The Ethics of Blogging

I’ve been blogging since 2009 and have always tried to maintain my own high standards of ethics in how I present myself and the material that I cover – and it drives me insane when others don’t do that themselves!  Here are a couple of the things that I hold close to my heart with regard to ethical blogging:

• Indicating the source of my book when I share a review.  While for me, it doesn’t matter the source of the book as I’m still going to treat the material in the same manner and be objective and non-biased, it is important to me that everyone knows I’m being upfront and honest about it.  They can draw whatever conclusions they like about if the source of the book affected my review of it; although I will assure you that it has no bearing.  I have given both review copies and personally purchased books both glowing and scathing reviews.
• I don’t charge or accept a fee to review.  I don’t advertise on my site and no longer have any affiliate links that result in money to me (I spent a bit of time removing them as I edited some old review formatting).  I have no issues with advertising/affiliate links or other bloggers doing this, it’s just not for me and my blog and I personally don’t show via other’s affiliate links; I go out of my way to shop around them.
• No personal attacks – whether it’s on other bloggers or authors.  You should be discussing the material, not whether or not you like the person.  I will admit that I have a private list of authors/publishers that I will not work with based on interactions I have had in the past, but I’m not going to go posting about why or let that shade a review that I am writing.  If you leave an attacking comment toward myself, other commenter, or author I will remove the comment (luckily this hasn’t had to happen yet!)
• I will not sell ARC/unfinished review copies.  I actually have kept all of my review copies of any type.  The only way I would get rid of them was to offer a giveaway or gift to a fellow review/blogger.  It drives me insane to see how many ARC copies are for sale on Ebay – at least Amazon has an explicit policy about when it is okay to sell an ARC, Ebay doesn’t directly address it.  There is a reason that these books say on them somewhere (first pages or front/back cover) that they are not for sale – the author and/or publisher do not make any money off of the sale of these as they are given away for publicity purposes.  There are plenty of people out there who do not care about this, and I cannot support those who do this.

Amazon’s sale policy for ARC copies is very limited

For me, blogging is and always has been about my love of reading and the hobby.  I didn’t start blogging as a way to get free books or make money.  I didn’t even know it was a possibility when I started!  I simply started as a way to share the books that I loved with others and give my husband (boyfriend at the time) an out so he didn’t have to listen to all this history talk.  I love the relationships I have formed through this blog and look forward to continuing them with you into the future.  I just needed to re-state my stance on my personal ethics on blogging based on some less-than-above-board stuff I’ve seen around elsewhere lately.

You can find the full details of all my blogging policies in the tab above titled Policies, or via this link.  I would love to hear your thoughts on the ethics of blogging!

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