Reviewing a Book You Received

Reviewing a Book You Received

Once your book has actually reached you, we would love to hear how it turned out. Your review helps the next person decide whether this is the right thing to make for someone they love.

When You Can Review

The invitation appears once the book is genuinely in your hands, not merely paid for:

• A printed copy counts once it has shipped.
• A Digital Edition or an Audiobook counts as soon as the order is paid, because that is the moment you can download it.

Only the person who owns the book can review it. Nobody here can write one on your behalf.

Where to Find It

Open the book from My Books. At the top of its page you will see How did your book turn out? and a Write a review button. If you have already written one, the same place says so and offers Edit your review instead.

What You Are Asked

• Your rating — required. One to five stars.
• Headline — optional, up to 120 characters. A few words summing it up.
• Your review — required. At least a sentence or two, up to 2,000 characters. What you had it made for, and how it turned out, is the most useful thing you can write.
• How to credit you — required, up to 60 characters. This is the only name we publish, so most people use a first name and a last initial. We fill in a suggestion, and you are free to replace it with anything you prefer.
• A photo of your book — optional. A JPEG, PNG or WebP up to 10 MB. Photos are checked against our content guidelines when you upload them, and you can remove one later.

The button at the bottom says Submit review, or Update review if you are changing one you already wrote.

Two Separate Permissions

Consent is asked twice, because they are two different things:

• A required box: “You may publish this review, credited as above, on the site and in marketing.” Without it we will not publish your words at all.
• If — and only if — you attach a photo, a second box: “You may publish this photo on the site and in marketing.” If you leave that one unchecked, we will not publish the picture. You are welcome to submit the review without a photo.

What Happens Next

A person here reads every review before it goes on the site, so it will not appear the instant you submit it. Your book’s page tells you where yours stands: Pending review while we are reading it, Approved once it is published, or Declined if we were not able to publish it. Whatever it says, your own words stay visible to you on your own book, and you are welcome to rewrite a declined one.

You can change what you wrote at any time. One thing to know: every submission is read again, including an edit to a review we have already published. Your consent was to particular words, so new words go back to us to read before the new version appears. Your earlier version stops showing on the site in the meantime.