You want to learn how to make money writing book reviews? Then this post is for you.
As an author myself, I have come across many book reviewers who are making a ton of money just by reviewing other authors’ books.
Book reviews are so important for authors. Having that social proof on platforms like Amazon and Goodreads really helps sales.
So here is how the book reviewers make money writing book reviews.
Table of Contents
1. Write For Individual Authors
The best thing you can do is find authors who are in the self-publishing industry and recently published a book.
The main reason I recommend self-published authors because they want to get any coverage possible and if you approach them for giving book reviews on either your blog or on Amazon they will approve you instantly.
Since these authors have a minimum budget for marketing you may get less money for writing a book review, but this will work if you are just starting out your journey as a book reviewer.
It’s not necessary that all self-published authors have a low budget for marketing. There are many self-published authors, who have established themselves as bestseller authors, and are spending a lot on marketing their book.
You can also approach them. If you have a good background you can get the offer to review their book and get paid.
Now, apart from self-published authors you can also approach established authors as well as new authors from a recognized publishing house.
Every author craves book reviews as it can help them in achieving bestseller ranking as well as helping them to get authority in the industry.
2. Make a Book Review Blog
If you are a book reviewer or want to become one, having a book review blog is a must. It is one of the best ways to make money writing book reviews.
A blog will act as a hub for all the reviews which you will be posting. Also, it acts as your live portfolio which you can share with other authors as well as publishing houses to get clients for book reviews.
Now there are multiple options that you can use to make money from your blog by just reviewing books. You can earn money from the book reviews themselves, or through affiliate links to the books you have reviewed or even advertising on your site if you are getting decent traffic. See below for the 5 ways of making money from your Book Review blog.
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The methods to make money from Writing book reviews from A blog are:
1. Make Money from Ads
When you have a book review blog, all you have to do is post at least 20 book reviews which you might have read recently or even old book reviews, and apply for Ads.
The most common Ads network are Google Adsense and Ezoic.
There is no issue in getting approved by Google Adsense but for Ezoic you need to have at least 10,000 visitors to your blog. Sometimes they even approve websites with less than 5000 views per month. So do give it a try first.
Now when you place the ads on your blog you can make a good amount of money just by website visitors, which earn extra bucks apart from charging authors for reviews.
2. Make Money from Amazon Affiliates
Apart from Ads, you can always use an affiliate network to earn money from your book review blog.
For making money through an affiliate you don’t need to have huge traffic to your blog. Even with a few hundred users, you could make more money than from the Ads network.
So all you have to do is to sign up with the Amazon Affiliate account and add the affiliate code of the book which you are reviewing on to your site from Amazon affiliate dashboard.
Now when anybody reads the book review on your blog and clicks the link to buy the book from Amazon, you will get a commission.
This way you can make money from different sources, that is, from Ads as well as from Amazon Affiliate.
I recommended you use Amazon affiliate because Amazon is the largest seller of books and people feel confident while making a purchase from Amazon than from any other site.
3. Sell Book Promotion Space on Your Blog
As you continue to write more and more book reviews you are likely to get more visitors to your blog.
So now you can do free and paid promotion of any books (whichever books fits your audience or your rule).
All you have to do is create a page where you should mention your requirements for promotion, both free and paid. And add a contact form where you will collect the details such as book name, author name, Amazon link (general link, not affiliate link), book description, etc. Mention this page on your blog homepage with a good featured image.
If your blog gets a good amount of traffic, you will get many review requests.
For free promotion you can mention in your requirements that you will only place the book on sidebar and not on the homepage, etc. And for paid promotion you will post the book on the homepage as well as share the book on to your email list and social media followers.
The above one is just an example of what you can do. You can post the requirements as you like. There is no hard or fast rule.
You may be wondering…
How you will make money from giving away free promotions to authors?
The simple answer to make money from giving free promotions on your book review blog is to use your own affiliate links to their books.
When any of your readers will buy those books from your affiliate link you will get the commission. So it’s a win-win for both parties.
4. Organize Writing Competition
This option works for blogs which get a decent amount of traffic or the owner of the blog has a great social media presence.
Having a blog can make it possible for you to organize any events solely on your accountability.
This is the next way to make money from book review blog. You can organize any type of writing completion on your blog and let the writers and authors take part.
You can either organize story writing competition, poem writing competition, or even book reviewing competition.
If you organize a book reviewing competition, you will make money also as well as you will get a ton of free content for your blog which you can post later.
Now you can have a small entry fee for the competition. The fee doesn’t need to be high. I recommend going really low as $1-$5. This will you will get a lot of entries.
This will also increase the blog traffic as more and more people will visit to list themselves on the competition.
You can also give some rewards for the winner. The prize can be a box full of books, cash prize, or Amazon gift cards. These things works great in the book industry.
5. Sell Your Own Products
Selling your own products on the blog is one of the best and most profitable things.
Your products don’t need to be physical ones. You can create an info product or a digital product such as a printables, bookmarks, tags, t-shirts, etc.
