Book Review Services - A Comparison

Recently, I independently re-published a book that was originally published in 2020 with a small publisher. Sadly, what happens when you re-publish a book is that it doesn’t actually replace the other version – it is published as a new edition. This means that the book loses all its previously acquired reviews on websites such as amazon. While I’m all for getting organic reviews, if you’ve ever tried to build up your book reviews you know how hard it is to get those first dozen. Once you get a dozen or so reviews, they begin to keep trickling in but for some reason no one wants to be in that first batch.

So, to get the ball rolling, I decided to try two book review services: Book Roar and Book Bounty.

As a quick summary, both services follow Amazon guidelines. You choose books to read from a book pool on the website and provide reviews. Every time you write a review, you obtain points, which you then exchange for the ability of putting your book in the book pool for others to read and review.

The services do not allow review swaps. On Book Bounty you are only told that a review has been completed. You are not told by who or what the review was. On Book Roar, you are told the username of the reviewer and shown the review as proof. However, they ensure that you are never shown books in your book pool from anyone who reviewed yours. Sure, you could try and figure out who reviewed your book on Book Bounty and then vengefully go and buy theirs if you don’t like their review. You can similarly go trolling through Amazon to try and get to the books of the person who reviewed you on Book Roar. However, in both scenarios you wouldn’t be participating in a swap, but rather showing the world that you are a slightly pathetic individiual with too much time on your hands and no ability to take constructive criticism nor desire to improve as a writer.

So, now that we got that out of the way, let’s discuss the site differences:

COST

Book Roar: at time of writing this, it is free to use the site. You choose the books you want to review, meaning that you choose if, or how much you are willing to pay for books. A large majority of the books in their review pool are available on Kindle Unlimited for free, or the authors post them in the book pool during Free or 99c promotional periods. So, you can easily pay nothing for using Book Roar.

Book Bounty: at time of writing this, membership was $15/month if billed annually or $20/month if billed monthly. In terms of paying for the books you chose to review, it was the same deal as on Book Roar.

PRO TIP 1:

On both sites, you can build up review points and then choose when to use them. So, review books in advance of when you want to receive your reviews. For example, if you have a book that will be released in November, start reviewing books around September and in this way build up enough review points so that when your book is released you can ask for a handful of reviews right away.

PRO TIP 2:

When you put your book in the book pool for it to be chosen by readers to review, make sure that it is during a free, or 99c promotion period, OR that it is available on KU. Some authors put full priced books up for review and then wonder why they aren’t being picked up by reviewers.Think about it: it looks both silly and self-important of a starting author to go on a website where they are specifically asking for reviews and simultaneously attempt to charge reviewers for the “privilege” of choosing their book to review. This is especially ludicrous considering sites like Kirkus charge hundreds of dollars to give just one review and here you are getting them for nothing but your reading time.

My book was available on KU and I also put it in the review pool during promotional days when it was either free or 99c for a limited time. When I did this, I had no issues with it being picked up by readers/reviewers.

POINT SYSTEM

Book Roar: On Book Roar you simply get 1 point for each book you read. 1 point = 1 review of your own. Simple.

I initially thought “yeah, but what if I read a 500 page book and my book is only 300 pages. How is it fair that each book is only worth 1 point? However, I found that I seemed to be shown books in the book pool similar in length to mine, so I am guessing the site moderates this.

Book Bounty: various books are worth various amounts of points. The specific point amounts are not based on just length. They are a combination of length, book price, and amount of time in which the reader is expected to provide the review. So, a book that costs more will give you more points if you choose it. Similarly, if an author asks for a quicker turnaround, this gives the reviewer more points if they choose that book.

In the same fashion, depending on the combination of length, cost, and turnaround expectations you have for your book, your book is assigned a ‘review cost’. You then use the points you accumulate to request however many reviews. For example, if your book is worth 100 points and you have accumulated 500 points, you can ask for 5 reviews.

TIME ALLOWANCE

Book Roar: for most books you are not allowed to post the review sooner than 72 hours after taking the book. The maximum time allowed tended to hover around 3 weeks for me. The maximum time allowed appears to differ depending on book length/content. Since my book was a novel of around 350 pages, most books I reviewed were this length as well. So, I am not sure what the time limits would be for short, children’s book etc…

Book Bounty: the time limits also slightly varied based on book type and length however, were much shorter overall. The minimum time allowed that I personally saw was 3 hours, for a crossword puzzle book. The absolute maximum time allowed to post a review was 5 days, regardless of how long a book was. While on one hand it’s great to obtain reviews quicker, on the other hand I found it very difficult to read and review longer novels in this short a time, considering I also have a job etc…

REVIEW MODERATION

Both Book Roar and Book Bounty say that if you cannot give an author at least 3-stars that it is preferable for you to return the said-book to the book pool and explain to the author, or the site’s team, what the issues were with the book so that the author can potentially work more on it. I have heard some people criticize this, however, I like this concept. Many of the authors asking for reviews on both sites are new authors. When a new author receives private feedback on how to improve, they can actually work on their craft, instead of just having their career squashed online. Choosing not to provide a review is not lying about the quality of the book. You aren’t giving a fake review. You are giving the author a chance.

