Are you shitting me? Has the world gone completely mad? This is giving authors, publishers and books a really bad name. And it’s embarrassing.

Makes me glad my review blog is so small I’ve never had something like this sent to me. I really was hoping this was a joke when I first saw it on FB and Twitter.

I’m sorry…what? Just…what?

This is not the first time about a publisher sending something like this. Ages ago, I was sent a NDA to sign before I could accept any ARCs from them. I couldn’t believe what I was reading because it mentioned things like trade secrets and so on. I emailed them straight back and said, uh NO FREAKING WAY.

I think my favorite part is the requirement of 400 words, not including their questions. Considering how broad the questions are, what else to they expect you cover?

Also, even without your “outing” these people, it wouldn’t take long for most people to catch on to every review looking the same, provided the reviewers followed the mentioned format.

LOLOLOL. No, really. LOLOLOLOLOL

I have no words but other than to say – HELL NO! No author or publisher is going to dictate what I can write in a review and let alone on how it is distributed. If an author or a pub contacts a reviewer to review a book, they are offering that book for an honest opinion and to let their audience know what the book is about. You can’t control that aspect and seriously a contract UGH.

I too came here via Twitter because I couldn’t believe it. Having read the contract, I still don’t believe it. Consider me mindboggled.

F to the uck no! Bloggers don’t work for the publishers or authors.

Maybe bloggers need to send their own bulletpoint reviewing contract to these out of control publishers and or authors.

This is just utterly ridiculous. And I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to say that this week. Has the world been passing around stupid pills and I somehow missed the memo?! *head desk*

@Nanny – Comment

And that’s ridiculous too! (that someone would ask you to sign something promising not to pirate their book). Pirating books is against the law, AND the law provides for damages to the author in the case of it happening! The author would not need a contractual promise from you to go after you for piracy! That’s like…you steal the author’s car so the author brings a signed document to court to say, “Look! She PROMISED not to steal my car and then she did!” It’s unnecessary, both to prosecute you and to sue for damages, because the law already protects the copyright holder. You are right in that your signing it didn’t give the author any protection (or you any obligation) that either of you didn’t already have.

@insanehussein – Comment So glad I found this site–your style is so much fun! Looks to me like that author is looking to get kicked in the taco.

Oh for crying out loud. I guess I’m just piling on. What everyone else said.

wow. just wow. also 10 cool points to anyone who can dm or email me the author’s name quietly. I just haz to know.

Bwahahahahahaha! I thought this was a joke at first but apparently it isn’t. Wait – actually, it IS a joke.

In one sentence or five words:

The author mentioned in this contract will self-destruct in 10 seconds.

Going just by the info in the post, I’m a little hesitant to start blaming the author for anything other than submitting to/contracting with a publisher who would do such a thing. It’s entirely possible the author is new (probably is, if they’ve signed with some amateurish newbie epublisher) and they may honestly believe this is normal.

That doesn’t mean s/he doesn’t bear responsibility, just that I hate to blame a writer for their publisher’s ridiculous behavior.

And man, is it ridiculous. And man, am I sick of this whole “Reviews should be constructive so authors can learn from them” shit. No. Just no. I’m tired of seeing it from authors who should know better. I love reviewers and think they’re awesome, but If you need to learn how to write by reading reviews of your already-published books, you weren’t ready to be published in the first place.

Yet I just read about a self-published author who said she paid to get a Kirkus review, to boost her situation with Amazon. I didn’t think that was possible, but I don’t believe I am remembering this wrong. It was one of those “Gosh, she’s making a fortune without being published by a New York house!” stories. In PW? WSJ? Can’t remember, but it did raise my eyebrow.

If you have to pay someone to review your book, by definition it is a loser and so are you. At least, that was supposedly true in the “good old days.”

Publishing is changing but the ethical standards remain the same. You can no longer send out the secretarial pool to buy up all the copies of the Jackie Susann book to make it a bestseller, but you can get your peeps to vote for your book on various review sites or put up glowing reviews on Amazon and so on. Buy a review? Why not? Buy a positive review? Even better.

This is WRONG on so many levels, I’m not sure where to start. Let’s just narrow it down to this – New or not – the author should know better. Someone who is trying to make a living selling their words/ideas/thoughts/stories should know better than to DEMAND someone else’s for free. *Shaking head in disgust*

Aside from being misinformed as Stacia pointed out, it is disconcerting to see an author — who should know about the value of copyright — demand full rights to another writer’s (blogger) intellectual property.

@Stacia Kane – Oh Stacia, I love you.

Wow. Aside from the general WTFery of a “contract” for a review, the five required questions caught my eye. I used to do secretarial work for a reasonably successful YA author (for values of “reasonably successful” equal to “made enough from her writing to pay someone else to help triage the daily mail and do similar things so she could work”) and those five questions look really familiar to me. Middle-school teachers with a lack of imagination often hand out templates to their students for letters to authors. The kids are required to write a letter to their favorite author; the teacher apparently grades them on how close they come to this template. Those five questions are darned close to the ones in the form letters. Just swap the fifth one for “Tell the author something about yourself,” and you’d have it.

This sounds very similar to a scheme in which a vanity press promises an author a “Hollywood Coverage” of a book, thence to be shown to “Hollywood Producers” as a way to market their book as a potential movie. I’m guessing the author is the only person who ever sees this coverage, which he/she has to pay for, of course. If you look at a review as part of your own marketing strategy, then it makes sense to control the content. Pretty sad and icky, all around.

My favorite part is the “what did you like best about this book?”. Sometimes, the answer is: “when it ended”, or “that I could easily delete it from my e-device” or “the sound it made hitting my wall.”

I hope you *will* identify the publisher and author. I don’t see why it would be wrong to do so (they can’t have an expectation that a boilerplate contract between themselves and bloggers be private), and it might have the positive effect of making them (and others) rethink this incredibly stupid move.

I’m astonished that nobody seems to have noticed that the contract gives the publisher and author exclusive rights to the review. Now, some of us have been known to sell a review from time to time: this would preclude that. This is not just a grab of right-to-publish: it’s a grab of all rights. Turning your review into a work-for-hire at a rate of $0.00 per review. More f*cked up than you were even thinking! I can understand them wanting a non-exclusive right, just barely.

@insanehussein *blush* Thank you!

Yeah, I didn’t comment on the “exclusive rights” thing because the very idea of it is so outrageous I don’t even know what to say.

Aside, though, from the fact that it’s totally counterproductive; if the only place a review can appear is in your own promotional materials, why ask someone else to write it? The point of a review from another source is that the review is posted on the reviewer’s blog/site/whatever, thus spreading the word about the book.

What sort of idiot goes out of their way to guarantee that no reviewer will be able to discuss the book, anywhere?

As a former IP lawyer, I find this contract abominable. I really hope that a lawyer did not draft this thing. What were they thinking?

The article that Stacia Kane referred to is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/technology/for-2-a-star-a-retailer-gets-5-star-reviews.html?_r=1

We received an email from this “publishing company” over at http://www.thefoundingfields.com and laughed, got pissed, deleted it and basically blackballed the dumbasses.

I’m sort of seconding Stacia Kane’s observation, above. I think this is a case of a newbie author who was literally sold a bill of goods regarding reviews and promotion. No doubt, this ludicrous contract was part of Aziza’s marketing packages, one of the “services” that is constantly flogged with the annoying popup ad, present on every page on their site.

I’m not excusing the author….just noting that this is what happens when desperate writers sign up with predatory vanity houses that promise the moon, stars and sun.