How does Independent Book Review work with indie presses?

We’ve been indie press fanatics since we started. From book lists exclusive to small presses to indie press round-ups (like this one!), we’ve always celebrated the passionate people who advocate and publish other people’s work just because they believe in them. We publish about fifty reviews per month, and anywhere from 15-40 of them are from indie presses.

Whether you are the publisher of a small press or the publicist for one, you’re welcome to use this portal to submit your books for free, take advantage of our indie press discount, or request a free publisher copy of The Truth About Book Reviews to share with your authors.

When should we submit our books?

If you are submitting for free, we usually recommend submitting no more than three months in advance of publication. We aren’t hard on deadlines, so feel free to submit your book even if your book is already out or will be out in two weeks. We just don’t want them too far out because if we get it covered early, we’d like to have a purchase or pre-order link to pair with it once we post it.

If you are buying a guaranteed review, you can do that whenever you’d like. We will send our review to your inbox within your preferred timeline (1, 2, or 5 weeks), and then you can use the quotes from within the review on your marketing material. We won’t post our review on IndependentBookReview.com until the book is available for pre-order or purchase, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get them early enough to include in your press releases and on your book covers.

Why should I buy a review instead of submitting for free?

This one is totally up to you! We review only about 1% of the books we receive in our free submissions portal. That doesn’t mean your submission definitely won’t be accepted–if your cover is incredible and your blurbs and description are too, you’re increasing your chances!–it just means that we won’t review most of them.

If you want to guarantee a review on IndependentBookReview.com and get some pull-quotes to use on your marketing material, buying a review in this discount portal is your best bet. Our reviews are 400+ words from reviewers interested in specific genres with a balance of summary to opinion about 60 to 40%. If you get five reviews from us, you’ll get your own space on our Browse By Publisher page.

What is the Group Beta Reading service?

Some authors and publishers use our group beta reading service prior to copy editing. It’s a way for you to ask readers what they think about a book before you publish it. Our beta readers are reviewers, librarians, booksellers, book bloggers, editors, book marketers, authors, and more.

Our beta readers don’t sound like editors; they sound like readers. They offer genuine responses about their reading experiences in a detailed letter addressed directly to you. They say things like, “I loved this part because…” or “This character was my least favorite because…” instead of saying, “You need to fix this now.” In their beta letters, they will share what they consider to be the most important takeaways of their reading experience as well as answers to three of your questions. This is a big-picture service, so think more “missed plot point” rather than “missed comma.”

You can hire either three beta readers at a time or five. That way, you’ll read multiple opinions at once instead of hearing from one person about an error that only they perceive. Different readers see and prefer different things.You are the one who makes the final decision in the end, so we find hearing a comment from multiple people is more informative than only one.

How can indie presses use a publisher copy of The Truth About Book Reviews?

The Truth About Book Reviews is IBR’s first published book. Written by indie press marketer Joe Walters, it’s 247 pages of insider information on how to get more reviews (blurbs, trade, Amazon, and more) and actually use them to market your book. Think of all the times you’ve heard authors say, “I’m trying to get reviews, but I don’t know how.”

Well, send them a free pdf of this book. It was released in 2025 and is chock-full of actionable steps for authors to take to market their books in the reviewsphere. Some publishers use this book in their onboarding sequence so every author they bring on reads it while other presses use it on an as-needed basis, whenever an author asks a question that takes way too long to answer.

I’m an author publishing with an indie press. Do I qualify for the discount?

Unfortunately not. This discount is for indie press publishers and their employees only. It’s not that we don’t want authors getting money off; it’s just that indie presses are often publishing more than a few books, so it’s more like a bulk discount than anything. Authors should submit their work for review here or for Group Beta Reads here. (And if you’re hoping for a discount, subscribe to Write Indie and see if mayyybee there’s a treat’s waiting for you on day five.)

How can our books be featured on book lists, the IBR Instagram, or the Read Indie newsletter?

