Ahira's Hangar

I just got an email today from Amazon offering me a spot in their vine program. Apparently they will send you free stuff every month (which would be welcome in this economy) and all you have to do in return is review it.

Which opens up some questions in my mind:

1. what happens if you hate something and your review reflects that? will you be pressured or punished over negative reviews? or dropped from the program for giving negative reviews? Amazon is, after all, in the business to sell stuff to people...

2. do you have any choices whatsoever over what they send you? or even the type of thing that they send you?

3. there is, of course, the ever present ethical question of people (whether on Amazon or in any sort of blog) reviewing something they were given for free - do they subconciously try really hard to see or emphasize the good in the generally bad as a sort of payback to the publisher/author/whatever for providing them with freebies? Subconcious expression of gratitude? Internal or external pressure to praise where there is little to nothing to praise?

4. what happens if you just do not have time in any given month to use/review the product/s they send you? (this might be a problem for me, as I do work full time and have two children)


Is anyone here an Amazon vine person? Do you like and recommend this program? What sorts of things have you been sent to review?

Wow. Amazon must really like you! I'd say congrats, duchess, but I'm not so sure...

Never been part of this program, but I seem to recall some brouhaha over this sort of thing a while back. But my memory is very foggy about it.

Good luck if you intend to participate!

It sounds similar to BzzAgent, which I took part in for awhile.
If it is run similarly, then they will want truthful reviews.
Give it a shot!

I did decide to give this a try. I signed up, and they asked me a bunch of questions about what kind of books and music and movies I like. Then they gave me a list of about ten or so books to choose from. You can get one book/CD/DVD/electronic/whatever a month - perhaps with an extra now and then if there is a bunch of stuff left over after most people get a chance to pick. You do not have to request anything - a big plus to me, as sometimes I just get bogged down in life. Most of the books were more literary sort of novels, with a horror or two. The only one I felt excited about was a Terry Pratchett book for children - and I like his children's and YA books a lot more than his books for adults! But that one was out of stock...so I chose a book about a town in New Jersey that is noted for having championship/national/world level children's baseball teams and what the families of the kids have to go through. With my younger son having participated in high level championships (state and national level) in his sport, I thought maybe I could relate to that particular book. Plus I thought my husband would also be likely to read that one!

So we will see how it goes...

Both the book and the shipping are free. I have to pay by reading the book and reviewing it. I would think that most of the time that would be fine; hopefully I never get unlucky enough to choose something that is unreadable/unlistenable/unwatchable.

What? His adult books are fantastic. I own at least 20 of them. Maybe a few more. Just bought the latest the other day.

--A

I like his books for adults, too - but some of his kids' books ROCK!!! If you ever run into it, you must read The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.

Oh, i've read most of the kids ones too. Not that particular one as it happens, but quite a few of them.

--A

My little baseball book came today. I checked to see if they had leftover books - you can have two, if there are some left over once everyone gets a chance to get a pick. So I chose a general fiction novel by someone I know as a science fiction writer - Iaian Banks. I have heard he has general fiction out there, but it is not generally available in this country. I know they are rereleasing some of his science fiction right now, like the superb Player of Games - it looks like he has picked up a publisher for his regular fiction books, too!

I will not pick anymore until I have read and done the reviews for these two - the baseball book is pretty short, though.

I was surprised - they even had some food items. Some sort of breakfast energy bars.