OnlineBookClub.orgReviews of onlinebookclub.org

I honestly started off enjoying this website and being able to read books for free with the idea that I would be paid for my reviews. It was meant to be fun, and something I could do in between real life as my down time. However, I wrote a review in my own words and was marked down for “plagiarism”. Keep in mind, I used my own words. I came off too “generic” according to the editor, and thus I was banned from ever reviewing again. It was my first review. I had actually paid $3 of my own money for that book, with the intention of getting $25 back from doing a review. As it was a higher amount of money for a beginner, I thought I would try my best to sound as professional as I could in my review. Horrible mistake because they seemed to think I was an AI which I am not. I suspect that the book they wanted me to review was supposed to be 5/5 stars (I gave 2/5) and thus they banned me. I only suspect that because the book was poorly written with all the reviews being 4 or 5 stars. I was the only one going against the grain and got banned so it does make me wonder. I think OnlineBookClub would benefit a lot if they had a “Warning” which gives you the option to just edit your review to their standards. Completely banning someone for trying their best to sound as professional as possible is just an absolute low blow. Especially when it was my first ever review.

After writing 3 reviews for this site I am disappointed. My first review went well, I learned what they were looking for and adjusted my methods. My second review I was told I gave just a “summary” of the book and not enough on what I thought of the writing. My third review I did less summarizing and focused on reviewing the writing and flow of the actual book. All of the writing in the review was my own, but they banned me for plagiarism! Plagiarism is copying someone else’s work and that is definitely not what I did! They said they didn’t think I actually read the book. The book was hard to follow and my review stated that. It is completely unprofessional to ban someone for something as severe as plagiarism when that is not what happened. If you think my review sucked then tell me to fix it, don’t ban me.

It's a scam. Even if you do the reviews correctly, meeting all the requirements (which are not few), they do not contact you to send you the corresponding import. Furthermore, they are tremendously demanding. Instead of formally hiring a professional review team, they use people demanding a professional review while paying a pittance.

Scott and his company are nothing but scam artists. Since no-one replied to my previous review, I will reiterate what I wrote before. I received an email from this scammy company offering me a top-notch review and 1000 confirmed sales. I agreed to that in March, 2024. The review I was given was someone who doesn't even like romance books. They didn't like the language in the book. And they gave me a 2-star. The email from Scott said I was guaranteed a 5-star review. He agreed to send this to a 2nd person in their scammy organization, and I still haven't seen a review. When I went to tell Scott that, he told me it takes time. I paid for the top-level review. It should have been less than 2 weeks. It's now September and Scott has refused to give me that review. When you complain, Scott tells you that you are being unreasonable. I paid upfront for the service, the least he could do is provide the service to me in a timely manner. Scott Hughes is a scam artist and someone who hires inferior people. All I want is my money back at this point. Steer clear of this scam and sham of a company.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY IF YOU ARE AN AUTHOR! SCOTT THE OWNER IS A DICK AND HE WILL STEAL YOUR MONEY AND GIVE YOU CRAPPY SERVICE AND I REPORTED THEM TO THE BETTER BUSINESS BUREA, THEY TOLD ME THAT THEY WOULD BE MARKETING MY EBOOK TO BUYERS AND ONCE I SUBMIT MY PAYMENT, THEY SWITHED UP AND SAID THEY WILL MARKET MY EBOOK TO REVIEWERS, NOW TELL ME, HOW IN THE HELL AM I GOING TO MAKE MONEY? FROM THE SKY? FROM REVIEWERS? THEY WILL USE YOUR CONTENT TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF THE AUTHOR AND GIVE THE REVIEWERS THE CHUMP CHANGE FROM THE PAYMENT YOU SUBMIT, LEAVING YOU WITH $0 DOLLARS, I'VE BEEN ASKING FOR MY REFUND SINCE APRIL OF 2024 AND WE ARE NOW IN AUGUST OF 2024, THEY STOLE MY MONEY AND I DIDN'T RECIEVE THE SERVICES I'VE REQUESTED! THIS BUSINESS IS A SCAM, YOU CAN'T EVEN GET ON THE PHONE WITH ANYBODY, (NO NUMBER) FIRST RED FLAG, EVERYTHING IS VIA EMAIL, SECOUND RED FLAG, AND WHEN YOU EMAIL SOMEONE VIA ONLINE BOOK CLUB. ORG THEY REPLIED TO YOU WITH A DIFFEENRT DOMAIN THAN THE ORIGINAL, CALLED PREMIUM, THRID RED FLAG!!!!!!! I BEG YOU, DO YOUR RESEARCH AND SEE IF I AM LYING!!!!!

The verifying process is very unsafe, you have to send a picture of your ID in order to get verified. I did it but shortly after i stopped using the website. Now I'm extremely worried about data & identity theft. Deleting your account with a click is impossible, you have to write support. Overall a very bad experience if you're a private person.

