The New York Times reported a story on the rising number of “entrepreneurs” on the internet who are willing, for a nominal fee, write bogus-but-overly-positive reviews on websites like Amazon.com, TripAdvisor, & Yelp. The Times article goes on to describe how web-users on, for instance, Craigslist will leave posts advertising fake customer review services: $5 for a positive review. Review-fueled businesses, like Amazon.com, now fear a loss of user-review credibility. Additionally, potential customers looking at book reviews, for instance, might find themselves doubting whether or not a book they’re considering buying is actually as good as the reviews say.

BlueInk Review takes a different approach on this trend. Co-founded by Patti Thorn, writer & editor for 28 years at the late Rocky Mountain News, BlueInk is a website for self-published literature that has started a book review service offering “serious reviews of self-published books” for $395. The service takes seven to nine weeks, but, if you’d like your review faster, you can spend $495 to have the review in just 4-5 weeks. BlueInk might compare dubiously to the slew of fake-reviewers lurking around hotel & restaurant review sites, but they also give users some control: if the review isn’t to your liking, you can have it terminated. No refund, though.

“So far we’ve been contracted to do about 142 reviews at this point. (Only) about 10 authors have ‘opted out’,” said Thorn. “We analyzed our stats & came to the conclusion that about 1 in 4 or 5 books receives a completely positive review.”

Considering that BlueInk Review is only servicing self-published authors, which consists of writers who have maybe never dealt with an editor or, perhaps, even a writing workshop setting, it could be that this service is something of a salve for the onslaught of unpolished, self-published literature. As it gets easier & easier to self-publish e-books, those close to the book market, as evidenced by BlueInk, are developing ways to manage, for the sake of the reader, the unprecedented flow of new books.

Thorn said that poor mechanics (grammar & spelling) are the most common criticism of the work BlueInk deals with. She also said critics have been noting quite often that the author “had a great idea, or a kernel of something very nice, but could have used the direction of an editor.”

Check out their website at: http://www.blueinkreview.com/.