Do I dare review more books?
I review books on this blog occasionally. Many of them are books I bought myself and wanted to share with people because I found them interesting or useful. Some are books that have been sent to me by publishers (some of whom also publish books I have worked on).
Apparently the new Federal Trade Commission guidelines will require that starting in December 2009 bloggers who have any connection to publishers will be required to state that fact in any articles they write, whether that connection is employment (which makes sense) or just simply that the publisher provided the product being reviewed for free.
More here on the FTC website.
What do you think? Should I tell publishers not to send me free books in the hopes that I will review them? Should I just stop reviewing books that interest me? Would it bother anyone if you found out that I reviewed the upcoming edition of a Linux book (or something else) after receiving it for free, even if I emphatically state that my opinion is being posted unedited and based not on the fact that the book was free but on the contents of that book?
EDIT: The original article on a news site has disappeared, so I replaced the link to it with a link to the FTC website outlining the policy.