I am an author, who paid for 10 reviews in early July 2023 for a book coming out in OCT over 3 months lead time. I have used them before, and got reviews in a timely fashion. The last time they delivered in 3 months time, so when I asked when they may be finished this time they said more like 5 months. When the job wasn't finished then either, I asked what was going on. At that point they kept saying "let me get this to my manager, we will get back to you," which they never did. I experienced the same thing over and over again for months, when finally I asked for a partial refund. at 11 months, they said oh, we can expedite the order. Which seemed off since they could have done that at 5 months. Then some manager kept saying the reviews are done, problem solved. They were done awhile ago. Except when they did post they were dated days after they said. The point being is that they lied, shuffled me around to buy time, and DIDN"T finish the job in a reasonable time frame. They once did a good job, this time they were frauds, liars, and gas lighters. DO NOT USE IF YOU WANT RESULTS. SCOTT- some one DID represent 5 months though, then passed me around redundantly, avoiding the issue, much like you avoided the real issues. Why wouldn't one expect the same service they got the first time around? Good, reputable companies are consistent. Scott-You do NOT offer 100% satisfaction. I asked for a refund for the reviews you couldn't supply. I was denied, "they are coming" I was told and offered a discount on future business, which I would never give you.

1. Don't expect to make as much as they promise. They promise you'll get better paying reviews as you grow your level, but you'll just likely get stuck at $5 or $6. If not, then it's likely they choose which reviewers get their payment added and which ones don't. You'll likely do a lot of free work for them before you get a few $5 reviews if you're lucky, even if you get good scores and rise to higher levels. Do the math- it'll take you several days to several weeks of your precious time to read a book for a mere $5 or no pay. Then you'll again have to wait more than a month minimum for your review to be published and paid if at all. If that sounds okay to you, go ahead. 2. Don't expect to be paid in the time frame they promise. In fact, don't have high hopes at all. They promise 2 weeks to check and publish your review and 3 weeks to be paid (about a month and one week already) - NOT ALWAYS TRUE. Some of your reviews will go for months without being edited at all and even longer to be paid. If not, they'll keep changing the date of last status update so that the wait time is always refreshed. If you're lucky to not experience those, some dispute will pop up out of nowhere and reset the status all over (give that another 3 weeks for the dispute to be checked by a moderator, after which the status will reset again after being checked, and God knows what else will pop up after that - and that's after waiting for a month and a week already). And even after all that trouble, your payment may still be delayed even further, sometimes for weeks or months. 3. Don't expect to always be helped. Before the support forum was a great way to get help both from the support team and reviewers who have gone through the same experiences. Scott shut it down I guess because the backlash on him was too great. He also forbade leaving negative reviews on third-party sites, so it's a real pain to understand any challenges you'll go through or how to solve them. There are numerous reps but most are super clueless and even rude (shoutout to Melissa and a few others who actually try to help when they can, but seemingly, even they have their hands tied in some instances. The era of Gali and that entire team was also great as you were always assured to be helped). Imagine a rep tells you that there's nothing they can do for an error caused by their own site. Or imagine sending over 40 emails and messages on the contact form for weeks or months, even with video recording of what the issue is, without ever being helped. Every new rep will tell you to either explain yourself all over again or refer you to a link or article that doesn't solve your problem, or outright tell you that they can't help you or never reply to your email. It's like they don't even check previous correspondences or threads. If you're assisted at all, it'll be after weeks or months. 4. Expect to be banned for anything and everything. There's a current trend among editors to ban reviewers for AI with totally no proof or with relying on AI detecting tools which have been proven to be erratic and inaccurate. You can also be banned if a moderator flags your account for absolutely no reason or under unclear circumstances. You'll be banned if an author flags your review for false reasons (in OBC all authors, admins, editors, and reps are always right even when they aren't). I referred my friend and she was banned for AI allegations even when the editor had falsely said that what she had wrote were not in the book when they were (and it was clear the editor hadn't read the book themselves to begin with). All she did was to use AI to edit and remove errors for her. She now says I had referred a scam to her, and I now certainly see that's true. 5. Don't them to side with you even if you're right. There are instances in a PRQ dispute you'll be right but the case will still be decided against you by a mod. It seems reps and mods are instructed to side with authors as much as they can. A good case is the author of the book Entanglement who sporadically changes the PRQ selections of his book. A friend I had referred reported sexual scenes in the book (there were graphic scenes including oral s3x), but his review was rejected because a moderator supposedly sided with the author who had decided there are no sexual scenes in his book. And that's even after she had provided multiple screenshots to prove the erotic scenes were in the book. She was eventually banned for those "inaccurate" PRQs. 6. Expect a million other problems with this site. This site has a high score because it always requests reviewers to review them positively on reviewing sites but then forbids those with negative experiences from leaving reviews of those experiences on third-party sites, threatening to ban them if they do. I'm no longer afraid of that because I'm so done with this site and I regret referring my friends to it.