Why We DO NOT Review Ebooks and PDF Books

 

Illegal PDF uploads to download sites is just that: illegal. "Oh, I'll read it online and if I like it I will buy it" is a standard lie and I doubt anyone stating that ever has.  Myself and David Gordon as well as the late Art Wetherell produced two top selling "adult" books for Fantagraphic Books. To say that our dealings showed that a written contract with a publisher meant nothing is an understatement.

When illegal scans of our books started appearing on download sites we contacted Fantagraphics as they were the publishers and had the ability to contact legal authorities and shut down illegal download sites  and via those actions attempt to get financial compensation.  They washed their hands of the whole thing leaving it up to myself to shut down illegal downloaders. There were even attempts at getting those running download sites to pay £1/$1per download -charge the ones downloading. Nope. The last time someone checked was five years ago and had the three of us received a share of that £1/$1 fee we would each have around £3 million each. The downloads were that high. Instead the whole business left a nasty taste in our mouth and we knew never to trust a publisher again. 

Or PDF files.

All of the millions of downloads (last figure is somewhere on this blog) were possible due to PDF files. It is why I never have and never will release anything as a PDF or Epublication.  Once the thieves have the PDF then it is online and ....we lose any money because the thieves who download the books are never going to care about the amount of work and time we put into a book. They just care that they get something for free.

I have been asked more than once whether I can send PDF copies of books to review. I respond with "no" but say I can send hard copies if they forward their addresses. Either an insulting response that indicates they feel you have no right to ask them their mailing address or it's the "How stupid and out of date are you?"  More common is that some never respond. They just want free PDF books to read. Every publisher -big or small- should have a small number of books for review purposes that get sent out. I pay the postage and that's that. It's part of publishing.

When CBO moved to WordPress initially we had PDFs and press releases sent in. The PDF books looked great but then there were problems. Either the book when it finally appeared looked awful quality or never appeared at all and for some reason, as a reviewer, I was held responsible!  Yep, some even complained to WordPress and in the end we had to make a decision and promised WordPress (and now Blogger) that we would only review hard copy books and no PDF versions and after one kickstarter after another failed and people lost money we swore off ever publicising those. I get 2-3 kickstarter projects sent to me a week with the hope that I will publicise them and I explain that I do not review kickstarters or promote them (count the number that simply vanish leaving angry backers in their wake)!

There were two occasions on which PDF publications sent in caused even more problems. There were accusations that CBO (me) had handed the PDFs  to illegal download site owners as the books were on those and that meant the point of publishing to earn money was...pointless.  I deleted the PDFs as by that time we no longer reviewed them but the morons behind the pirated files seemed adamant that I "or one of your staff" (I have staff???) were behind the leak.  In the end those involved were put in the position of having to declare how many PDF copies they had sent out for review. It was 20-30 copies but they "could not be sure of the total number".  They were laughed off the internet. In one case it seems a friend had sent copies around to his friends "as a favour to promote the comic" so they were leaking PDF files everywhere.

For that reason the rule is never broken: we never review PDF files of books.  We never publish Ebooks or send out PDFs for 'review'.

If you want to review a book why the objection to a hard copy -it shows the quality of the book which a PDF does not. Stamping your foot and declaring "I don't want to pay postage to send out review books!!"  will only hurt your foot.  Are you in publishing or are you doing this as a hobby?  Us old farts have had to pay to send review copies out for decades so suck it in, cry baby.

Oh...and people who used to send in CDs "My comic is on there to be reviewed" and that's all the note says...yeah, sure.  Someone I have never heard of before and has no online profile sends me a CD and asks me to put it into my computer -get lost. In the early days of CBO there were people reporting having similar discs sent to them and what was on them infected their PCs.

I hope that makes things clear (again) and I am sure that there will be moaners out there. Like the one who tried to start a flame war with CBO to get views and ran the headline "No name comic site DEMANDS review copies".  I never did and never have. I ignored him and his site vanished within the year. A Flame war to get views is so lame -it's why it is used by so many no hopers on You Tube now.