Reviews with pictures

[Entsuropi]

It would be easier to just not take internal shots. I don't think we'd be missing much.

ACtually, i would vastly prefer a picture of the inside. I want to know how the book is set out, how it looks and how pictures and sidebars are used. That is all information that a single picture can conviegh instantly.

Also, I think an entire pic of both covers and the spine is sort of overkill.

Why settle for less

If any text contents are legible, we could possibly get sued for copyright infringement.

Or simply make sure that the picture is sufficiently zoomed out so that the main body of text is un-readable.

[Fellfrosch]

That's a good idea. We also have the option of blurring the text in photoshop.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I could start E-mailing pics of books that I review as attachments if you want. Or all pictures for review could be submitted in a forum here.

[42]

Need I remind people that all images are also copyrighted, this includes the cover of a book. Often the copyright to a cover of a book is held by the artist and not the publisher.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

But you can run pictures and quotes as part of a review.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

I just sent in a coded review For Maelstrom with pictures and links to PDFs from their website. The game expressly states that excerpts can be used for reviews. So I'm confident its ok.

[42]

Saint, in reviewing my handbook on copyright laws, where does it say that reviews can use pictures from a product? My sources tell me that you can't simply because it is a review of something. For example, I know newspapers have to get permission from artists to reproduce any images for a review of a gallery exhibit. So anyways, if you could show me where it says that I would like to know. It would also save me a lot of time dealing with some of the artists I work with currently.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

uh... I haven't reviewed your handbook on copyright laws, 42.

It seems absurd if you can't reproduce anything though, even to review the art itself. However, we have lots of absurd laws, so it wouldn't surprise me. What about layout? Can you do that? What about the sample pages provided on places like Amazon?

[Spriggan]

humm I was looking at your Malstrom review ElJeffe and a few of the picture links are bad.  The pictures up top are ok but as far as that large of pictures in the middle of the review, we should use thumb nails.  Or at least something the size of the covers that you posted with a link to the larger image.
One more thing...Alwayse double check the deparment you're submitting it to.  I don't think this is a Video game  

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

There are 4 at the top and a map, and thats all the pic links. The other links are for PDF's availible at Hubris Games main site. But again they worked for me.

It got put in the wrong place accidentally.

[Brian]

If you guys can come to some sort of agreement regarding copyright issues and bandwidth consumption, showing pictures in reviews is itself an extremely simple task to accomplish. There are all sorts of super-fancy ways to handle it in PHP/MySQL with very little effort, but you could even just stick a simple HTML tag in the article text, and have reviewers e-mail Fellfrosch (or somebody) an image to be FTP'd to the appropriate directory on the server.

[Spriggan]

It may be easy but it's hard to get Tage to get off his butt to code it.  That's one of the main reasons why we've never done it.  The other is copyright/layout issues.

[EUOL]

Be nice, Sprig.

[Spriggan]

wow...wait...do I know you?  Anyway you didn't get the sarcastic tone to the "Tage's Butt" part.

[Brian]

Coding isn't necessary at all if you just do it the lazy-man's way. Just have reviewers put an image tag -- like <img src="http://www.timewastersguide.com/reviewerimages/myfile.jpg"> -- at the appropriate spot in their review, for instance. Sure, its slighty less professional looking, but it also gives the reviewers control of image placement in their reviews.