You can even sell a course on your blog.
All you have to do is think of a digital product around your niche which can either educate or solve a problem for your audience.
The best example of digital products under book reviewing blogs are bookmarks and course on how to became a successful book reviewer.
This way you can make a lot of money from book reviews only. This book review blog of yours will act as a base for everything you can do later on. This can act as a full business if you plan it the right way and do the heavy lifting.
3. Signup With Publishing Houses
Another great way and long term option to get paid for writing book reviews is to tie up with publishing houses, both big and small.
As these traditional publishing houses own the full responsibility from editing, printing, and marketing a book, they require some fulltime as well as freelance book reviewers to market their books.
So if you can tie up with a few of them, you can make a sustainable recurring income just by posting book reviews on either blogs, Amazon, Goodreads, or on all of them depending upon the publishing house and your deal with them.
You can first visit their website to see if they already have a book reviewing option. If yes, check the requirements to join. If they don’t have , you can email them and ask for it.
This is a traditional approach so you have to work on the publishing house terms and not on your own terms. And sometimes they can even ask for a biased review. So you have to consider them accordingly.
4. Become a Beta Reader
Yes, you can make money by becoming a beta reader contradictory to the belief that beta readers should not be paid.
If you look into any freelancing sites there are thousands of beta reader gigs available ranging from $5-$100. They have good reviews as well.
So yes, beta readers are paid and there is a huge demand too.
Since you already have an established blog, social media followers, and you have reviewed many books, you can use these things to your advantage and provide your service with little more than just book feedback.
You can include in your beta reading service like:
- You will provide feedback.
- You will critique the book.
- You will also publish the book review on your blog, or on social media accounts, depending on the charge or Gig you have discussed.
Becoming a beta reader has advantages, the main advantages being:
- You will get a free book.
- You get the book before it is published. So you have the time to draft a book review beforehand and publish on the launch day. This way you will get good traffic to your blog as you are one of few people who published it.
- You will get paid also.
- You can earn from the affiliate sales.
5. Become an Editor
This is completely an optional choice, still its a choice to make money while writing book reviews.
I have seen many book reviewers who offers book editing services on their website/blog.
There is no doubt book editing service is costly and authors pay a hefty sum to find good editors.
So if you have any experience, which you should have while writing this many book reviews on your blog, you should definitely try this method to make money writing book reviews.
I have a complete post on how to become an editor and how much to charge for book editing. You can check the above post to know more about this option.
6. Reach Out to Newspapers, Book Reviewing Blogs, and Literary Magazines
✅ Local Newspapers
You may have seen book reviews section on newspapers. This is a best place to apply for. Though big newspapers have permanent book reviewers, small and local newspapers are usually lacking in this department.
If your local newspaper has a book review section, you can apply to them. They can hire you on a permanent basis or you can work on temporary or pay per review basis.
✅ Book Reviewing Blogs
Like your book reviewing blog, there are many established reviewers who hire other book reviewers to write for their blogs.
Some blogs have job requirements also, others hire freelancers for a particular book or for a particular genre.
What you can do is check those book reviewing blogs and see if they have a particular requirement or not.
You can also directly approach them either on social media or on email.
✅ Literary Magazines
These are somewhat harder to get, still you can apply to them as well.
They usually pay $10-$50 per book review but only accept a handful of book reviewers.
So if you have achieved a name in your industry then you can apply to some of the literary magazines.
7. Apply for Book Reviewing Jobs
Yes, book reviewing jobs exists.
Once you’ve made your portfolio and resume, you can apply on all major job posting sites.
There are multiple jobs posted on a regular basis.
Some of the sites that you can use are:
There are many more which you can use. But these are some of the famous names for offering book reviewing jobs.
8. Become A Freelance Book Reviewer
Just signup on freelance sites like Upwork or Fiverr as a book reviewer, and you will get a ton of gigs for reviewing books.
People say that book reviewers are not being paid, it’s unethical for book reviewers to ask for money to review books, blah blah!!!
But when you search for book reviewing gigs on these sites, there are already people who are doing extremely well. They are getting daily orders for book reviews and are making a lot of money reviewing books only.
The best place to start is Fiverr and it is the one I recommend the most.
List of Sites That Pay for Book Reviews
So, I think by now you’ve already got a good idea on how to make money writing book reviews.
But, there is more.
Here’s is the list of sites that pay for book reviews. These are:
1. Online Book Club
OnlineBookClub.org is a free site for book readers that have been around for 10 years.
It has a massive community of more than a million readers from all over the world.
Many authors submit their book here for reviews, and it gets to the readers who like to review that particular book.
Its a completely free service so you can join this site to make money.
The payout ranges from $5-$50 per review.
2. Kirkus Reviews
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/ is one of the most trusted and respected sources for book reviews.
They have a policy that the reviewers should able to write a review of 350 words within two week time frame.
They pay on Freelance basis.
They accept English and Spanish language reviewers currently.
To know more about them visit their career page to check the latest requirements.
