Cailin Riley Books

Let me take you into the confusing and sometimes shifty world of book reviews.

When I self-published my first book, I joined a lot of author/writer Facebook groups and came across the idea of trading reviews. Some people would post, asking for other published authors to “swap” free copies of their books in exchange for *wink wink* reviewing them on Amazon and other platforms.

As you might expect, many of these posts were either removed soon after posting or commentors would tell the poster that the practice of exchanging reviews is frowned upon and in some cases, like Amazon, not allowed.

But who really is policing these practices? And what about professional sites that offer paid review services?

Enter me circa 2022, when I stumbled upon Pubby.

Pubby is an online site where authors upload PDF copies of their books and are connected with readers who then read the book and write an official Amazon review. Authors often rely on reviews to further market their book, and the more reviews you have, the more likely it is that you book will garner notice. So, the more reviews you can get, the better. A Pubby subscription costs about $20 a month.

When I used Pubby, the site used a points system. Users gain points every time you review someone else’s book successfully. You then use those points to “bid” for a review. For example, it cost more points to ask for a faster turn-around time. You could usually get between 5-10 reviews on your book a week, depending on how many points you earned.

As you might have guessed, using Pubby felt a bit morally grey. Firstly, I was paying for reviews, albeit indirectly, but still. Furthermore, most of the users of this site are other authors, not general readers. This can pressure users to “be nice” and give everybody 5 stars because you want to treat others like you’d want to be treated as an author. Lastly, there is no guarantee, parameters or policing of people actually reading your book before submitting a review. There is a deadline to read and submit by, but at the time I used the site, there was no mimimum time you had to wait before submitting a review. Meaning, you could literally get accepted for a book and then write some gobbledegook about loving the book and submit it all within 5 minutes.

As such, most of the reviews I received for my book were pretty one-dimensional; you could usually tell the difference between who submitted without reading and who at least skimmed the chapter titles.

Pubby, and other paid book review sites including Book Sirens and more, may serve to underline honest review systems for books by offering behind-doors incentives for dishonest reviews.

It’s hard for me to say personally if I believe these sites are unethical or not. I do think they can cause some confusion and harm, but I could also say the same for “real” reviews. Even after actually reading the book, some people still use AI to help them write reviews, which might not end up reflecting their true thoughts. Some people give a book on Goodreads 2 stars with no explanation whatsoever, dragging down an author’s rating. These actions are confusing and can cause harm just as easily as paid reviews can.

Have you come across paid review sites? Why do you think they should or should not be used?