Having said all of that, I think your post here Jordon raises a lot of the other complicated issues that are swirling around the publishing industry, age old dilemmas of power, gatekeepers, distribution of equity and influence, access and inclusiveness…. what I personally would like to see is a greater number of diverse voices in the streams of books dealing with kingdom of God stuff. For that would more accurately portray the citizenship of the kingdom of God.
Just my thoughts…….

Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze program is, in effect, a written contract. If you do a 200 word review, publish it on your blog and and a site like Amazon, send that info to Thomas Nelson, then you can get your next book.

Now maybe I just need to create a boilerplate 200 word “this book is crap” review with spaces for the name of the book and it’s author – because, quite frankly, most of what I’ve been sent from Christian publishers is crap.

But I’d really rather not play the game at all.

I always appreciate your blogging voice & integrity. I believe you were once an OOZE network blogger & now aren’t (I think you didn’t opt-in to our ViralBloggers transition); if there’s any beef you have with TheOOZE or me personally I’d love it if we could talk – either here if it’s general or via email if it’s more personal. I addressed some of this over at Bill’s blog, so forgive me for being repetitive…

Back when we started in early 2006 – with Spencer’s own A Heretic’s Guide to Eternity – we didn’t have the technological capacity we have today, to enable bloggers to select exactly which titles they want. I had to rely on my instincts of what I thought given bloggers would enjoy reading. I was right much of the time, but I was also wrong – some books bored some bloggers. And it sucks to feel obligated to review a book you feel ‘meh’ about.

So anyway, back then we were virtually the only outside provider organizing blog tours. I remember the conversation like it was yesterday, Spencer, Jasmin (my wife) and I sitting at a Baja Fresh in Southern California. We had received great results from Spencer’s campaign, and we said “What if we could do this with a bunch of publishers? What if we could give the best faith bloggers access to some of the best authors and books out there? How many could we do? What would it take?” And our long trial-and-error-and-refinement process began.

In March 2009, enter ViralBloggers.com – now you only select books that you think you’ll be interested in. But you’re right again, with the greater power of choice (to quote young Peter Parker’s uncle Ben) comes greater responsibility – publishers want you to review books you hand-select. While it would be nice to clue(train) ‘em in that no-strings-attached would actually make them seem cooler, it’s simply not possible in the current technological climate. There are too many hard materials costs involved in printing, shipping, administrating, analytics, etc., for publishers to be that hands-off. However, I do have hope that in a year or two, once e-readers are a bit more ubiquitous, that we’ll be able to run more open-ended campaigns with far larger quantities of digital editions.

But – as the disparate voices here chimed in, many of whom are part of the ‘Viral Bloggers’ community under the current arrangement – we do not in any way expect bloggers to post favorable reviews, and we actively stress this.

Daryl Dash (f’r instance) is a Viral Blogger in good (great!) standing and has written a scathing blog review of A New Kind of Christianity – which is the first review you see on Amazon! No whoring here. And – you’ll find this amusing, Daryl – the folks at the publishers did notice your Amazon review, and did notice that you’re part of our Viral Bloggers community – but you know what she said? “That’s perfectly fine!”

I know, Jordon, that the combination of Christ and commerce gets very tricky – and so I appreciate your occasional posts driving out the money-changers! All the same, I can say from personal experience these past four years getting the amazing privilege of doing this for a living, that the vast majority of people I’ve ever worked with, at every stage of this – authors, publishing, in-house marketing, my co-workers at TheOOZE – are full of integrity. They – we – have no desire to manipulate, take advantage of, or whore out anybody. We’re people who love reading, love ideas, love Christ and love online community – and we’re always learning.

Thanks again for your thoughts.

Once I wrap up my pile of 2-3 books to review, I’m looking to move toward interviewing authors on my blog. I’m still thinking through the details, but I tried it with an author and let her talk about her ministry and her book and it seemed to avoid some of the pitfalls of becoming a “review whore.” Thanks for this. We need to keep talking about this issue.

Once I wrap up my pile of books I’m looking to more toward interviewing authors on my blog. I’m still thinking through the details, but I tried it with an author and just let her talk about her ministry and her book and it seemed to avoid some of the pitfalls of becoming a “review whore.” Thanks for this. We need to keep talking about this issue.

But like Mike and Daryl, I’ve had only positive relationships with the publishers I’ve accepted or requested review copies from…and I am a damn good reviewer who won’t spin a review just to save a buck and get a book.

Now if someone out there in Bloggy Land needs a Tropical Island Travel reviewer and will set up as long as I write a glowing review, dude, I have zero integrity on that one and will be writing the sweetheart review while I pack my swimsuit and snorkeling gear.

The bottom line here is influence and messaging. How will we allow our blogging power, however modest (such as mine) may be, how will we shape it to make the blogosphere a better place? Providing honest, intelligent reviews of books (which is an idea a person has taken time to pen into thousands of words) is for sure a very concrete and simple way to do just that.

Even if they are not asking for positive reviews, it is an arrangement where they provide something in exchange for something back and I think that does change things when it is not disclosed.

Again, it’s the non disclosure that bothers me more than anything.

I am not saying that all firms ask for that (most do not) but I don’t think it’s an unheard of practice.

But, the Canadian curlers are doing well, so it’s still a good day. No worries.

When I set up Jordon Cooper Outfitters, I wanted to test out ads there (there is a business plan for that site), and I couldn’t get Adsense to serve them up at all for a couple of days so I tested them on my site to see if the problem was mine or Google’s.

I apparently forgot to delete it (although according to Google’s site, you can’t delete, you can only suspend). The ads should be gone now.

Keep the faith.

And the advertising pic from GR was definitely funny, Triple D.

I had to laugh when I read it in Google Reader. Check out what’s at the bottom of your post, just after “It’s the same reason why I don’t have advertising here.”
http://twitpic.com/14glou