Kirkus ReviewsReviews of kirkusreviews.com

My sixth novel offered my first experience with Kirkus Reviews and I wish I'd submitted to them earlier. Everyone I've dealt with has been extremely professional and courteous. I am a very happy customer and would highly recommend Kirkus Reviews to fellow authors. A great review is a great review...but Kirkus stands above them all.

As an independent writer without an MA program, I wanted an objective review of a book, which if published would certainly garner a range of real reviews, positive and negative. Kirkus was an excellent resource to submit the work to and receive an objective analysis -- some bad, some good. I felt the critiques were genuine and helpful, and the praises appreciated. It's always problematic if you pay for a review -- I see several commenters here with angry red 1-stars because they got a bad review. Well, that does tell you that Kirkus is honest and won't give a glowing review if the work is not good. As Trustpilot goes, that's pretty trustworthy. For those angry red commenters -- Kirkus provides a good indication of what the public may say about the work, so they're really doing you a favor. In any case, I found the service very helpful and am using the critiques to rewrite and improve my work. Kirkus reviews was well worth it.

I have teamed up with Kirkus on a number of self-published books to help widen the social media market splash. I have found them to be clear-eyed, enthusiastic, professional and most helpful in this endeavor. I use them for every scrap I publish.

Good service.

FIRST A WARNING ON KIRKUS REVIEWS. Unlike The Online Book Club and other review for pay outlets, Kirkus, despite their much higher than average charge, does not appear to require their reviewers read the entire book. It refuses to re-consider reviews where clear mistakes and omissions in the review indicate that the reviewer skimmed the book and wrote their cursory review from personal and political biases. To avoid cancel culture blackballing, avoid Kirkus. The following is taken from my letter of complaint to Kirkus about a review I paid $595.00 for and found dishonest and worthless. "I believe the reviewer not only did not read the entire book, they failed to read carefully or intelligently any major proportion of it. I infer that the reviewer skimmed a few pages and disliked the point of view, which is critical of political and literary positions they endorse, and then decided to pan it. This would be typical of the “cancel culture” mentality increasingly prevalent in contemporary universities and the book industry. However, Kirkus offers no warning in its advertising that submissions that satirize “woke” or DEI biases will be canceled. Authors pay for and have traditionally had a right to expect politically unbiased reviews. Apparently, Kirkus no longer respects that right and instead defends “woke” bias as legitimate by virtue of their weasel word “subjectivity.” Kirkus generates a substantial portion of its revenue from reviews. Many authors, including myself, would avoid them altogether if properly warned about their indulgence of their reviewer’s political biases. Having reviewed and graded countless student book reports, I can almost always tell if a student has in fact read the whole book, or merely skimmed and made his/her case by cherry picking a few passages. The Kirkus review has all the earmarks of such a dishonest skim. For example, the reviewer stresses the novel’s comic aspects ignoring its dark side with three murders and five brutal deaths among the characters, and a villain motivated by racial hatred of a black woman. This is only one of many indications that the reviewer did not read the entire book. The novel subjects the reviewers’ treasured cancel culture along with its rightwing opposite to harsh Swiftian style satire. However, Kirkus’s reviewer never formally acknowledges her biases in favor of the targets of the satire. He/she also objects to its mixing genres, a criticism that applies to Shakespeare and, most important, to life itself. These are but a few of the errors, omissions, and misjudgments in the Kirkus review which as a result becomes little more than a tissue of sloppy errors, inexcusable omissions, and inappropriate biases. For Kirkus’s standard $599.00 fee for their expanded review, authors expect and deserve better. Reviews as biased and close-minded as this have no value to any author, they make Kirkus’s $599.00 charge a scam. I explained this in detail to Kirkus and told them I wanted either a review based on an unbiased, complete reading or my money refunded. They tried to defend the defective, biased review claiming that I was objecting to the reviewer’s “subjective judgments.” My response is that while subjective judgments are sometimes inevitable, unacknowledged political bias and gross negligence is not. Writers who expect Kirkus reviewers to read their entire book and write a fair-minded review should put their money to better use.

There is no respect for the writer or the work. My reviewer called my work extremely critical and condescending terms without giving a reason. Regardless of the quality of the work, a paying customer is entitled to some respect. There is no quality assurance. Once the review is assigned, the reviewer can write whatever they want. If their review has no relation to the work, there's nothing the editors can or will do about it. The reviewer may not read more than a few pages. It is irrelevant to anyone in the organization. My experience with Kirkus was a waste of my time. I would not use their service.

My reviewer mentioned several themes in my story that I had hoped would be noticed by readers. It was a relief and encouragement to continue writing the series! I'm grateful for the close reading and use of the reviewer's delightful language in describing my book.

The process of using Kirkus Indie was easy, smooth and ultimately rewarding. My book of poems had already been published in the Spring of 2024, and I submitted it for review in the Summer of 2024. I was pleasantly surprised that the review was thorough and very insightful with many quotes from the book included in the fantastic review. I took the chance and I was rewarded with a rarified starred review and a “Buy It!” Recommendation from Kirkus Indie. All in all, the website, communication and delivery of the review was easy and on the timeline promised at the outset. Thank you Kirkus for a wonderful experience!