Anti-Piracy and Review bloggers delimna
Lets get a few things straight here.
When you are a review blogger/review company YOU as the owner of that blog and ultimate boss of that review team are suppose to make sound judgment on the people you allow into you circle and pass books along to.
When an author sends you a book for review, knowing full well that you have an entire team and that anyone on that team might select that book for review, they are entrusting you and your judgment of your team that their books will not be distributed outside of the sole purpose of you or one of your review team to providing an honest review of their book, therefore you are working as an extension of the Author. IT IS NOT PIRATING.
Right now because this is a hot topic everyone is misconstruing the original message. Mrs. Mummert's sole purpose (and i'm only going by what I read here) was to point out that SHE NEVER PROVIDED THIS BOOK TO THAT BLOG AS A GIVEAWAY ITEM, thus posing the question, just where did they get the book from? How in the world were they going to gift it to anyone if #1 the author didn't provide them a copy as a gift. #2 they weren't gifting the book to the winner through an Amazon gift. Sending what is suppose to be a GIFT directly to a kindle.com email address is bassackwards. This in no way shape or form relates to ARC's provided to tour companies or reviewers for reviews.
Why am I writing this, because all of a sudden I have authors cringing over how to distribute their books to reviewers. The answer is simple, you do that as you have always done. And as an Author if you are now questioning what exactly that tour company you hired to handle your book tour is doing with the left over ARC of you book, then I suggest you look at other tour companies, because if that questions even pops into your head then you need to look elsewhere.
Honesty, Trust and Credibility are the major components of a Tour Company entrusted with your Intellectual Property. Choose wisely, research, and ask for recommendations.
Its unfortunate that everyone right now is freaking out over what is happening with their books, but I honestly believe that its become the big fish story. As I started out with, Mrs. Mummert's post was directly related to GIVEAWAY'S AND CONTESTS, (and I'm a SUPER DUPER FAN OF HERS by the way) it was not related to books provided to blogs for reviews. Aleatha Romig even clarified this in a post earlier today, that bloggers/tour companies given review copies were working as an extension of the author with the authors FULL PERMISSION to distribute the book under defined terms and circumstances.
So here's how this works. Drue's Random Chatter is a Book Promotions Company, Drue & Sassy's Review's and Sassy Ray's Reviews are Review Companies. We have a wonderful review team who we trust. We will ONLY provide your book to those people on our review team who would like to provide an honest review of your book. BUT, we will not give out personal information of our review team, that would be asking us to violate the confidentiality our review team has entrusted us with. If you want your book reviewed, please fill out the review request form and provide a copy of your book. We will provide the review, but we will in no way shape or form distribute your book outside of that purpose, without your expressed written authorization. And I'm sorry this is going to sound harsh, but if you cannot accept that, than please go elsewhere and look for reviews. I am not going to increase my already overflowing workload to accommodate hysteria. IRL I am an Corporate and Intellectual Property Law Paralegal, I can probably recite IP laws to you in my sleep and I know full well the repercussions of breaching confidentiality or infringing on IP.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, everyone take a step back, re-read Mrs. Mummert's post and stop reading in between the lines.
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