“The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy” explained how book marketing entrepreneur Todd Rutherford netted as much as $28,000 a month selling book reviews to authors. Rutherford — and his clients — knew that the average consumer is influenced by reviews, but isn’t sophisticated enough to realize that those reviews can be bought and sold.

Rutherford is one smart dude, isn’t he?

Is this ethical?

His business folded because of issues with Google and other troublesome factors, but its temporary success brings up important book marketing questions for authors: How do you feel about paid book reviews? Are they ethical? Acceptable? A reasonable marketing tactic?

Personally, while I understand the impact and importance of favorable reader reviews, I think it’s unethical and misleading to purchase them. It’s false advertising. You’re influencing a consumer’s purchase by pretending that someone just like them bought the book, read it, and liked it enough to post a glowing review on Amazon.com. But that’s not the truth.  So how is that an honest tactic?

I wonder if John Locke, one of the top-selling authors on Amazon, thinks this is ethical. On the one hand, he must, because he spent thousands to secure 300 reviews, according to the Times. On the other hand, he omitted this information from his popular e-book on how he became a best-selling author, How I Sold One Million E-Books.

Surely, those paid reviews contributed to his success. If he was comfortable with his decision to buy reviews (although he didn’t require them to be positive), wouldn’t he have detailed that tactic in his how-to book?

Locke told The New York Times, “Reviews are the smallest piece of being successful.”

How do you feel about it?

While you can’t purchase the review you want from Rutherford’s GettingBookReviews.com anymore, you can still generate reader reviews with other sites and services (Kirkus Reviews, for example, will sell you a review). Get advice on how to do that in one of my more popular blog posts, “Where to find online book reviewers.”

So, tell me: How do you feel about purchased book reviews? Do you, like so many, think they are ethical? Or, like me, do you think it’s a misleading marketing tactic? I’d love to see your opinion here. Please comment.