FTC Disclosure

I did one of these for The eBook Test — FTC Wants Bloggers To Disclose: My Disclosure — and have forgotten about doing one for here. I’m making this a page in itself which will appear via a permanent link in the sidebar so anyone can find it and see it at any time.

Of the ten called out in that original post, three are now UnPersoned. They no longer exist to me. I won’t embarrass anyone by company name or person name. Let me just say that the most important currency online is trust. And when you lose mine, you are gone with zero appeal, forever. Other people can go ahead and trust you, but I never will and want nothing to do with you, period.

The only open-ticket carryover item from back then is this:

NetGalley: I have an account on NetGalley, which means I can get pre-publication electronic galleys. I haven’t downloaded anything yet.

As of 2010, I still haven’t downloaded anything. [Update: As of January 10, 2011, still haven't.]

Other freebies include eBooks offered to everyone at Kindle Store, Sony Reader Store, Kobo Books, and Smashwords. I have lots of such freebies. Whenever I get around to finally reading them, if I do a post about any of them, I will state the book was a freebie given out to anyone who bothered to get it when it was offered.

From time to time, I am emailed and asked for advice about eBooks from various people and companies who I will not name because I consider such exchanges to be confidential and understood to be under NDA as soon as I have read the email. Replies are given without any fees expected, asked for, or favors exchanged. And if you ask to meet with me, you will get my standard reply: No.

Advice is always given on the basis of my knowledge, not on any inside information I might or might not have about what another person or company is doing or might do. Such communication with me is siloed and never spreads.

From time to time I will receive a press release in email, unsolicited. Sometimes this will generate a blog post, sometimes it will not. Doing a post means the subject of the press release is itself sufficiently interesting to me that I think other people would want to know about it. Given how lax I am in checking email, any post I do appears hours after many others have already done such posts. No payments or favors ever take place for such a post by me.

From time to time, a writer will offer me a free eBook directly. My standard answer is: I don’t take freebies. I’ll only take one when everyone can have one, such as offered at the various eBookstores named above.

From time to time, someone will offer to send me a pre-publication eBook for advice of some kind. I might accept this offer depending entirely on the person asking. I am capricious that way; too bad for you. Accepting such an offer in no way means it will ever generate a blog post. It would only do so if a) I have later bought the eBook, and b) found it to be good enough to recommend.

Rarely, someone will offer to send me that cursed thing that is a printed book. No. Not even if everyone can have one. See: The Horror Of Paper Books.

Finally, anything I write about is because of curiosity, advocacy, or even condemnation with no strings attached (the condemnation is always free!). My only allegiances are to writers, writing, and to ideas. Anyone who crosses my path today can be cut off tomorrow. And I cannot be bought, leased, rented, or bribed by any company.

October 8, 2010 Update:

Just because I am emailed for eBook advice doesn’t mean I will always agree to give it. I have the right to say No. And have.

Whenever I link to a book or product — or anything else, for that matter — there is no payment or other favors involved.

November 19, 2010 Update:

Do not send me any goddammed eBooks as “gifts.”

April 28, 2011 Update:

I don’t know what happened here. At one point I updated this page to mention that on February 24, 2011, I emailed Asus to formally request a review unit of the Asus Eee Note. Since that date, Asus hasn’t replied. Also, I’m no longer interested in reviewing it, so essentially everything else here remains the same.

May 27, 2011 Update: Unsolicited, writer Anthony Neil Smith sent me a free Kindle copy of his upcoming book, Hogdoggin’, which I previously wrote about here. Since I don’t have a Kindle, a portable device that can do the Kindle app, and won’t read on my PC with the desktop app, the copy has no value, but when something like this happens, it goes in this Disclosure.

May 27, 2011 Update 2: Do not send me free things without asking. Besides, in most cases the answer will be NO! anyway.

June 28, 2011 Update: Unsolicited, writer Richard Herley sent me a free Kindle copy of his upcoming book, The Drowning, which I wrote about here earlier in the day. Since I don’t have a Kindle, a portable device that can do the Kindle app, and won’t read on my PC with the desktop app, the copy has no value, but when something like this happens, it goes in this Disclosure.

I repeat:

DO NOT SEND ME FREE STUFF WITHOUT ASKING FIRST!

August 26, 2011 Update: As a Klout Perk, I got a free copy of the eBook Mile 81 by Stephen King.

October 21, 2011 Update:

I got this in email today:

Dear Mike,

I just got done reading your “Dropbox Can Go To Hell” and I found it really informative! Do you do advertising? I’m marketing out a few sites and can pay you $50 via PayPal to add a text link into one of your older posts. The link would go to an education site and I’d make sure the site relates to your post’s content.

Thanks and let me know if we can work something out!

No. Nothing can be “worked out.” This is graft. Go away.