I'm a bit concerned by this. - Edit 1
Before modification by Werthead at 19/09/2009 04:23:44 PM
I got an NB from another poster who asked if he could do a pre-release spoiler-free review of the book. He said Ben was okay with it. We're going to run that as our RAFO review.
It is understandable that RAFO will want to do an 'official' review, as Dragonmount has done, but there are quite a few people here who run blogs or have contacts with Orbit or Tor who will be getting pre-release review copies, such as myself, Ken, Pat, Larry, maybe a few others. Saying you can only have one review before release and that's it seems to be somewhat limiting.
I think that pre-release information makes the board susceptible to hoaxing and half-truths. I'm sure some people are getting early copies, but others will post falsehoods and undermine the credibility of the board, making RAFO the centre for all that is false.
I don't remember this happening on a large scale for the previous books in the series. And after, in my case, five years of posting accurate pre-release reviews of hundreds of other books, that my honesty would not be called into question, let alone other posters of considerably longer service on Wotmania.
I've got an open mind about it though.. you can NB me if you want and we can formulate a strategy if you're really keen to post small scraps before the release of the book.
What would the policy be on links to offsite reviews, either to our blogs or to the newspaper/official news outlets that will be doing pre-release reviews of the book?