ShelfariAs part of my quest to become a frelance book reviewer, I have been trying to find websites where I can publish my reviews, and if I am lucky maybe even make a little money. One of those sites was Reviewstream. It looked pretty cool, so I created an account and submitted a review. All this happened about three days ago. Yesterday I received an email. Here it is for everyone to read:
Hello Terence,
You certified that “the review was written by you, was not published anywhere and was not copyrighted in any manner” on review submission.
However we discovered that review Wolf Totem: A Novel you submitted, was published at wolfsongs.com/?p=178
We consider this as a cheating attempt. Your account was closed.
We are not interested in further cooperation with you.
I never intended to be a fraud or a cheat. Since the other location where the review was posted was actually this blog, and the review was my own, I thought I should once again check out their TOS. Well, that was a rather interesting read. I usually read Terms of Service very closely, but I missed a biggie here.
Simply put, according to their terms, all submissions are considered copywrighted and fully owned by reviewstream. Oh, but they can put your name on it and if for some reason people can sue over what was written then you, not they, are liable and vulnerable!
This TOS is completely unacceptable. I do not write reviews, such as they are, to give over all rights to them in the hopes of earning $0.10 a view.
Ultimately, I am very glad they closed my account. I never want to submit anything to them again anyway, so I am glad they won’t let me.
I am also glad, cause I know my blog is searchable and findable to anyone who wants to see it.
I advise everyone to avoid this site like the plague. It is completely unreasonable. It is totally not worth the effort. No one should have to give all rights away for something they worked on! Also, there are other websites that allow you to post reviews that are not nearly as restrictive.
That is for another review.
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