To become a Readers’ Favorite author, all you need to do is request a review of your book or enter your book in our Annual International Book Award Contest, which also comes with a review.

Please login to your Author Area to check the status of your review. If your review status reads PENDING then your review is currently live in our system awaiting review. You can update any of your information including your book file. We will email you as soon as your review is complete. We will also update you at 90 and 150 days if your book has not been reviewed by then.

You can update any of the information you submitted to us, including your book file, on the Book Review Information page in your Author Area.

We do not change your password or email address, so if you are having trouble with either, please copy and paste them into the login boxes on our Login Page. If that does not work, please use the Recover Password form and we will email you a password reset link in a few minutes. If you do not receive it, please check your spam folder. The reset password link will only work once, so be sure to remember the new password you select. If our system does not recognize your email, you do not receive the email, your email has changed, or you have any other login problems, please submit the form below.

If you submitted one of our forms and did not receive a confirmation email, please check your spam folder. If you cannot find it, please complete the form below and we will resend it to you.

If you have any payment problems or questions, do not worry, there are no issues we cannot fix for you in a snap. Just complete the form below with as many details as you have and we will get the problem fixed immediately.

If you have received a Readers' Favorite 5 star review or you have placed in the Readers' Favorite Book Award Contest in any year, please click "Five Star and Award Stickers" in the Authors menu at the top of our website. Thank you and congratulations!

Amazon, Goodreads and Barnes & Noble do not allow professional review companies to post in their Customer Reviews section. Some authors post the review(s) themselves or add the review(s) to the Editorial Reviews section on their Amazon and Barnes & Noble pages through their respective member areas. Others prefer to add an excerpt from their review(s) to the book description on their Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble pages.

Because we have thousands of reviewers, judges and contestants worldwide, and receive thousands of submissions each month, we can only accept a digital copy of your book, like a Microsoft Word document, PDF, MOBI or ePUB file. We take great care with the security of your book file. All of our reviewers are verified with photo IDs and are avid readers who volunteer their time to help authors. We are used by all the major publishers and have never had an issue with the security of a book.

Winners in our annual book award contest are announced on September 1st by 8 a.m. EST. We ask that contestants login to their Author Area on September 1st to see how they did in the contest. If you are in the contest and have not done so already, please login to your Author Area and click the Contest tab for more details and information about your contest entry. Good luck!

If we have not reviewed your book yet, it will not be listed on our public site and will only be visible to our Reviewers in a secured area. If we have completed your review, please login to your Author Area and on the first page called Book Information, you will either see a link to your public Readers' Favorite Review Page or instructions explaining what we need to create it.

We review manuscripts, published and unpublished books, eBooks, audiobooks, poetry books, comic books, graphic novels, and short stories. Your work must be complete, written in English, and fit into one of our 150+ genre categories. You can submit a book with AI-generated material, but you must let us know in the Book Description box on our form what portion of your book is AI-generated. Currently we do not accept erotica books that are mostly sex with no substantial plot.

If you receive a review of 4 stars or more and your work is currently available for purchase on Amazon (your book does not need to be on Amazon now to get your review, we just have to wait until it is before we can post your review publicly), we will post your review on our site, KOBO, Google Books, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. Your book must currently be on those sites for us to post your review.

When your review is complete we will send you an email with a link to your new review on our site, as well as login information for your Author Area where you can update your Review Page links and options. We are happy to review manuscripts and unpublished books, we only ask that they be complete and preferably proofread when possible. We will send you the completed review which you can use any way and anywhere you wish, but we cannot post the review for an unpublished book on our site until it is available for purchase on Amazon.

You can submit your book to us in the following formats in order of preference: PDF, Kindle (MOBI), Microsoft Word (DOC, DOCX), RTF, and ePUB. If you have a different file format like Open Office or Word Perfect, or you have any trouble attaching your book to our Review Request form, just complete the form without attaching your book and your confirmation email will have instructions on how to easily send us your book file.

If you are entering a sequel that is not standalone, where you need the reader to have some information from the previous book(s), then please add a short synopsis of your previous book(s) to the beginning of the Book Description field of our Review Request form below. If there is not enough room, add the synopsis to the first page of your book file.

If you would like the same reviewer(s) to review your entire series, please submit the first book in the series and if you like the review and reviewer, then you can submit the next book and contact us (click the Contact menu at the top of our website) and let us know you would like the same reviewer. Although we do not assign books to reviewers, they always enjoy reading books by authors they have reviewed for before, especially a series.