WHAT ABOUT BAD QUALITY REVIEWS?

Book Roar: Book Roar shows proof of the review to the authors and asks them to confirm that it is live on both amazon and Goodreads. They will not do anything if you simply get a negative review, but they ask that you contact them if there are quality issues with the review such as irrelevancy or potential AI-generation.

Book Bounty: the site verifies that the review is live and simply tells the author so. The author is not shown the review and Book Bounty client services will not in any way assist with quality issues with reviews.

So, now, onto my experiences with each service.

THE VERDICT

As I mentioned, the books that I was shown in the Book Roar book pool were closely equivalent to length and type to my book. That meant that they were more intensive for me to read and review. On Book Bounty, I could choose to review a couple of crossword puzzle books in a day or two flat and have that be equivalent in points to a review for myself. However, while it sounds like Book Bounty is a much sweeter deal in this aspect, it actually meant that it was harder to get good quality reviews for my own book, since everyone else on there could also choose coloring books and crosswords to review. And, because of the way the point system works, a crossword puzzle book could be worth just as many points as an actual novel, as the site seems to take length, but not content type, into their point calculations. So, in the end I felt that this point system was beneficial to low content book creators, but not to serious writers.

I actually became bored picking up crosswords on Book Bounty and so I started to pick up novels in various genres, just like I was doing on Book Roar. However, I found that the quality of novels on Book Roar was far higher. I am not sure what the reason was for this. But, while five out of 5 books that I read on Book Roar were 4-star reads or above, I ended up returning 50% of the novels I picked up on Book Bounty back to the book pool because they were SO BAD.

One of my personal goals is to support Indie authors - many are amazing and often of higher quality than traditionally published ones I’ve read. On the same note though, I get very irritated when I see Indie books that look like they were written while drunk as this lowers the credibility of Indie books overall and hurts serious Indie authors. Many of the books in the Book Bounty pool were beyond horrific. We are talking: first draft, zero editing. One book actually had the same chapter written two times in a row in different ways and then a character that was sometimes in the hospital and sometimes in hiding; apparently the author hadn’t decided yet.

I am not sure why Book Roar attracted higher quality writers than Book Bounty but this then transferred to the quality of reviews that these people were giving. While it took significantly longer to obtain reviews on Book Roar they were all of decent or high quality. I am not talking about whether a person liked or disliked my book; that is not a measure of review quality. What I mean when I discuss review quality is whether it is

A) Relevant to the actual plot and writing of the book

B) Thoughtful and detailed

While Book Bounty does not provide details of the review you receive, as discussed at the beginning, it isn’t necessarily hard to figure out which reviews came from them, especially if you are tracking your book sales etc…In my case it was especially easy to know which reviews came from Book Bounty as there was no way an actual reader would bother to write reviews of such uselessness. One person’s review was just a comment on my cover and table of contents….yup. That’s right. They were given a 350 page novel and wrote a review about the book cover. This was the review that pushed me over the edge and I wrote to the Book Bounty customer care, despite the fact that they state they don’t get in any way involved with the actual reviews.

I understand that Book Bounty doesn’t want to go against Amazon terms of service by somehow influencing reviews. However, at the same time, they should be protecting writers from potentially being banned by Amazon for receiving these kinds of reviews. As a book review portal they should be booting off people who provide either AI-written or simply bullshit reviews. Book Bounty did respond to my concerns with a bland email that did not promise any real action to get rid of these types of reviewers.

On the flip end, all reviews I received through Book Roar were of high quality. Again, it wasn’t about the reviews being 5-stars. It was about the fact that the reviewers clearly read the book and wrote thoughtful comments relevant to the writing style and plot.

Why the Difference in the Quality of Reviews?

While I can’t say for certain, I believe that the structures of the sites contribute to review quality in the following ways:

1. The fact that Book Roar shows proof of a review to the book author and tells authors to notify them of potentially AI-generated reviews etc... makes reviewers feel more accountable for the quality of the reviews they provide.

2. The fact that Book Roar will not allow you to post reviews any sooner than 72 hours and shows books equivalent in length and intensity to your own in the book pool, attracts more serious writers, rather than people who want everything for nothing at the speed of light.

3. The maximum of 5 days allowed for reading and reviewing a book on Book Bounty may be far to short for many people, just as it was for me. Readers on Book Roar are given approximately three weeks, which, with a full time job and life outside of reading feels more realistic.

So, in the end I cancelled my Book Bounty membership. I found both the books in their book pool and (most of) their readers/reviewers to be of low quality. In my opinion, Book Bounty could be useful to creators of low content books such as colouring books, crosswords etc… However, I would personally not use it for high content fiction.

On the other hand I have kept my Book Roar membership and every now and then will actually pick up a book from their book pool to read simply because they have good books.

At this point, I have received all the ‘starter’ reviews I wanted and am happy to again watch more reviews trickle in organically over time. However, I know there are a couple of other, similar review sites out there and I’m quite curious as to how they differ since my experiences with Book Roar and Book Bounty were significantly different. If you have used other sites, do share your experiences in the comments.