Hey there,
Remember us? It’s your old pals at BookRoar. We apologize for our silence over the past few months, but things in our personal lives meant the BookRoar newsletter had to take a back seat while we focused on other areas of the site. The good news is BookRoar is stronger than ever and our turnover of reviews is at its highest levels yet. Anyway, we thought it was about time we updated you on some very important changes to our service, as well as convince those standing on the sidelines to jump in and join us!
Minimum Star Rating on all Reviews
Okay, this is the big one! After careful consideration and feedback from our community, BookRoar will now ask for a minimum of three-stars on all reviews obtained using our service. We have to balance these changes while respecting Amazon’s Review Guidelines and our own mantra of providing truthful and honest reviews, so in order to help facilitate this change, please follow the below steps when selecting your BookRoar reads from now on.
When scanning the Review Pool, the timer on the top right will tell you how long you have to make a decision on a book. Please use this time to research the book and the author, and also use Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature to get a feel for the writing style and content. This should give you an idea on whether or not the book is suitable for you and if you think you can award it the minimum three-star rating.
Should you select a book from the Review Pool and find it is heading in the one or two star direction, then please return it to us at any time and request a refund from Amazon (please note, the return to Amazon must be within 72 hours of purchase and you must have read less than 10% of the book). In this event, all that happens is you have lost a little time, but no review is submitted, and no harm is done to the author or the book.
If you have read significantly more of the book or you cannot get a refund, then please Contact Us for further instruction before leaving a negative review. We still accept low scoring reviews, however they are not to be posted on Amazon and Goodreads, but instead kept private between the author and the reviewer via the BookRoar submission. For full details on this new policy, please see our updated FAQs.
We hope these changes will help our members give and receive constructive and honest feedback without having to deal with the pain and heartache of a low scoring, publicly visible review. These changes take effect on any book selected from this moment forward, however any book selected before this date will be bound by the old rules.
Review Pool — Mixing It Up
Our second big change is on how the Review Pool operates and the order in which it brings books back for you to view. Previously, the Review Pool would prioritize books with the highest amount of Credits on them in a move to reward those who were most active on BookRoar; however we ended up in a situation where those with only a few Credits wouldn’t often get selected.
Well, now the Review Pool has been adjusted to bring back a more random selection of books, meaning those with less Credits have a greater chance of being selected. If you have been with BookRoar for some time and haven’t had much traction, then hopefully things will change for you now. And if you have been with us for a while then you should now see a greater variation of books whenever you enter the Review Pool. It’s a win-win!
Removal of Amazon Marketplaces
Again, following user feedback, we have decided to remove the ability to post reviews in some Amazon marketplaces. This is to help ensure reviews are obtained in the countries where authors are actively trying to market their books. From now on, we only accept reviews on the following marketplaces: United States (.com), Canada (.ca), Mexico (.com.mx), United Kingdom (.co.uk), Germany (.de), France (.fr), Italy (.it), Spain (.es), Japan (.jp), Australia (.com.au), and Netherlands (.nl). BookRoar continues to welcome authors from around the world, however if you live in a country without an Amazon marketplace or your marketplace is not listed, then you will need to set up an Amazon account in another country and meet the minimum criteria in order to submit reviews.
On the Subject of Changes…
Our FAQs and Review Tips pages have been updated with some further advice and the answers to our most popular queries. If you haven’t read it before or could do with a refresher, then please head there now. It is a great resource detailing how to use BookRoar to gain the best results, as well as showing you exactly what you can expect from our service.
Ko-Fi Memberships
We are saddened to have ended our monthly Ko-Fi membership a few months ago, but we feel it was the best course of action to take as it has allowed us to reduce the amount of Credits entering the Review Pool. This has increased the amount of ongoing reviews at any time and shortened the time it takes for each person to be selected, meaning BookRoar is far more efficient than it was last year.
But it also means that BookRoar does not operate for any financial gain at all. Yep that’s right — we get a whole lot of zilch and zip for doing what we do, and the fees we incur cost a pretty penny. If you ever receive a good review through us or like our customer service, then please throw a few bucks our way. As usual, all donations go towards running, maintaining, and improving the site, as well as funding any future services we may require.
Ensure Your Genres Are Correct
This is your regular reminder to ensure all relevant Genres are added to your books. Seriously, add as many as are applicable! The Genre Filtering Tool allows our members to remove the books they don’t wish to see, so if your book’s genres are not correctly added then it could easily be skipped over. So do yourself a favor and make sure your genres are there — it is quick, easy and hella effective!
I think that’s it for today! From now on, the BookRoar newsletter will be issued quarterly, however we’ll still be at the end of an email should you ever need support and guidance. You can also find all of our previous entries on our Medium page, as well as a few articles we have written. But until next time…
See ya later, alligators.
The BookRoar Team
