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An author asked me today to review his book.

It's in my genre, so I said, sure, send it to me in a pdf (old school; I don't own a kindle).

His response, "You can pick it up in pdf format on Smashwords."

I did look it up and it was posted (by an unknown author) for $5.

I was greatly put off because I don't agree that if you seek another person's review that you should ask for them to pay for the book to boost your sales / income.

Opinions?

Personally I wouldn't even have gone to the bother of looking it up. Clearly he/she wasn't really interested in your review.

Thanks Fran. I go out of my way to help other authors. That's great advice. If they won't send it for free, for my time, they don't deserve my opinion. I give my books out for free even without requesting reviews so this one threw me off!

You are right. If an author wants a review, the least he can do is to send it to you free.

Never would ask someone to pay for the review, it should be the other way around. If I request a review. Then I should be paying for the book.

Thanks everyone for the responses. I know how bad we all need reviews but I thought it odd. I give even my paper copies away if someone will promise an honest review.

That was horrible!! This guy is looking for help and wants to charge and put someone out for it?! There is no doubt he should have sent you the book, for free!

That's totally unacceptable! I list my book for free on SW...I'm just grateful to anyone who is interested enough to read it....even more so if they take the time to review it. I would never charge anyone who agrees to review it....if I was selling my book for money, I'd offer to pay them instead.

Thank you all for supporting my position. I tend to be too kind and will buy the book if not asked to do so. We all want the sales. But this guy just put me off by requiring it. Seems like he's more interested in the cash than my opinion (which would have been biased, frankly, due to his insistence I buy his work. Not fair to him as an author or me as a reviewer.)

I would send the author an email asking for a clarification along the lines of, "Hey, I'd love to review your book, but due to time constraints, I'm only reviewing work that is free or paying me to review at the moment.", and then see if he sends you a free copy. It could be that it slipped his mind that you had to pay for the book on the website. (It's a stretch, but still, benefit of doubt...)

"Hey, I'd love to review your book, but due to time constraints, I'm only reviewing work that is free or paying me to review at the moment.",

Why lie? Time constraints have nothing to do with it.

Drop the author a line that says "The opening line of my review will be "This author is a cheap SOB who is unaware of how to act in certain areas of adult life." To see the rest of the review, please send $5 to ..."

I actually asked him to just send me a copy and his response was that the time that he took to write the book was worth more than my time to read it. Being I disagree with that logic, I told him I was not interested.

Wooooooooooooooowwwww. Well, he cleared that up then...so much for benefit of doubt! He asks you for a favor, then asks you to pay for the favor, then tells you that the favor he is asking of you is not worth as much as his own efforts...

I think I'm going to close my eyes and hum loudly to make the buzzing in my head go away.

That happened to me, too! Such a turn-off.

LOL! I'm loving that I found this group!