Category Archives: book reviews

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Would you pay for a review?

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I was reading a blog post by Monica Jackson on Blogging in Black that interested me simply because it’s something that’s been on my mind lately. Should I start charging for reviews? Somebody sent me a message asking me if I did on MySpace. (http://myspace.com/joeyreviews add me)

At this point, no. But in the future, I hope to broaden the amount of outlets that I have to put my reviews on. When that happens, I might consider charging a fee to review a book. Now that I think about it, I might charge the fee only if I’m going to broadcast it on multiple outlets. Otherwise, send it, I read it and it gets reviewed…

Monica stated that her ideal world would have reviews and advertising at separate entities. The reality is that reviews are indirectly advertising and marketing. It’s advertising in the sense of promoting the book in a public forum. It’s marketing because the strategy of getting reviews for a books is executed in hopes of generating sales of the book.

Another reason I should be compensated is the amount of time it takes to read a book and write something significant. I takes way more than 60 minutes to accomplish this. Why shouldn’t I get paid for my time and effort? Theoretically, you are not going to send me a book for it to “probably” get reviewed. No, you’re sending that book expecting proper time and effort goes into it to see what it’s about.

Right now, I have about 40 books to review. I’ve had to stop accepting books, so I can focus on the ones I have. The cool thing is that I like to read. I especially like to read books that everybody doesn’t know about. It makes if more fresh that way. But if I’m going to put your book out there, shouldn’t I make something off the front end?

What happens if you pay for a review, and I think you book sucks? Shoot, I might just give you your money back. Better yet, half…I still had to suffer the reading of it, lol.

At this point, I’m just coming up with ideas. But I might be asking for a little ching-ching if I’m going to be doing a lot of promoting of my reviews.

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Book Review: Mistress Me by Venesha for Polka Dotz and Stripez Publishing

It’s been over a month, but I got another book review posted on The Urban Book Source. The book is none other than Mistress Me by the “Urban Barbie Doll” herself, Venesha.

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I hope you enjoy this review as much as I enjoyed writing it! Please leave your questions, comments and/or concerns on the book review’s page.

You can either click on the above picture or click on the following link:
http://theurbanbooksource.com/reviews/books/mistressme.php

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Mari Walker’s Never As Good As The First Time Debuts on Essence Best Sellers List

Congratulations to Mari Walker for her novel debuting at no. 3 on the Essence Best Sellers List for August! Pretty good for her first time being published. Check it out.

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Check out my book review and my interview of the novel Never As Good As the First Timeand Mari Walker on Urban Book Source’s website. We get pretty deep.