We have over 1,500 reviewers who are as varied as the stories they read. They are not literary experts but regular readers with a passion for reading and helping new and established authors with honest reviews of their work. When you submit the Review Request form below, it is sent to all our reviewers for selection. We do not assign reviews, we provide our reviewers with detailed information about your book so they can choose stories they are interested in.

This process is designed to closely mimic the purchasing process at a bookstore, providing you with a quality, honest and genuine review from exactly the type of person who would have normally purchased your book.

Ratings are given on a 5-star scale:

5 STARS – Excellent: I loved this book.
4 STARS – Good: I enjoyed this book.

If a book receives less than 4 stars no official review is given. Instead, the reviewer will write constructive criticism to let the author know what problems they had with the book and offer any suggestions they may have to improve it. This will be about the size of a regular review and will be sent to the author privately; it will not be posted publicly. We are here to help authors, not hurt them.

Although we as a company do not interfere with what rating a reviewer gives a book, as the rating must be what the reviewer feels is appropriate, we do monitor the average ratings of our reviewers to ensure they are being fair and honest about their ratings to maintain the integrity of our reviews.

When you receive a review from Readers' Favorite, the first line of the review indicates who your reviewer was so you can look them up on our About Us page. Knowing the type of person who provided your review can help you understand the potential demographics of readers who will enjoy your book. This also benefits the reviewer by giving them proper credit and recognition for their work and time.

Because it is critical that reviewers provide quality reviews, we invite you to Review your Reviewer. When your review is complete, you will be able to login to your Author's Area and rate your reviewer on a 5-star scale and provide a short review, just as they did for you. Your feedback is presented to the reviewer to help them improve their skills, the same way book reviews help authors improve theirs. The information is also passed to the Readers' Favorite staff to help us ensure the quality of our reviewers and reviews. If you would like to join the Readers' Favorite Team, please fill out our Reviewer Application.

By far, most of what we do is provide free book reviews to authors. In fact, we provide hundreds of free reviews each month to authors from all over the world from independent authors to best-sellers and celebrities. However, even with over 1,000 reviewers, we are not able to keep up with the ever-increasing demand for free reviews.

Although we cannot guarantee that all books will receive a review, more than half of the books submitted for a free review will receive one within 3 months. Some books are reviewed in less than a week while others are never selected for review. As a company we play no part in the time it takes for a book to receive a review because we do not assign books to reviewers; they select them from a detailed list. Reviewers search through the genres they are interested in, read your description, look at your cover, and can even read a portion of your book to ensure it is something they are interested in reading. We designed this process to mimic that of a bookstore to ensure you get a reader who represents your core audience.

If you are interested in a guaranteed review, getting your review back more quickly or would like multiple reviews of your book, please look at our Express and Express Package options in the BOOK REVIEW OPTIONS section of our Book Reviews page by clicking the Authors menu at the top of our website and choosing the first menu item.

When a book is submitted to us for review or our contest, all our reviewers/judges will be able to see the book details you provided to help them choose your book, but they must select your book for review/judging before they will have access to your book file. Once your book is selected it is removed from the list and the only people who have access to it from that point on are the reviewer/judge and select admin staff. Once the book file is no longer needed it is deleted from our system.

We have done hundreds of thousands of reviews since we launched in 2009 and are used by all the big publishers and have never had an issue with piracy. All our reviewers are vetted and provide a government-issued ID so we can verify their identity and so we can cooperate with law enforcement should there ever be an issue with an author's book. We also have a litany of systems in place to track and monitor our books to ensure their security.

Generally, authors have nothing to fear when submitting their books to reputable review companies because their books are not of interest to pirates yet. Pirates do not need to work for a review company to steal book files. They can buy the Kindle version of the bestselling book on Amazon and use common DRM cracking software to copy it in 10 minutes or they could simply buy the paperback version and use a standard OCR scanner to scan each page and have a PDF in about an hour.

Using these methods, they can steal and sell James Patterson's new book or all the Harry Potter books, the choices are unlimited. With review companies, almost all the books are unknown or not even publish-ready yet. And it's not about quality, they don’t care how good your book is, they just want something they can sell, which means books that are at the top of Amazon’s sales lists because those are books people are currently talking about and searching for.

