The government in the form of the FTC has decided that bloggers must be clear in disclosing what compensation they receive and any affiliation to the entity that provided the "product" for review.
Actually the reasoning for this is explained in this article:
FTC to Social Media Marketers and Bloggers: Y'all Play Fair Now
SPECIFIC DISCLOSURE
Whether the review is at one of those sites or on my blog, I receive no compensation other than the book to read. Sometimes I get permission to pass a review book on as a Giveaway or to host a Giveaway of a separate book, other than my copy. I may on occasion do reviews or hold Giveaways for products other than books.
All reviews are my own opinions and I am not endorsing any book, publisher or product but merely sharing my reaction and recommendation regarding the book or item. I may link to a buy site, publisher or author website. I am not paid for such links or even asked to provide those links, except perhaps for specific Giveaways. I am not affiliated with any authors, publicist, publishers or companies for books or products that I review or Giveaway. I do it as a convenience to readers and to encourage them to look at the author's works or occasionally to look at a product that may be of interest to my blog readers. My goal in this blog is to encourage readers to find and enjoy authors!
I will not be including a link to this disclosure for each review or book or product announcement posted on my blog unless that appears to be required. The link will appear on the sidebar of the blog.
GENREAL DISCLOSURE
This Statement is to serve as a disclosure for all blog links.
I do have links to various authors, publishers and sites on my blog. I am not affiliated with any of these, other than the review sites mentioned above and various Yahoo Groups and other blogs I may be a team member on or that I may follow. Also, I have become friends with various authors through Groups and Blogs and the author's websites may be linked. I receive no compensation from any linked site on my blog, nor for any Giveaway on other blogs that I may post about. I am not attempting to give an endorsement for any of the linked sites although, again, I wish to encourage and support authors and to encourage interaction between authors and readers.
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If you are interested in some of the news about the FTC Guidelines I have provided links to several articles of interest below (none of which I endorse *BG*) and may update from time to time.
