The rule of thumb about questions in headlines — that most headline questions can be answered, simply, "no" — has never been more true than in this blog post, which is headlined "Are Paid Book Reviews Worth It?"

I didn't know that paid book reviews existed, but now I'm horrified to learn that they do. Here's the thing: if you're paying for a review, the likely audience of that review is just going to be a bunch of authors who have also paid for reviews. Readers can instinctively detect insincerity in a review, and these kinds of mercenary reviews are very likely to be poorly written. A poorly written book review is about as useful to society as Ted Cruz's thoughts on feminism.

Now that I know there's a whole paid-book-reviewing industry, I just want to state for the record that the Seattle Review of Books has never and will never accept money in exchange for book reviews. That flies in the face of the very idea of book reviewing.

Don't pay for book reviews. Pay for advertising instead. It's more honest. (And if I may, allow me to make a humble suggestion about the kind of not-terrible internet advertising you could buy.)