The answer to this question is yes, Self-Publishing Review is legit.
The company was founded in Los Angeles in 2008 by New York indie author and Sarah Lawrence/New School lit grad Henry Baum, whose blog on self-publishing started receiving requests for book reviews from authors who followed the blog. After several years of reviewing books for free, the demand for this service became overwhelming, and Henry asked other indie authors and his British partner Cate, a media professional who has also self-published, to help him create a service for self-published authors to submit their books for a reading fee. Hiring professional editors and experienced reviewers, the site soon became a hub for indie book publishing at a time when there were few resources available to authors. Over the years we have collaborated with Kindlepreneur, Blue Ink, Indiereader, Kirkus, Derek Murphy, The Book Designer, and BookBaby on special promotions.
To this day, we offer free advice to all self-published authors.
Nowadays, there are many other book review sites such as Kirkus Review, Pacific Review, Blue Ink Review, Indiereader, and Foreword Review, all of which offer the exact same legitimate editorial service to authors. There are also many more offering this service we won’t mention. But in 2008, we were one of few services to offer a professional review service, i.e. not free, not written by amateur readers who may not understand the technical aspects of writing, or how to write a review constructively so that it is useful to the author. We also have a zero-tolerance policy on reviewers who do not read the book to ensure the quality of our content is high.
Our review fees are based on a fair split with our team of reviewers, who get around half of the profit of each review fee for their time spent reading the text and writing the review. The rest of the fee is spent on editing, proofing, and social media shares for the review, which is done by other professionals in the team, including Henry and Cate Baum.
As the demand for marketing services grew, SPR developed a selection of services and packages specifically designed for self-published authors to market their books. Everyone who works at SPR is a self-published author in their own right, but is also a professional in the book industry. Cate dedicated herself to an education in publishing, gaining both a Masters in Creative Writing with Distinction, and a certificate in Screenwriting from UCLA with an A grade. She took editing and formatting courses with the EFA, and is now an experienced book editor and formatter with more than a decade of experience editing indie books.
As Amazon Kindle took off for indie authors, with the advice of KDP reps and experts who have literally worked on the Amazon algo, we developed our promotional packages to garner sales and reviews on Amazon, which are mailing list-based, just like BookBub, but designed to give transparent results for self-published authors, with no pre-approval. These packages are within Amazon guidelines because we do not pay the subscribers to our lists to leave positive reviews on Amazon, and all reviews are unbiased and honest. We use agencies to maintain these lists to ensure they are spam-free and up to date.
Our Amazon promotion fees are kept as low as possible. These promotions cost a lot of money because there are many aspects to running this kind of campaign, including the time and effort we must spend on the maintenance of our lists, and the advertising, taxes, overheads, and analytics required to run them successfully. There are parts of the process that require us to work late, and other parts that require several team members to be working on them at the same time to ensure a smooth delivery. However, the results have been excellent, and have given a lot of authors a fantastic book promo unlike any other.
Our editing fees are also kept relatively low, and we have two packages designed exclusively for self-published authors. This is because many editors refuse to mix different stages of editing, and will charge several fees for different stages of editing. Having worked with many editors, Cate Baum realized there was a need for a simplification of these norms, and created the packages we now offer, to be economical and comprehensive. Cate employs two book editors, one UK and US, both with vast experience with indie authors, as well as editing and overseeing these jobs herself. Because she can also speak three languages, she is uniquely placed to also help second-language-English authors edit their books.
We are a family-run business now based in Valencia, Spain, where we have been located for some years due to the great weather, free healthcare, and an encouraging tech community of expats from the US and UK, with satellite offices in the US. We hire a diverse remote team in the US and UK, welcoming all backgrounds. Valencia is a modern and vibrant city, named World Design Capital in 2022. Many book fairs and concerts take place here, as well as TV show and movie filming, including Westworld, Tomorrowland, Doctor Who, Game of Thrones, and the new Indiana Jones movie.
We hope this answers any concerns you may have about Self-Publishing Review or any of our sister sites, including Bookvertiser and The Independent Review of Books. You may contact us at any time with specific queries, or if you need expert self-publishing advice, which, of course, will be much better quality information than just asking a complete stranger who can’t shut up on a forum…
Useful links:
Paid Reviews – What’s allowed, what’s not allowed
Mythbusting Reviews and Ranking for Authors
All about Book Reviews and Amazon – A Quick Guide
Updated Feb 2023
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