Drawbacks to Reviewing PDF Books

@muslimmommyblog and I partnered to talk about this important issue.

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PDFs are an easy and convenient way to bring exposure to the books with very little financial loss from authors/publishers. However, when sending a physical book they finacially lose on the its cost, profit and shipping charges. Because of this, there are some that prefer to just email the PDF of their published products for review. Based on my experience, I have compiled a few key points to consider.

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1. If the publishers/authors are willingly sending PDFs of their books, this tells me that they are not serious about protecting their work, effort and investment. So, how do they still expect that the readers should respect and protect their work more than themselves?

2. When the PDF is sent to the reviewer, it becomes an amanah, a trust, that we must take care of. My worry is, what if my email gets hacked? Therefore, I do NOT keep any electonic versions after I have published my review.

3. Part of having a fair review accross the board, is to review the quality of the physical print of the book. Is it fair to give one physical copy a 10 vs. a PDF when we don't have the opportunity to equally touch the book and feel the quality of the pages? Furthermore, does this mean that I should automatically deduct points just because it is a PDF version that I am reviewing due to the incomplete opportunity?

4. On more than one occasion, the PDF version that was sent to me did not match the actual book that was being sold on the market. This causes more time spent on the review to investigate and get to the bottom of what's what. This is a major disadvantage for the author because, if I happen to miss this, then the review would not reflect the true version of the book being sold.

5. Based on my experience, the PDF reviews that I have posted have had the least amount of exposure on this platform. I wonder if the inconsistency on the visual appeal has something to do with it. 🤷‍♀️

It may seem that PDFs are an easier way to expose their books without breaking the bank, if all these points are considered, in return it may actually be a disadvantage.

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Check out @muslimmommyblog for her view on this

May 2/2020