This has been the talk on twitter yesterday (Mon Oct 5th) and on a few blog posts that I saw on my blog reader.
An Article on MSNBC website that states that bloggers have to disclose if they have received a product for free or have been paid for reviewing products. This is something that I know we’ll all want to pay attention to, especially since the fines can reach up to $11,000 per violation.http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33177160/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
The law will start being enforced on December 1st.
I am not sure how this will play out for me and my fellow Canadian bloggers.
Anyways, I just wanted to put it out there that I don’t get paid for reviews. My only compensation I receive is the books I receive from publishers and/or authors and I do make a note of that in my reviews. So all my reviews are 100% my thoughts and opinions and my opinions are not swayed by the way I receive my book.
If you are reading this on a blog or website other than Cindy’s Love Of Books or via a feedreader, this content has been stolen and used without permission.
Thanks Cindy for bringing this to my attention. I do wonder how it will play out for us Canadians. What if we receive a book from an American publisher – do we then disclose it? We’ll have to keep up to date with this
I was wondering if this would affect Canadian bloggers at all – you’ll have to keep us posted.
The FTC rules are so vague. One representative of the FTC said that keeping a review book would be considered compensation. That is so absurd!
I was reading about this as well yesterday and wondered the same thing: how will this affect Canadians? In my opinion, I feel that as long as we bloggers state that we have received a “review copy”, we should be good to go. In one interview I read online, the people who were making the legistlation suggested “sending the review books back to the reviewers once we were done” so that it wouldn’t be considered compensation. Ridiculous! I just hope that this doesn’t affect the companies sending us books to review- book blogs are such a great way of promoting books to avid readers!
That article is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever read. I worked for a newspaper for many years, and we received free books and products ALL the time. Most of them went into an annual auction, and the money went to charity. But I don’t remember book or music reviewers EVER being REQUIRED BY THE FTC to either give the products back or declare in the review where the materials came from. It was left up to us to handle our own ethics.
Rather than trying to control everyone, they should invest their time and money into teaching people how to think for themselves and to separate genuine content from advertisements.
I’m an American in Canada, and I think it’s mostly hooey. They don’t care about book bloggers; they’re going after the people who have blogs devoted entirely to product reviews and who give everything a glowing review because they were paid to do so. I highly doubt that American book bloggers have anything to worry about.