Get your resume ready and apply for it. This is the best site for book reviews on the planet.
You can apply to become a book reviewer at https://www.kirkusreviews.com/about/careers/.
3. BookBrowse
In BookBrowse, you are sent an Advanced Readers Copy (ARC) in the months ahead of the publication.
Since you have to become a member to get the ARC, you are required to fill out the book reviewers form first. You can find the form here.
As a member you are offered four to six books per month for reviews. You can accept what books you want to read and review and what you don’t.
Remember, BookBrowse sometimes doesn’t give an ARC to all the reviewers as they only get 25 copies before publication. So chances are there you will not always get a copy.
If you are selected, you are required to give a review of 50-100 words. You are not allowed to exceed the 300 words limit.
You are given free book but you are not paid for the review.
4. Reedsy Discovery
Reedsy, a well known site among all the book lovers, both readers and authors, also provides book reviews and recommendations.
Reedsy Discover also provides readers a ton of self-published books to read before they are even available for all.
To become a book reviewer on Reedsy Discover you can fill this form. Once you are selected you can find many books which you can read and review depending upon the genre you choose.
You will get a tip from the authors and readers directly for reviewing the books.
The tip can range from $1-$5, as a token of appreciation.
5. Women’s Review of Books
WRB reviews fiction books, graphics novels, poetry books, and memoirs.
As the name suggests it mainly reviews books written by female authors. Though it is not just limited to female authors, they mainly focus on that only.
It is a femanist magazine that has been published for 36 years.
Since they are a big player, all the book reviewers working for WRB are either journalists, or are famous book reviewers. So if you have such qualities you can send them a direct proposal.
All the joining details you can find at : contact here.
They pay a huge $100 per review.
6. Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly is a online weekly news magazine that focus’ on international book publishing business.
It offers book release news, its earnings, bestseller list, and all other aspects of a book business.
Since it posts reviews of both self-published authors as well as traditional published authors, they occasionally require book reviewers.
They pay on Freelance basis.
To apply check on its Jobs page.
7. The U.S Reviews of Books
U.S. Review of Books is a nation-wide book reviewing organisation that reviews all kind of books and publishes them in their popular monthly newsletter.
The book review ranges from 250 to 300 words.
The book reviewers should be able to summarize the book as well as give insights. These can be quotes from the book, comparision from other books in the same niche, reviewers should speak about the author, etc.
The reviewers are also given the opportunity to assign a “recommended” rating.
Complete review should be submitted within 2-3 weeks.
All the qualified book reviewers are paid on monthly basis (5th of every month).
To know more in detail **visit here.**
8. Moody Publishers
Moody Press is a nonprofit publishing house that publishes Christian titles and study material and resources for Bible. If this niche fits your reviewing interest then you can apply for their book reviewing program.
They will not pay you but you will get Authors Review Copies.
The reviewers should be able to write a review within 60-days of reading the book.
You can know more about their program by visiting their Review page.
9. Booklist
Booklist is a review journal for public and school librarians, which helps librarians with selection of books based on the reviews.
Booklist publishes top 10 lists, author interviews, read-alike, and many other useful information.
Though they have in-house book reviewers, they do offer freelance opportunities for book reviews, blog post, and featured articles.
They pay $15 for book review, $12.50 for blog post.
The normal book review length should not exceed 175 words. If in any genre, the reviewer wants to give a star rating, then they should write a review between 200-250 words.
Click here to know more about Booklist.
10. getAbstract
If you love reading nonfiction books then this site is just for you.
If you can summarize a nonfiction book, which is usually what all the book reviewers do in their blog, then you can make money writing book reviews.
Till now they have summarized more than 18000 nonfiction books into 10-minute bites which a reader can read or listen from the app.
You can visit their career page to know more about the submission guidelines.
11. New Pages
New Pages is a online news site which publishes book reviews and many more useful information for readers and authors.
You should own a blog if you want to get approved to review for New Pages.
You are required to send a flash review of 100-200 words. In any case it should not exceed 300 words.
At the time of writing this post, the job post says “no pay”. But you will be given copies to review.
To know more about their submission guidelines click here.
12. Writerful Books
Writerful Books accepts all kinds of genres but if you love reading and reviewing contemporary fiction, historic fiction, literary fiction, narrative non-fiction and memories then your chances of getting approved will increase.
The downside of this site is that your review should be published to Writerful only. Reviews should not be published elsewhere either online or personal blog etc.
They pay their book reviewers $10 to $50.
And if you become one of their most quality reviewers on Writerful Books then you will also get a $100 Amazon gift Voucher.
To submit your application click here.
My Verdict
Here I have provided the complete guide on how to make money writing book reviews. But there are few things you should work on first. These are:
- Create a book review blog.
- Review some free books on your blog, on Amazon, and on Goodreads.
- Create your resume as book reviewer.
- Make friends with self-published authors. Grow your network.
After doing these first steps, you can then grow your book reviewer career with some of the other methods mentioned!
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