1. An email I received from a business planning, I guess, to disrupt the book blurbing business.

Pro tip: If you're paying for book blurbs, you're wasting your money. If you're taking money for book blurbs, you're an awful person. In both cases it undermines the goal of blurbs.

2. Personally, I give book blurbs for one reason and one reason only: I read the book and I liked it. There is no financial incentive offered or implied, it's one author paying forward to another. That's all, that's it.

3. The process of blurbing as enough cynicism and misunderstanding around it without some people (or companies) trying to find a way to monetize it. A paid blurb is worthless, and it degrades the value of sincere blurbs in the process. So, lose/lose for everyone.

4. It's clear that this business will be targeting self-pubbed folks, as traditional pub has its own process which works perfectly well. I'm for making it easier for self-pub people to connect with blurbs, but this ain't it; it's just extracting more money out of self-pubbers.

5. In any event, in case it's not clear, I won't be participating in this thing, nor do I suggest any other authors do so, either. If you're curious how I do field blurbing requests, it's on my site, as it has been for years. Simple.

/end https://whatever.scalzi.com/about/publicity-blurb-and-unpublished-work-guidelines/

PS: This was my response to the email.