Fair Warning: Book Bounty
Hello Authors! I wanted to share a recent experience I had with Book Bounty as a sort of heads up/warning to potential users of that website.
First off: What is Book Bounty? It is a subscription based site that lets you accumulate points by reading and reviewing other authors books that you can then use to post your book for reviews.
For a while, I was enjoying the service. It motivated me to read titles for genres that I usually didn't seek out, which expanded my horizons. It was also a great way to get reviews for my own books while enjoying reading others.
But recently, I have been running into some issues with their site, but the most egregious happened this month. I accumulated points to post a bounty for a "Verified Purchase" review, meaning the reader had to buy the book digitally on Amazon. The problem though was that they posted a review for the month of May, but that particular title doesn't have any sales for the month of May. It also doesn't have any pages read through Kindle Unlimited (it is a book I released last year that has stagnated on sales). The reviewer also left an incredibly generic review, clearly indicating that they did not read the title.
I messaged the Book Bounty team to dispute this and get my points back, but at best they said they would adjust my points based off of an unverified purchase review, and even then it would take 10 days to complete their review.
What also irks me is that the review in question was a 3-star review, which is the lowest review that title has. Normally, I don't let lower score reviews bother me too much if the criticisms are valid. I treat them as opportunities to learn and improve myself. But this generic review did not offer any of that.
Has anyone else had issues with Book Bounty? The premise of the site is great, but in practice it has been really bad for the last few months.
The TL;DR is that if you are considering using Book Bounty, be aware that you may not be getting what is promised.