However, if you would feel better securing your book file a bit, there are a couple of things you can do: you can add a watermark to your pages, just please be sure it is light enough not to interfere with the reader’s ability to clearly see the text. You can also password protect your PDF, just be sure to provide us with the password in our Book Description box when you submit it to us so the reader can access it.

Readers' Favorite is growing fast, and even with over 1,000 reviewers we still need many more to keep up with the growing demand for reviews. Choose from hundreds of books each month from seasoned veterans like James Patterson to first-time indie authors. You can even earn money and win cash prizes! Visit our Reviewer Application page to learn more and apply.

We do not change your password or email address, so if you are having trouble with either, please copy and paste them into the login boxes on our Login Page. If that does not work, please use the Recover Password form and we will email you a password reset link in a few minutes. If you do not receive it, please check your spam folder. The reset password link will only work once, so be sure to remember the new password you select. If our system does not recognize your email, you do not receive the email, your email has changed, or you have any other login problems, please submit the Contact Form below.

Become a Readers' Favorite Affiliate and you will earn a 20% commission on any Award Contest purchases made by those you refer. Our Award Contest is very popular and grows exponentially each year because it is a very valuable program for authors. Visit our Affiliate Application page to learn more and apply.

You can request a payment from your Affiliate’s Area as soon as you have reached $50 or more in commissions. Payments are made within 24 hours to your PayPal account.

We accept manuscripts, published and unpublished books, eBooks, audiobooks, poetry books, comic books, graphic novels, and short stories. Your work must be complete, written in English, and fit into one of our 150+ genre categories. Currently we do not accept erotica books that contain primarily sex with no substantial plot. Your book does not have to be on Amazon and we do not have a minimum or maximum word count restriction. Your book does not have to be published, and if it is published we do not have a publication date requirement. We are an international competition and accept submissions from all over the world.

You can submit your book to us in the following formats in order of preference: PDF, Kindle (MOBI), Microsoft Word (DOC, DOCX), RTF, and ePUB. If you have a different file format like Open Office or Word Perfect, or you have any trouble attaching your book to our Contest Entry form, just complete the form without attaching your book and your confirmation email will have instructions on how to easily send us your book file. Because we have thousands of contestants, judges and reviewers worldwide, we cannot take physical books because it would be too hard to manage. We also cannot take a Kindle copy direct from Amazon because they are coded to one reader and we need several people to have access to the book.

Once you have entered the contest you will have a new Contest page in your Author Area that will display our first Contest Update, as well as all of the information you have submitted with your contest entry, including your book file and category(s). You can update any of this information in real time at your convenience.

We currently have 3 categories for audiobooks: Children - Audiobook, Fiction - Audiobook and Non-Fiction - Audiobook. The audiobook categories cannot be added on to a regular book contest entry, the audiobook must be entered in the contest separately because they are very different from the regular book version and need their own review and contest score. On our form you will provide 2 Audible or Spotify codes for free audiobook copies of your book, one for your reviewer and one for your judge, and the link and instructions to redeem the codes. You can also provide a Dropbox or Google Drive link to your audiobook files but they must be accessible to anyone with the link and the link cannot expire (you can disable the link once your complimentary review is complete and the contest is over).

If you are entering a sequel that is not standalone, where you need the reader to have some information from the previous book(s), then please add a short synopsis of your previous book(s) to the beginning of the Book Description field of our Contest Entry form. If that is not enough room, go ahead and enter your book in the contest. Then write up a synopsis of a few paragraphs to a few pages and send it to us via our Contact Us page and we will attach it to your entry for you.

Due to the high volume of entries in our book award contest, we have created 3 deadlines to try and motivate authors to get their books in early: Early Bird deadline - April 1 ($99), Regular Deadline - May 1 ($109), Final Deadline - June 1 ($119). Our judges are hard at work reading and scoring books year round, so the sooner an author can submit their book, the less expensive it will be and the quicker they will receive their complementary review.

Once entered in the contest, the author can login to their Author Area and visit their Contest page to update any of the information they submitted to the contest, including their book file and category(s). The page also has our contest updates to inform the author on what to expect from the contest. We do not send email updates as they are too unreliable. Instead, we ask all authors to visit their Contest page when they enter the contest, and then again on September 1st after 8 a.m. EST when the contest results are announced so they can see how they did.

If you entered multiple books in the contest, you will need to check the Contest page for each one. Login to your Author Area and select the title of your book from the Book Title drop-down, then click the Contest tab to see the results for that book.

