large blog tours, where an author makes several stops (free or not) I've yet to see an author get a bad review at one of these stops. Why would an author stop at a blog where they got a bad review? All the bloggers on the scheduled tour probably did love the book, but how do I know. It doesn't help my unknowing when bloggers link to the other bloggers on the tour, who also really enjoyed said book. I always thought bloggers interviewed authors not for more visitors but because they loved the author's work, and wanted to learn more about them and give their readers the same chance. I always thought of blogger interviews as an intimate affair, like an indie band playing at a small venue. Sure the audience might be small but they're loyal and smart, and willing to financially support art they love.

It's funny, I became aware of or met several interesting new book bloggers at BEA. The last thing I'd want to do is fight with someone I just met. Why so much intensity about all this nonsense above?

I usually agree with Ed on many things, but despite being one of those "lit-bloggers" I have to say I think blog book tours sound just fine. I wouldn't want to participate in one, but I don't see any ethical problem with the format. Speed dating for books, whatever. I think all us book bloggers and lit bloggers ought to lighten the mood up and just enjoy getting to know each other, instead of engaging in this type of territorial rule-making and line-drawing.

But what about a blogger doing the work and someone else getting paid for it, Levi? I do blog tours a couple of times a year and have a blast with them. But someone getting paid hundreds of dollars while I read/review/interview. That troubles me.

And now there's the whole FTC thing about advertising.....

Sure, that makes sense, Colleen. I'm certainly not interested in speaking up for blog book tours. But I think the words in some of these comments are heavy-handed. I don't think it makes sense to evaluate blog book tours on the same strident ethical standards as standard literary criticism.

Several years ago I ran a writing contest called "The Quest" on LitKicks. We charged $20 to join, and some readers criticized me for charging an entry fee. But I know that if we didn't charge an entry fee, I wouldn't have been able to run the contest. I suspect the financial arrangement behind blog book tours is similar -- it's what the person arranging the event felt was necessary to make the event work. As long as there's nothing deceptive about this, I guess it seems reasonable to me. Mainly, I posted my comment because I thought some of these comments were going off the deep end, hostility-wise, and (as parents say) "somebody's going to end up crying".

Point taken Levi - and thanks!

Colleen--regarding Traveling to Teens you have just posted I feel that one point you made struck the most. "Ladies and gentlemen, it really is a popularity contest." as well as asking for stats.

This is not a popularity contest. It's logic, common sense. Take for instance if you're a publisher would you prefer choice a) a blogger who is well established, knows what he/she is doing, that RESULTS in plenty of hits. Or choice b) a blogger who has more posts of OTHER people's contest than anything else, who only wants FREE ARCs which is basically NO hits? Is the choice not obvious?

As for the stats I feel that I HAD I do this. In more than one occasion we have received forms that the bloggers claimed to have so-so hits. We had hoped that people would have ethnics and would not lie to us. But after visiting so many of these blogs we just cannot afford to just "trust" certain people.

I think we will just agree to disagree on this - as I see the hit meter focus as not different from friends on facebook. You can have a lot of hits from people who just jump in and out and don't ever engage on any level about the subjects you discuss. They don't read or search for or buy the books.

This goes back to the difference between organizing tours between bloggers you know and don't which is why I've always worked one way - with those I don't have to check up on for obvious reasons.

Lisa has done a good job of defending her business and her integrity - but as a blogger who has toured books through TLC Book Tours, I just have to say ED YOU ARE WAY OUT OF LINE in your harsh words. TLC Book Tours has never asked for my stats, asked me to review anything other than honestly, and has demonstrated the highest integrity. I wouldn't tour books for them if I thought otherwise. As far as getting paid to review - um, would not THAT be unethical? *laughs* I could just see the nasty comments you would post if a blogger were accepting compensation from an author to review their book!!! I wouldn't accept payment to do a blog tour as that would seem to me to be questionable and I don't begrudge Lisa or her business partner payment for the work they do to set up/coordinate a tour. And apparently authors don't begrudge it either since they seem to be lining up for tours over there.

I have a real problem with the name calling and hostility being directed toward others in this conversation. It is one thing to have a discussion which is civil...it is another thing to throw around accusations which just seem mean spirited and are not grounded in facts.

Just my 2 cents.

This thread is done.