Reviews are the lifeblood of your book’s success. Getting them is vital throughout your author journey, starting from before until long after you launch your piece of writing. Paid services are, of course, well aware of this fact. There are so many to choose from, so if you’re wondering what the best paid book review sites are, keep reading!
Dozens and dozens of companies are happy to take your money in exchange for the promise of landing you some good reviews.
With the many book review sites out there, you might be wondering which one should you choose.
Not All Paid Book Review Sites Are The Same
You can easily find plenty of companies out there that promises reviews in exchange for dollars. But, as much as you’d want them to be, not all of them will turn out effective. In fact, you may come across some that aren’t even legit.
Rather than take you through all the options available, I’ll share the tried-and-tested ones we use to help get your search narrowed down.
Here at Book Launchers, we use:
- Goodreads,
- NetGalley,
- BookSirens, and
- Booksprout for our authors.
Now, you might be thinking, “A review is a review. So why so many different sites for the same thing?”
Well, if you haven’t noticed, paid book review sites aren’t all the same. Your book category, overall strategy, goals, and who you’re targeting are essential aspects to consider before going with a review company.
Still, every review site has the same ultimate goal: increase your exposure, find new readers for your book, and bump up those review counts.
Not all sites can make sense for every author. The best course of action would be to pick those that best suit your unique needs.
Here are the four best paid book review sites you can rely on for non-fiction authors, each with its distinctive features.
#1 Goodreads
Goodreads is the most popular review site in the publishing industry today. It remains the top on-line community for book lovers and authors alike.
Amazon runs it, so it boasts some perks for authors with books in the Amazon database.
Right through the site, you can claim your profile and earn a badge that verifies your identity. You’ll also be able to access a wealth of statistical information on your books listed on KDP.
So, how do you know if Goodreads is the way to go? Well, if you want your book to go viral and gain as much exposure as possible, Goodreads could be your ticket.
Here, the strategy is to get people to add your book to their virtual bookshelves, and of course, leave some reviews on it.
This way, your book gets raised visibility. Other users can now see it in their friends’ feeds, giving it a much better chance to be added to their reading list.
Think of it as like playing a giant book-fueled game of telephone with 80 million people.
Speaking of games, did you know that we have an entire YouTube channel dedicated to guiding authors like you to create an excellent self-publishing game plan. Check it out, and if you like what you see, let’s see how fast you can smash that subscribe button.
Back to our topic, you can also run a giveaway on Goodreads, a surefire way to get book reviews. It’s something we do regularly for our clients.
All active giveaways are listed on the giveaway section of the website. Your fans can link to it and encourage their friends to enter the giveaway.
Here’s a video dedicated entirely to helping you get all the goods you can get on Goodreads.
#2 NetGalley
Next up on the paid book review site list is NetGalley. NetGalley is a service that delivers digital Advanced Reader Copies, better known as ARCs.
This service provides ARCs of your book to professional readers. We’re talking about reviewers, media, journalists, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, podcast hosts, and many others.
These professional readers use NetGalley to access digital copies of your book, making it an effective marketing tool not just for your book but for your entire brand as an author.
It allows your work to be made available to people who want to read it in their professional capacity.
A NetGalley promotion offers your ARC three months to be highlighted in their database’s recently added and read now sections. The promo also lets you showcase your book to the sections specific to your title’s categories.
By opting for this promo, all users will see your book listed on the NetGalley website.
There’s a lot more to NetGalley when it comes to figuring out if it’s the right one for you.
To help you out, we have a video that goes into all the details of this review site. We also dive deep into costs because it can be pretty expensive and may not be worth it for all books. Stick to the end of this video to make sure if this review site is for you.
The following two on this list are similar to NetGalley. These two book review sites also deliver your ARC copy to both readers and reviewers. But, they focus more on getting your ARC securely to reviewers, bloggers, and your book army.
#3 BookSirens
BookSirens boasts over 10,000 readers across various genres with an average review rate of 75%, making it an attractive site to get book reviews.
The high average review rate is because their users are vetted and accepted as serious book reviewers. Before users can get approval to join BookSirens, they must have posted at least 20 starred ratings on Goodreads.
How this works is that you first need to send your book to the BookSirens team for evaluation. They will then confirm if it is a quality book – something that they want to offer to their users. Once approved, they will add your book to its appropriate category where users can discover it, download the ARC, and start reading.
A remarkable feature of BookSirens, which leads to their 75% success rate, is that readers can only download one ARC at a time. They can’t download a new ARC until they finish reading and reviewing their active one.
This feature is pretty cool for authors because your advanced reader is much less likely to ghost you without leaving a review. And they’re entirely focused on one book at a time.
BookSirens will also give you a direct link that you can send to your book army. So, those folks can hop on over there and securely download their ARC for free.
You also have the option of choosing whether your reviews are posted on Goodreads, Amazon, or both. Now if you’re wondering about getting book reviews from your book army (And how to keep them from being removed) – check out this article.
#4 Booksprout
Booksprout is another option to consider if your main priority is a prelaunch review push.
Similar to BookSirens, Booksprout is a review site that automates the delivery of your ARC to over 40,000 users.
Their average review rate is around 79%. Even your book army will find it challenging to beat that.
Before you get all excited, we’ve been testing this one for some time, and we’re getting mixed results.
Self-Publish and Succeed, well after launch, got four reviews from a single Booksprout listing. Yet, the other books we tested did not bring any results.
Right now, we’re playing with it to figure out whether it’s a timing issue, a topic, or something else.
We’ve experienced the same thing with BookSirens. My book wasn’t even accepted by them for their reviewers. So, I only used BookSirens for ARCs, but some authors from our client base have gotten good reviews.
BookSirens Vs. Booksprout
So what’s the difference between the two paid review sites? Which one is better for you? Let’s discuss the main differences between BookSirens and Booksprout:
- Booksprout focuses on getting reviews by a specific date, while BookSirens focuses on getting a particular number of reviews.
- On BookSirens, you can post your book and have the reviews roll in for as long as your little heart desires. But on Booksprout, your reviewers have a time limit to read and write their review.
- Booksprout also limits the number of reviewer downloads depending on your subscription level. The more money you spend on their service, the more downloads you can do.
- BookSirens is a fee-per-book service, letting you choose the number of downloads from as little as 5 to as many as 250.
On the plus side, you can request Booksprout reviews posted on up to eight different sites rather than just Goodreads or Amazon. They include options like Kobo, Apple Books, Google Books, and even BookBub.
Whether you go with BookSirens, Booksprout, or both, these two book review sites are easy to use. They’re effective if you need a little help building up your audience.
If this is your first book or your book army looks a little sparse on the prelaunch battlefield, one of these two review sites, or maybe both, could be your answer.
Now that you know some of the best sites that can help you get book reviews in bulk, maybe it’s time to get in touch with us. See what we can do to help you take off even further, even months post-launch.
Here at Book Launchers we help authors like you in every stage of the self-publishing process. Whether you write the book yourself or with our help, we’re with you every step of the way.