OnlineBookClub.orgReviews of onlinebookclub.org

I submitted my money but no response.

The review focused too much on a one word error to downgrade the rating. Positive comments were generalized and negative comments were detailed. Also, an error by the reviewer was overlooked when I brought it to their attention. They said I could pay for another review.

I love the opportunity to read and give my honest reviews on them and being paid even if it's a low amount is an added plus. Unfortunately the guidelines and actually getting a review approved and being paid seems almost impossible. Your review will be rejected over the smallest mistake, including a forgotten or misplaced comma. I've submitted a review multiple times and even after fixing all grammar and punctuation mistakes it continues to be rejected. It seems pointless to keep trying at this point

I submitted my first review, and I keep receiving feedbacks on how to improve my writing. It is very useful and it really helps me. Recently, I received an email from the OnlineBookClub review team that asks me to send a selfie with me holding my ID . 'For your reviews to be sent to the moderators for approval and payment, you must finishing filling out your payment profile, including uploading a picture of you holding your ID. Your reviews and payments will be on hold until you have uploaded a picture of you holding your valid government-issued photo ID." I find this very strange. Did this happen to somebody else?

1. I like your honesty. 2. Your review came earlier than expected. In my belief, your reviewers have little knowledge about the European mentality and their thinking. Humour is apparently not international.

Your pitch is good but after you pay then there are many things you have to accomplish in order to complete the process and no refunds. I want to know all the hoops I have to jump through in the beginning and not after I have paid.

Confusing to follow

OBC offers opportunities to readers, reviewers and authors, as well as opportunities to discuss related matters. I'm still learning about it, and updating this review as I try out various things. As a reader, you can find new books by independent authors to buy (often at a discount or in Kindle Unlimited, sometimes temporarily free). You can maintain bookshelves of books you want to read, are reading, and have read/rated, and can comment on books and reviews - and of course write reviews. And as a team reviewer you can get an Advance Reader/Review Copy - and even get paid for reviews. I am mainly using the site as an author but, with the Authors Review Authors (ARA) scheme, also read and review books for credits that can be used to have my books put in the review pool for review. Otherwise, authors can order editorial review at one of four levels (with longer time frames and less experienced reviewers at lower prices). Also you can purchase for bulk reviews, and bookshelf promotion. As an author paying for these premium serivices, I found the website to be slow and awkward for entering books. The author services seem expensive, and as yet I have no results, so I can't judge value for money - but I should point out that reading a book takes times time, as does writing a professional editorial review (usually used prepublication to gain ammunition for the launch). Of course, I would hope ordinary (unpaid) readers would enjoy reading my books enough to review them, and am mostly interested in such reader reviews (particularly when also posted on Goodreads and Amazon). The entering of genre and age categories is particularly awkward, and not fine grained enough. However, I note that particular emphasis is given to the quality of the reviews and characterizing books in terms of level of language and profanity, although I would like to see more clearly outlined guidelines for (ARA) reviewing. Premium customer service in relation to author purchased premium services is pretty prompt, usually within one working day, while other matters can take several days to address. There is also openness to fixing identified problems, and some of the problems I've identified have been referred to the website/software people for fixing. UPDATE (8 JAN 2024). I have now had several "official" reviews across multiple books, as well as an "author" review and a stack of "reader" reviews across multiple books. It is apparent that the reader reviews are used as a training ground for the official reviews, which come in four levels with higher cost for short time frames and more experienced revewers. This training includes an expectation that reviewers give a spoiler-free summary, a clear rating of what they liked and didn't like, including an instruction to keep track of errors (and take them into account in the ratings). These errors are provided to authors for comment before the review is released. While actual typos and grammatical or punctuation errors do tend to get found, unfortunately the majority of these reviewers are non-native speakers of English and thus pick up supposed errors that are actually correct as the book stands, while at other times reviewers count as errors cases where they propose alternatives that may be good suggestions but do not relate to actual errors. Also, sometimes reviewers argue over things that are a matter of preference, dialect/variant or register. On the other hand, generally these discussions are useful and educational for the reviewers, who mostly are happy to learn more about idiomatic English. But this does come at a time cost for the author. Still, reviewers do tend to pick up actual errors too, although it is much more appropriate to pay for professional proofreading than rely on reviewers for this (and if more authors did this, there would probably not be the same emphasis on counting errors).