New self-published book review service – fee-based reviews

This sounds strange to me – paying a reviewer to review your book.  I can’t imagine that too many bad reviews will come out of this service.  However, since it is connected with the superb Publishing Perspectives it lends the venture credibility and is probably worth a look.  It is certainly hard enough to plow your way through the morass of self-published books.  Here’s what they say about their new service:

… my company, BlueInk Review, is excited to be collaborating with Publishing Perspectives to bring you some of the best work emerging from this new mountain of material.

BlueInk Review is a fee-based book review service offering self-publishing authors honest and credible reviews written by professional book reviewers, including critics who have written for such high profile publications as The New York Times and Washington Post. Authors pay a fee, but that in no way influences the nature of the review. (For more discussion of this, check out Managing Partner Patti Thorn’s article for Publishing Perspectives, “Making the Case for Fee-based Reviews of Self-published Books”).

Beginning today, Publishing Perspectives will offer a monthly selection of our Starred titles, books of special note.

As a founding partner of BlueInk and a publishing professional with over 20 years experience selling both domestic and foreign rights to books  — including Dava Sobel’s Longitude and Sebastian Junger’sFire, among other bestsellers — I am well aware that your time is too short to waste vetting one mediocre book after another. We require our critics to handle our reviews in the same way they would reviews for a major newspaper or periodical; our Starred Reviews are granted seriously and sparingly.