Ethics Statement

(The “Trust Over Hype” Edition)

Fake reviews and manufactured social proof are not just dishonest—they are a systemic failure of the modern publishing industry. As someone who builds a brand around systems thinking and engineering integrity, I treat trust as a design constraint, not a marketing buzzword.

This is not a moral manifesto. It is a description of the system I’ve built to ensure that when you see a recommendation or a review here, it actually means something.

1. The Fight Against Fake Reviews

I despise fake reviews. They distort the market and make it impossible for readers to find genuine value.

  • The “Review Farm” Plague: My inbox is a constant stream of offers from services promising hundreds of 5-star ratings for a fee.
  • The Response: Every single one of these offers is documented and moved to the spam bin. I have zero interest in “buying friends” or inflating my ratings.
  • Hygiene Over Shaming: While I maintain internal records of these predatory services, I don’t publish a “Wall of Shame” simply because my time is better spent writing books than fighting nuisance lawsuits. Just know that if you see a review for my work, it was earned, not purchased.

2. Advance Review Copies (ARC)

I use Advance Review Copies to get initial feedback before a book launch. This is a common practice, but I’ve added three ironclad rules to prevent it from becoming a biased echo chamber:

  • Mandatory Disclosure: I explicitly ask everyone who receives an ARC to disclose it. Transparency is the default setting.
  • Zero Creative Interference: I never dictate the content or the rating. A 3-star honest review is infinitely more valuable to me than a forced 5-star one.
  • The “Pre-DTP” PDF: ARC readers receive a raw PDF of the manuscript before the professional DTP (Desktop Publishing) process. It’s a gift of content, not a final product. This maintains a healthy economic gap between the “free gift” and the “real deal.”

Case Study: IT Dictionary Launch

To see this system in action, I encourage you to verify the feedback for my first book yourself. To make this verification as easy as possible, you can find the raw data on Goodreads and Amazon.

I don’t just point to the 5-star rating; I point to the human entropy in the feedback:

  • Organic Diversity: The reviews aren’t a uniform block. They vary in length, tone, and language (English, German).
  • Specific Proof of Reading: Reviewers reference specific concepts like “vibe coding” or the “AI - The New Kid in Town” section. This is something bot farms rarely bother to replicate.
  • Professional Backgrounds: Feedback comes from people with vastly different optics—from 40-year IT veterans to designers and operations specialists.
  • The Self-Correction Loop: One UK-based reader initially gave the book 4 stars on Goodreads, citing some repetitiveness. I didn’t ask for a change. However, after the official release, he purchased the final version and posted a Verified Purchase review on Amazon, upgrading his rating to 5 stars because the quality of the layout and DTP exceeded his expectations.

This proves that a fair system allows for honest criticism and genuine appreciation to coexist.

3. Paid Professional Reviews

Let’s be direct about this, because it’s exactly the kind of thing a “trust” page shouldn’t gloss over: I pay for professional reviews from editorial services like Kirkus Reviews or Independent Book Review. These outfits don’t work for free — the fee buys the reading and the write-up, not the verdict. That distinction is the entire point.

  • Paying for the read, not the rating: The only thing my money guarantees is that a professional reads the manuscript and produces an honest assessment. What they conclude is entirely theirs.
  • The only lever I control is publication: Once a verdict comes back, my single decision is whether to publish it or bury it. And for the record: I intend to publish every one, favorable or not. Full honesty, though — no brutal review has landed yet, so that’s an easy promise to make right now. Ask me again after the first one stings. ;)
  • Factual corrections only: On rare occasions I can suggest a change, but strictly on the factual layer — never the opinion. These reviews are written from raw, pre-DTP manuscripts, so some labels shift before print. This lets me flag things like a reviewer writing “black background” when the final book’s reference is a “black ribbon” in a serious incident case. Even then, it’s only a suggestion: whether to act on it is entirely the editorial side’s call, not mine. The verdict stays untouched; only the facts get aligned with the final book — and only if the editorial side agrees they should be.

The logic here is the same as everywhere else on this page: a review means something only if the reviewer was free to pan it. Paying for access to a professional’s time is a service. Paying for a predetermined score is fraud. I do the first and refuse the second.

4. Human Integrity

My commitment to ethics is practical, not abstract:

  • No “In Blanco” Signatures: I don’t put my name on content produced by others (including AI) without the level of scrutiny described in my AI Disclosure.
  • No “In Blanco” Praise: I don’t accept endorsements from people who haven’t actually engaged with the work.
  • Systemic Resistance: I actively fight the “pay-to-play” culture by ensuring my own ecosystem remains clean of manufactured consensus.

A Note on Authenticity

In an era of infinite scale through automation, human trust is the only thing that doesn’t scale easily. That is exactly why it is the most valuable asset in the “Systems & Sarcasm” universe.

Writing this page costs me nothing. Violating it would cost me everything.

If you see a review, it’s a real person’s opinion. If you see a recommendation, it’s because I actually believe in it. No shortcuts. No BS.

Contact

If you want to talk about this policy or report a “review package” being sold in my name, reach out: contact@adamkorga.com.

Last updated: July 30th, 2026