PubbyReviews of pubby.co

Got some review but not sure if they are safe to use.

When they first started, the company was great! It was less than 20 dollars a month and authors could realistically get dozens of reviews in a few months. Now, the price is almost tripled, and you get a review maybe once a year. They need to have a system in place where authors can pay to boost their books as pubby got flooded with other books and now you upload your book and it is lost in the hundreds of other books on the platform meaning nobody will find it as it is buried beneath pages and pages of books. I am not paying 30 dollars a month for 1 review a year.

In general, it works. But their customer support tried to force me to update my review at Amazon because an author did not like it. After this issue I am not sure how sincere reviews from Pubby are.

Update July 2025: I maintain that I was misled by a YouTuber who was paid by Pubby for promotion (affiliate/sponsorship), and it made this service look far more established than it is. It was advertised to me as a one-stop-shop for all my book review needs, but it turns out there just aren't that many users on Pubby. That being said, the customer service did refund my payment, and they are showing a concerted effort to improve their services. Their business model can be effective in theory, and if they play their cards right, they'll get to where they want to be. ----------------------------------------------------- The only reason this company exists is because slimy YouTubers recommend this to their ignorant subscribers. I thought this would be an actual way to get book reviews, but it ISN'T. My book has been sitting in the looking-for-reviewer queue for days and days. I did receive one review, but it makes my book look bad because it's generic and comes off as a clearly fake review. And I'm struggling to get a second review despite the fact that giving reviews doesnt cost anything. The business idea is great, but the problem is there might only be like 100 people using the platform.

Platform is OK. I subscribed for one year and uploaded one book for which 15 verified purchase reviews were received. I paid US$204 annual subscription ($240 - $36 one-time 15% discount) and US$14.99 listing fee, so each review cost around US$15. Pubby offered a good amount of snaps (over 10K) when I signed up. Then I spent around US$27 in total on buying books to earn more snaps and explored different genres. I usually chose cheap books that offered a longer duration. I had a tight budget and read slowly. A lot of pop-up notifications each time I signed in. Unlike most other companies, there was almost no communication initiated from Pubby to acknowledge and confirm changes on account and subscription except for problems on reviews. In April 2024, they automatically charged full amount after the 15-day free trial. I reached out to provide the discount code, and a refund of 15% was credited back to my card within a week. In September 2024, they emailed me saying a review I had submitted was not verified purchase so the snaps were deducted. After supplying proof of purchase, Pubby reimbursed the snaps as "a gesture of good faith", again within a week. Not sure why Amazon didn't show it as Verified Purchase. When I requested reviews for my book, I was concerned that some readers might carelessly use direct link on Pubby to make book purchases thus potentially causing red flags on my account. My account is still fine as of today. My book got picked fairly quickly initially. The interest waned after 15 reviews, and I stopped. My overall experience was smooth with some issues that were resolved quickly. So neutral with 3 stars.

I am giving pubby three stars today because I had a good experience in the past and honestly hope pubby recovers soon and gets back to where it was only months ago. It's true that customer service has always been slow, but it's only a small business and in the end it was reliable. Lately it took a lot longer to get an answer but I can confirm that I personally got a solution for my problem. I easily found readers in the past. Even when a verified purchase was necessary... lately it was literally impossible to get verified reviews and even for the standard version it's hard to find readers. I have never had a problem with payments so far. There is a monthly subscription option which has to be selected before signing up. It's not cheap and you have to read lots of books to earn your snaps, but that's the way those platforms work and I'm grateful it exists. I sincerely hope more readers will return and customer service will recover before long.

At first, I really liked the service. Later, I found out by looking at my credit card, they charged $14.00 for my " free trial." Then they tried to take the yearly rate from my credit card. I cancelled that card. Then, they went into my digital wallet& tried to take money from another credit card.

First of all, I see that many people get withdrawn too much, this is probably because the "default" payment is yearly not monthly, you have to toggle this choice when you sign up (or later in the settings) so that you get withdrawn monthly and not yearly! I liked the site, and the whole system seemed efficient and nice in many ways. I only did my trial period as I'm not allowed to leave reviews on Amazon because I haven't spent $50 lol, I am also not eligible for Kindle Unlimited as I live in the EU (and you're still not allowed to leave reviews). Anyways two major issues - The customer service. It is impossible to contact them in the chat, and the reply time is like a week, and then a new week for the follow-up, and they only answered one of my questions/chats. If they helped me, we could maybe resolve my issue and they'd keep me as a customer. Secondly, you can't choose which country you get reviews from! I write English children's books in a mental health niche, so my market is basically only English-speaking countries. A review in Italy has zero value to me. This means I leave reviews and "work" for my snaps (the point system) only to use them to get reviews in the wrong places :( This SHOULD be an option and an easy fix for them to change...