The Book Review ‘Tipping’ Scam
- slkayne
- Mar 1
- 3 min read
by Sharon Kayne
As I’ve written before, one of the most annoying things about being an indie author is all the marketing sharks that circle you like you’re chum in the water. Sadly, I suspect, many indie authors are easy prey. The marketing sharks offer numerous services: optimizing your website for search engines, creating a video trailer for your book, introducing you to their book club, and getting reviews for your book. I’d like to talk about the book reviewers today because I find them both the most tempting and the most annoying.
They can be very tempting because, as all indie authors know, Amazon reviews are what sell your book. These marketers start off by talking about your book in more than just flattering terms. It seems clear, given the heart-felt way they write about your book, that they didn’t just enjoy your book—they really got it. This is sad because, the truth is, they didn’t actually read your book. They simply ran your book blurb through an AI program and had it compose a sincere-sounding email about it. (Yes, this is one of the ways in which AI is evil—it’s helping scammers sound so much more sincere. It makes you long for the days when all the phishing attempts you got were on behalf of a Nigerian prince and written in broken English. Sigh.)
Then they go on to tell you about their stable of readers who will simply love your book, will happily read it, and will post a review of it on Amazon. All you have to do is send them an electronic version of your book (at no cost to them, of course) and then give them a $15-$20 ‘tip’ as a thank you for their review. They have to call the money a ‘tip’ because Amazon does not allow authors to pay for reviews. So they couch the ‘tip’ as money the reader will use to buy themselves a coffee to enjoy while they read.
That’s why they need the ‘tip’ ahead of time—before they even read the book, much less post the review. I’ve heard this same explanation so many times, I fear that there is a whole cadre of readers out there, dying to read books but lacking both the funds to purchase a book and to purchase the cup of coffee that makes the reading of the book possible. Tragic!
I had a very interesting email exchange with just such a marketer recently. I told her that I thought the review should actually be the ‘tip’ that the readers leave for me—a sort of ‘thank you’ for getting a book for free that I expect other people to pay for. She did not go for this.
Just for fun—and to be honest, because she was annoying me—I posed a simple question to her: Would you go into a new restaurant and say “I’ve noticed that you don’t have a lot of reviews on Yelp, and I’d like to help you. How about you give me and my friends a free meal? When we’re done, we’ll leave reviews on Yelp. And then you’ll tip us—just 15 or 20 bucks each—as a thank you.”
She did not answer my question, but I know the answer already: no. You would not do that. And I know why you would not: because it’s a good bet the restaurant owner would reply, “How about if you and your friends get the fuck out of my restaurant?”
Instead, she told me that I am, essentially, a slave-driving megalomaniac who expects people to drop everything in their lives and read my book straight through without so much as a coffee break. She made me sound like someone who’s cruel enough to kick puppies in my spare time. Just for grins.
The fact is, her “readers” are just random people with Amazon accounts who will run your book through an AI program and post whatever review it spits out. Assuming you actually get the reviews you ‘tipped’ for. Sadly, there are authors who will fall for this spiel. Some of them may actually garner a few of these fake reviews. And all of them will just get screwed out of money.
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