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Earlier this week, a friend sent me the Bloomberg article titled, “Inside a Firm Charged With Scamming Writers for Millions.” I wasn’t scammed at any grand scale, but since publishing Framed, I’ve received dozens of questionable “book promotion” emails written by fake personas controlled by overseas sweatshops. Evaluating the services I did purchase, I haven’t been impressed by most of them.
I grasped onto a lower rung of the “ego-driven debut author” ladder, one from which most people probably hated dealing with me but where I did shell out a hundred bucks here and a thousand bucks there. Excluding advertising costs, I spent around $10,000 on my debut novel. And, the truth is, most debut authors, especially those writing memoirs, would be happy to pay that much money to help cement their legacies.
In early March, before my paperback was published, I wrote a post in which I explained editorial reviews. Now that I’ve received all of the reviews that I requested, I thought it would be useful to let people know what I thought about the reviews. I’m going to review the reviewers. And, yes, I’m aware that this is an anti-pattern when it comes to customer reviews, as Goodreads wants that space to remain protected. To be clear: I’m evaluating services that I paid for, not organic reviews that my book has garnered.
Editorial Review Components
- Cost
- Turnaround
- Rating / badges
- Authority of the brand and reviewer
- Cross-posting, contests, and publication
Editorial Review Review Components
- Did the reviewer read my book?
- Is the writing good quality?
- Are the reviews objective? Is there meaningful deviation in reviews?
- Was there an organic audience response?
Reedsy Discovery: A
For $50, the Reedsy Discovery review program is probably the best bang for your buck. This system relies upon independent reviewers selecting the listed book for review, which, for me, took more than a month longer than originally projected (when I expressed concern to Reedsy, they did float the prospect of a full refund if I wanted to pull out).
My Reedsy Discovery review was one of the longest, most objective, and most detailed reviews I received. The reviewer’s understanding of the book was thorough and I felt it captured my tone really well.
I received the “must read” accolade. Also, Reedsy implements a voting system which determines which books will be further promoted each week. My book made the cut, and so was featured in a newsletter which garnered extra attention.
Midwest Book Review / Donovan Literary Services: B
When I contacted Midwest Book Review and was told that my technology book had been picked up by someone who claims “45+ years” as a book reviewer, I was a bit worried.
My concerns were misplaced, and Diane Donovan’s perspective as someone who hadn’t grown up with social media was invaluable to her assessment of Framed. While this reviewer wasn’t able to fully contextualize what I was talking about (hampering thoroughness), the assessment was kind, calling the book “thoroughly engaging.”
The main complaint here is that the web presence of these reviews is lacking, all of the book reviews are quite positive, and all of the reviews use similar descriptors (CTRL+F for “thought-provoking” in the June edition of reviews and see it used 33 times).
$50 was a fair price for this service, more so for quotes than for a thorough analysis.
Independent Book Review: C
This review cost $165 and it’s where the asymmetries between what indie authors pay for and what they get became more apparent. The turnaround–a month and a half–was reasonable, but my gut feeling was that this review may have used AI to sharpen/workshop the language (“peek behind the curtains” and a few other examples). To be fair to the site owner, I expressed these concerns and he said he’d monitor for this in the future.
Calling out that the book may be to “in-the-weeds” is good feedback, and overall it appears that the reviewer at least performed a thorough skim of the book. Unfortunately, the reviewer and website don’t have much authority, and it’s hard to ascribe “worth it” to this one.
Reader Views: B
This one was a bit of a surprise, as it came bundled with a book contest entry. What was most surprising was that it was a well-constructed, thorough review with a full scorecard.
Yes, it does seem like pretty much every entrant gets the 5-star review treatment, but this wasn’t templated marketing copy or AI-assisted writing. Someone spent time with my book and wrote a compelling review. For $89, I’d probably do this again, especially because it was cross-posted to Goodreads and included a BookBub recommendation.
Kirkus: C
My Kirkus review cost me $450. I received the “Get it” rating, a magazine indie feature, and… tons of upsell marketing, including text messages and multiple emails tempting me to pay to list my movie rights. That there is anyone out there trawling Kirkus for highly-rated indie books isn’t a claim I readily believe, but, regardless, Kirkus maintains a high level of respect in the traditional publishing space.
Although the review used some big words and was positive, it was obvious to me that the reviewer didn’t read my entire book, as different sections of my experience were conflated. I was dissatisfied with my attempt to rectify this with Kirkus support, and I wrote a detailed reddit post about my experience.
Author: you don’t need a Kirkus review. It isn’t going to help you sell books.
Literary Titan: A
I received an excellent review from Literary Titan after waiting for just one month. It’s a powerful write-up that doesn’t rely on common tropes or overused pleasantries. The reviewer read Framed and wrote a strong evaluation of it. It cost $119.
Additionally, I was featured in an author interview on the website and the review was cross-posted to Goodreads. I enjoyed working with Literary Titan and they were communicative throughout the process. This was much better than the Independent Book Review review, and I used this review as an example when communicating with other providers or curious authors.
Readers’ Favorite: D+
Readers’ Favorite offers a free review service as well as one that costs $99. The free service doesn’t guarantee that the book will be reviewed with any urgency. The draw to the platform is that there’s some massive yearly contest with tons of prize money ($125,000?), so tons of people end up entering.
Naively, I paid $99 to enter. I received my editorial review in three weeks, but it was low quality. There is usage of “you” and “I” that wouldn’t get past most editors, and the conclusions drawn often struck me as wrong (“O’Hearn offers a cybersecurity clinic”).
It seems like every book on this platform gets a choppy positive review. I wouldn’t recommend it compared to other options at this price point.
Booklife Reviews / Publisher’s Weekly: C
Compared to the Kirkus reviewer, my Booklife reviewer gave the impression that the book had been read beyond the intro chapters. Unfortunately, this review cost $499. My review was featured in the May 12, 2025 issue of Publisher’s Weekly, and I bought an extra copy for my parents, but I have no idea how I could justify this crazy expense.
As far as I can tell, I did not sell extra books based on this review. So, what’s the point? I liked it more than the Kirkus review, but I probably could have found five starving critics and paid them $100 each to generate more buzz and mindshare.
Summary
My experience in seeking out editorial reviews was that the more expensive ones were profoundly disappointing, while those that required a bit of digging to find were pretty good. My advice for indie authors is to think twice before shelling out hundreds or thousands to the more prevalent editorial review services. For the same price, you can probably get a well-known subject matter expert to read and review your book.