The only way to get featured is to submit your book for review! You might have a better chance of being featured if you buy a review (because we’re definitely going to read it), but free submissions qualify for this too. We post book lists and features of new releases every month, and since we ask for publication date on the submission form, you’re essentially announcing the book’s publication to us. We’ll take a look at it.

How can we use IBR’s reviews to market our books?

In any number of ways! Here are a few examples:

• Add a catchy quote on your front or back book cover.
• Add a catchy quote to the “editorial reviews” section on your book’s Amazon page.
• Design or pay for graphics highlighting a quote from the review and use them on social media, websites, newsletters, and on a book’s Amazon page with Amazon A+ Content.
• Use them on bookmarks, posters, trailers, press releases, etc.
• Include a pull-quote in your pitches to bookstores, libraries, conferences, other reviewers, etc.
• Share the published review as an announcement on social media and your newsletter.
• And more!

How do we qualify for starred book reviews?

We don’t do 1-5 star ratings at IBR. Instead, we give starred reviews to the top 5-10% of books we read here. Starred reviews are featured at the top of our website, in our Bookshop, and are most often pushed on our social media accounts.

In order to get a starred review, you’ll want to write a book so good that our reviewer recommends it for a company star. After it’s recommended by the reviewer, it is sent out to a different team to determine whether it should get the final star or not.

Can IBR post their review on Amazon?

Nope. But you can! Paying for reviews in the “Customer Reviews” section on Amazon is against Amazon’s policy and runs the risk of our accounts and your account getting suspended or removed. Instead, you can add editorial reviews to your Amazon product page via Amazon Author Central. Here’s how.

Can we choose not to publish the review but still use quotes from the review?

Yes! On or before the agreed-upon deadline, you’ll receive the review in your email inbox, and we’ll ask if you’d like to publish the review. You’re free to deny it for whatever reason you see fit and still use the quotes from the review, whether it be in graphics, in your editorial reviews section on Amazon, or elsewhere. We just ask that you use the exact language we used and attribute it to Independent Book Review.

Can you explain more about the add-ons?

Graphics: You receive two images along with your book review highlighting two of the catchiest pull-quotes from the review. The images include your book cover, the specific language we used to praise your book, our company name, and matching color and element backgrounds. One image is horizontal and can be uploaded to KDP as Amazon A+ Content under the horizontal module, and the other is portrait-sized (1080 x1350) which is of optimal posting to Instagram and other social media platforms.

Book Quote Video: You receive one silent .mp4 video file along with your review. The video includes one or multiple quotes from your book dropped onto a moving background. The quote is usually chosen by the reviewer as something they enjoyed and feel can stand on its own. Once you receive the video, you can upload it to either Instagram or TikTok and add your own background music. (We’d do the music ourselves, but they could break copyright laws and make your post un-postable.)

Advertising: Your book will be featured on our homepage for two weeks listed as an ADVERTISEMENT banner, and it will include the same banner in our Read Indie newsletter.

Can we have the review published on a specific date?

We send our review to your inbox within your preferred timeline: 1 week, 2 weeks, or 5 weeks. That’s when we’ll ask if you would like the review published on our website. Since we publish so many reviews but want to ensure each one has enough time and space on the website, your review doesn’t automatically go up on the site. It usually publishes in about one month after your confirmation, and we’ll send you the link once it’s live.

If your book is publishing in two weeks, however, and you’d like to time our review with the launch, you can definitely request that! We don’t usually guarantee specific dates, but we can aim to publish it within your launch week. We will need a specific reason to push publication up.

Our books aren’t available on Amazon or Bookshop.org. Can I still get a review?

You can! We will provide whichever purchase link you’d like, and we’ll share that on our Bookshop button. Please note that we do prefer B&N, small press, or distributor links over Smashwords, InkItt, or personal websites, but we can work with what you have.

Do you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to write reviews?

No. It is outlined explicitly in our onboarding document that new reviewers do not use AI to write reviews. We seek the reviewer’s original language and genuine opinions in IBR reviews. Our service is about guaranteeing an experienced reader to read and assess your full book; it would be against our mission to take shortcuts when reading books and writing reviews.