Contest results are released on September 1st and are now available. To see how you did and to find answers to all your contest-related questions, please visit the Contest page in your Author Area. If you have multiple books in the contest you will need to select the book from the Book Title drop-down at the top of your Author Area and then click the Contest tab to see the results for that book.

Please visit our Login page and use the RECOVER PASSWORD form to find your book and reset your password. If you are not sure what email you used for your book, enter your best guess and if you get it wrong the form will give you a hint to help you remember the email you used.

When a book is submitted to us for review or our contest, all our reviewers/judges will be able to see the book details you provided to help them choose your book, but they must select your book for review/judging before they will have access to your book file. Once your book is selected it is removed from the list and the only people who have access to it from that point on are the reviewer/judge and select admin staff. Once the book file is no longer needed it is deleted from our system.

We have done hundreds of thousands of reviews since we launched in 2009 and are used by all the big publishers and have never had an issue with piracy. All our reviewers are vetted and provide a government-issued ID so we can verify their identity and so we can cooperate with law enforcement should there ever be an issue with an author's book. We also have a litany of systems in place to track and monitor our books to ensure their security.

Generally, authors have nothing to fear when submitting their books to reputable review companies because their books are not of interest to pirates yet. Pirates do not need to work for a review company to steal book files. They can buy the Kindle version of the bestselling book on Amazon and use common DRM cracking software to copy it in 10 minutes or they could simply buy the paperback version and use a standard OCR scanner to scan each page and have a PDF in about an hour.

Using these methods, they can steal and sell James Patterson's new book or all the Harry Potter books, the choices are unlimited. With review companies, almost all the books are unknown or not even publish-ready yet. And it's not about quality, they don’t care how good your book is, they just want something they can sell, which means books that are at the top of Amazon’s sales lists because those are books people are currently talking about and searching for.

However, if you would feel better securing your book file a bit, there are a couple of things you can do: you can add a watermark to your pages, just please be sure it is light enough not to interfere with the reader’s ability to clearly see the text. You can also password protect your PDF, just be sure to provide us with the password in our Book Description box when you submit it to us so the reader can access it.

All of the award winners of this year's International Book Award Contest, including the prize winners and those selected by Wind Dancer Films, Headline Books, Allen Media Strategies, and Folio Literary Management can be seen on our Award Winners page. You can see the link to our Award Winners page directly below the search bar at the very top of our website. Please do not visit the Award Winners page to try and find out how you did in the contest. Instead, visit the Contest page in your Author Area for specific details regarding your book.

All books are given a score, and if no books in a particular genre scored high enough to place in the contest then that genre will not be displayed. However, this does not mean that no books in that genre were good enough to place in the contest. Because authors are allowed to enter their book in multiple genres, books that won in the missing genres also won in other genres, and it was in those other genres that the award was given. This leaves the missing genres with books that did not quite score high enough to place, and therefore the genres are not displayed. This happens with several genres each year, generally those with a lower number of contestants.

We offer up to 5 award levels in each category: Gold, Silver, Bronze, Honorable Mention and Award Finalist. However, not all levels are awarded in each category despite the record number of entries in this year's contest. That is because each book is given a score which corresponds to a particular award level. No attention is given to the number of entrants, only the quality of the book being judged. In some cases, the same award is given more than once in the same category, which is a result of more than one book receiving the same judging score.

Your book cover will appear once we have created a Review Page for you on our site. To do that, we must have completed your review and your book must be currently for sale on Amazon. Please visit the Book Information page in your Author Area for specific details on what we need for your book. Once that is done, your listing on the Award Winners page will be automatically updated.

Each contestant is given a review of their book as a free feature of entering our book award contest, if we have not already reviewed your book. It is important to understand that a Readers' Favorite review has no impact on our contest, it is just a perk for participating in the contest. A reviewer is an avid reader who reads your book and provides you with their honest opinion in the form of a review. A judge is a literary professional who reads and scores your book for the contest. They are two very different people doing two very different things.

It takes much longer to complete reviews than it does to complete judging because judges read with a purpose, while reviewers are volunteers who read for enjoyment. Contest reviews are given top priority by our reviewers. If we have not completed your review yet, we thank you for your patience and we will email you as soon as your complementary review is complete.

Login to your Author Area and click the red Contest tab, there you will see a link to your Contestant's page. Your Contestant's page will have all the information and materials regarding your award and our awards ceremony.