BookReverb for authors: what to check before you pay
Published 14 November 2026
BookReverb (bookreverb.com) sells authors access to readers. Readers get paid to finish your book, and BookReverb calls the review "optional". Its homepage says the service is "Amazon policy friendly by design". If you're thinking of signing up, here are the things we found and why they matter for your book.
Why we wrote this
Skriuwer works with a lot of independent authors, and we've seen what happens when a review strategy goes wrong. Reviews get removed, books lose their ranking, and in the worst cases Amazon closes the author's KDP account. This page is a warning, written to help authors avoid that. Every claim links to its source so you can check it yourself.
1. They paid users for Trustpilot and Facebook reviews
Inside the BookReverb dashboard, users saw a banner: "Earn $10 credit for leaving us a Trustpilot review". The same $10 credit offer ran for Facebook reviews. Both pages now say the offer has ended.
BookReverb shows 2,874 Trustpilot reviews with a 4.9 score (checked 14 November 2026). Trustpilot's guidelines for businesses don't allow companies to offer incentives for reviews. From the outside, you can't tell how many of those reviews came in while the $10 credit was on offer.
2. Paid readers write a different kind of review
On BookReverb, readers earn money for every book they finish. That's their reason to be there. A reader who wants to keep earning has every reason to stay positive: happy authors keep sending books, and harsh reviewers may get fewer. A reader who bought your book with their own money has no such reason.
Even if each review is honest, a wall of paid-reader 5-star reviews looks unnatural to Amazon. Amazon's Community Guidelines don't allow reviews written in exchange for payment, and when Amazon removes them, the author pays the price, not the service.
3. Natural reviews are the ones that last
Amazon watches how reviews come in, not only what they say. Natural reviews arrive slowly and come from different kinds of readers. Some are Verified Purchase, some aren't, and some ratings are mixed.
A sudden burst of 5-star reviews in a few days, mostly without the Verified Purchase badge, is the pattern Amazon's systems flag. If readers get your book from a service instead of buying it on Amazon, their reviews show up without that badge. Twenty unverified reviews in one week don't look like readers finding your book. They look like a campaign, and Amazon treats them that way.
4. They pause books listed elsewhere
BookReverb tells authors it may pause books that also appear on other ARC or reader sites. So you lose the option to spread your launch across several services.
Questions to ask any reader or review service
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Does the service pay readers, or give them anything of value, in connection with a review?
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Has the service ever offered rewards for reviews of itself?
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Can you use other services alongside it?
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Can you check the reader numbers it claims?
Sources
- BookReverb homepage, dashboard, Trustpilot credit page and Facebook credit page, viewed 14 November 2026.
- BookReverb on Trustpilot
- Trustpilot guidelines for businesses
- Amazon Community Guidelines
Editorial note: Skriuwer works with iWrity, a growth platform for indie authors that competes with BookReverb. We believe iWrity is the safest way to get reviews. Every fact on this page links to its source so you can check it yourself.