BookRoar Barbarians, listen up!
As we alluded to a while back in our interview with the brilliant Sal Nudo, we are implementing a change to the BookRoar submission process which (we hope) will alleviate one of the main frustrations felt by our members — Amazon processing delays (grr!). We have all at some point been held up for five days or more while Amazon does their thing, when all we want to do is dive back in and select our next amazing read.
Well, those days are gone, banished, no more, and it is all thanks to a new change in the way our members can submit reviews to BookRoar. Read on, as the below is important for everyone using the site.
What Is the New Submission Process
As of October 1st 2024, you will be able to submit your review to BookRoar at the same time you post your review to Amazon and Goodreads. You do not need to wait for the confirmation email from Amazon to tell you that the review is Live before posting. This new process will be in place for all members and for all books which are selected for review.
Due to this change, the authorization timer for the receiving author to confirm that everything is up to scratch has been extended to seven days. This is to allow Amazon the time to process the review and for it to appear online for everyone to see. After submitting your review, you can delve straight back into the Review Pool and choose your next book, with no Amazon delays holding you up.
To make this easier to manage, we have created new automated emails, which will notify you when a Credit lands in your account. You don’t need to check to see if your review has been moderated and approved any more, we’ll do that for you!
So now you can all read to your heart’s content. Ain’t no stopping the BookRoar train!
Hold Up! What should I do when I receive a new review?
Ah, the other side of the BookRoar experience. Don’t worry, we’ve got this covered too.
This new shift in our processes means that the onus for waiting for the review to go Live is on the author, not the reviewer. As a result, the author receiving a review should periodically check their Amazon listing to see when the review has gone Live, and only approve it when all is present and correct. Don’t panic if you do not see the review straight away — it can take up to seven days to be made Live on Amazon.
That being said, we are still here to help. If after five days the review is still not visible on Amazon, Contact Us and we will investigate what is happening as we normally do. We’ve still got your back and will continue to make every effort to ensure everyone gets something out of using BookRoar.
Again, we have new automated emails to remind you to check Amazon for your incoming reviews (please check your Junk folders, and mark anything from us as ‘Not Junk’ to ensure you receive future emails) and also colour changes on the BookRoar dashboard to remind you to let us know after five days have past. Finally, try not to hold up authorising the Credit if you see the review. An efficient member of BookRoar helps to keep the cogs turning and the Credits flowing!
Why have you done this?
There are two reasons why we decided to implement this change.
The first is that the most requested feature from our members was to be able to review another book while Amazon processed a recently submitted review. We too felt the frustration of having to wait what felt like an eternity for the confirmation email from Amazon to land in our mailboxes. This new process means that you can move on to the next book seamlessly and be assured that we at BookRoar have everything under control.
The second reason is that it will make our jobs at BookRoar a whole lot easier. As BookRoar has grown, we find we are spending more and more time trying to resolve missing reviews when we could be focusing on other areas of the site and thinking up other solutions. We enjoy helping our members and enjoy our correspondence with our regulars, so please do drop us an email anytime and we will still be available to help.
These changes may seem all good news, but they do come with a caveat. Some may see this as a green light to spam BookRoar (and Amazon and Goodreads) with low content, AI generated, or plagiarized reviews, and this is certainly not the case. Low effort reviews are still absolutely not allowed and we will continue to dip sample all reviews for quality. We will take action against anyone trying to cheat the BookRoar system.
But BookRoar, I like the old way — can we go back?
We appreciate this may cause a bit of upheaval and confusion as we move to this new process, but please try to embrace it and see how you get on. I am sure we will become accustomed to it before long and find BookRoar a whole lot easier.
But, as always, we are listening and adaptive to feedback. Good or bad, please drop us a message with your thoughts, questions, queries, or concerns. We are always eager to engage and learn in order to deliver the very best service we can.
And Finally…
The move to this new process has only been achieved due to an upgrade to our automated email provider. Sending out the amount of emails we do doesn’t come cheap — and making sure they don’t end up being marked as Junk is even more expensive — , so we offer our sincere thanks to our BookRoar Extra members who have made this possible.
BookRoar is still not run for profit and what we do make is invested back into the site. We have further upgrades in mind and will continue to fundraise where we can in order to keep improving BookRoar for everyone. If you like what we do and would like to contribute to the site’s future, please check out our BookRoar Extra membership on KoFi for some awesome rewards.
