Swapping Reviews

I've used Amazon's free book offer time with several of mine over the past couple of months. When I do that I tend to post a link to it on several of Facebook's "Free Book" groups. I think it helps. I get nice thumbs up messages from people and likes so it's good for morale if nothing else.

It also spawns offers to trade reviews. So typically I'll get a message or two from people I don't know who say that they have a free book and that they will write me a review if I will write them one. I have done this twice I think. At first I was naive, but then I began to think something fishy was going on.

These Facebook profiles usually have an attractive young woman, occasionally a man, as the avatar picture. When you click through most of them can't be viewed and have no history. This could be because of their privacy settings but I wonder whether it isn't because they are created specially for the purpose of promoting ebooks. Often the messages are written in an English that suggests that the writer isn't a native speaker or has mastered the language (no crime in that) but the books themselves are written in good English.

When you look at the books the author's name is not the name of the person on FB who has messaged you. And the books are always How To books. I've been asked to do reviews on How to Sing, How to Detox from Sugar, How to Meditate. Others have been recipe books about Paeleo diets and Smoothies.

They are rarely longer than 25 pages long and they say they normally retail for 5.99. For 24 pages? The content is usually grammatical and well written and with a broad brush approach - pretty much stuff that could be gleaned from the Internet.

When I queried one of the lovely young women who contacted me that her name wasn't the same as that on the book, she said that was understandable as she was merely a "Virtual Assistant". Does that mean she wasn't real at all?

I think that these books are of little real worth though they aren't bad as a general introduction or a basic source of recipes but I wonder whether you taint yourself with the 'infotrash' label if you exchange reviews with them.

While writing an honest review of a book can't be bad practice, I wonder what Amazon thinks about people spewing out hundreds of infotitles - recipes and how to books? Often the author claims to be a doctor or highly qualified nutritionist, but I have no way of easily checking these claims - my hunch is that they are fake authors with fake credentials ghost written by professional writers who regurgitate websites.