Paid editorial reviews are professional reviews you commission and then quote on your book’s page. They are not customer reviews, they carry no star rating, and you add them yourself through a separate Amazon field. Prices from the established services run from about $59 to $599, and none of them sells a good review.
- What Is the Difference Between an Editorial Review and a Customer Review?
- Are Paid Book Reviews Allowed on Amazon?
- What Do Paid Editorial Reviews Cost, and What Do You Get?
- What Happens If the Review Is Bad?
- Do You Have to Say the Review Was Paid For?
- Where Does the Quote Actually Go?
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the Difference Between an Editorial Review and a Customer Review?
A book’s page on Amazon carries two kinds of review, and they work in opposite directions. Customer reviews come from shoppers. They carry the star rating, and nobody can add one on a reader’s behalf. Editorial reviews come from you: they are quotes from a publication, a website or a named reviewer, and you type them into a field yourself.
Amazon draws the line in its own words. Editorial reviews, it says, “are different from customer reviews, as they are transcribed directly from reputable sources.”
The practical consequence is the part that catches people out. A review you pay Kirkus Reviews $450 for never becomes a customer review. It does not move your star average, and it does not appear among the reader reviews. It becomes a quote you paste into a different part of the page, credited to Kirkus by name. Two separate things are happening on one screen, which is why the rules that govern them are separate too.
Are Paid Book Reviews Allowed on Amazon?
Amazon’s ban on paid reviews is real, and it is written about customer reviews. Its community guidelines say: “We don’t allow reviews that are created, edited, or removed in exchange for compensation.” Compensation, it adds, includes cash, discounts, free products, gift cards and refunds. Buying a customer review breaks that rule, and so does giving a reader anything in exchange for one.
Amazon’s rules for the Editorial Reviews field are about content instead of money. They set out what you may not include, and how to credit your source. They say nothing about whether the review was paid for.
So the honest position is narrow, and worth stating precisely. Amazon nowhere says that paid editorial reviews are permitted, and it nowhere prohibits them. The question is simply unaddressed. What can be said is that several review services instruct their own customers to put the review there: Literary Titan’s FAQ states that its review “must be posted under the Editorial Reviews section on Amazon.”
One author on r/selfpublish summed up the common understanding: “From what I gather, it’s permissible to buy editorial reviews, but customer reviews are off-limits.” That is close to right, and it is the reading most of the industry works to. It does, however, credit Amazon with a permission we cannot trace to an official Amazon source, so treat it as common practice rather than as a rule you could point to.
What Do Paid Editorial Reviews Cost, and What Do You Get?
The established indie review services charge between about $59 and $599, and the fee buys a guaranteed review delivered by a stated date. It does not buy a favourable one. Each of these services says plainly that its reviewers write what they think.
| Service | Price | Turnaround | What you receive |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kirkus Indie | $450 standard; $599 expanded; $399 picture book. Express costs $599, $750 and $450 | 7 to 9 weeks; express 4 to 6 weeks | About 250 words, or 500 for the expanded option |
| BookLife | $399 up to 100,000 words; $499 above that; $150 to expedite | 6 weeks, or 4 expedited | About 300 words, plus a one-line takeaway, comparable titles and graded production elements |
| Foreword Clarion | $579, or $405 ordered through IngramSpark | 4 to 6 weeks | 400 words or more, with a star rating |
| Literary Titan | From $59, priced by book length | 45 days under 300 pages; 60 days above; 15 days expedited | About 400 words, plus an author interview |
| Readers’ Favorite | Free route, or paid Express tiers priced on its order form | Free route averages 10 to 12 weeks | At least 250 words |
We checked every price and turnaround above against each service’s own page on 31 August 2026. Figures move, and older comparison articles are a poor guide: Kirkus was widely quoted at $425 for years.
How Far a Published Review Travels
What separates these services is less the price than the reach. Kirkus says a published review goes out to more than 20 licensees, including BN.com, Google Books, Ingram and Baker & Taylor. Foreword distributes through Ingram, Cengage and Bowker. Literary Titan posts to a list of retail and reader sites. A review that only ever sits on the reviewer’s own website is a quote you can use; a review that travels into trade databases is doing a second job.
What the Money Does Not Buy
There is one thing the money does not buy, and it is worth knowing before you spend it. Librarians building a collection generally look for reviews in the trade journals, which do not charge. As one person put it on r/selfpublish, explaining how acquisition decisions get made: “Paid reviews are not considered.” If a library sale is your goal, our guide to how libraries buy self-published books covers what does count.
What Happens If the Review Is Bad?
Every service named here lets you stop an unfavourable review before it goes public. They hand you that control at different moments, though, and one of them takes it back.
Kirkus is the most direct about it: “If you receive a negative review, you can choose NOT to publish your review and it will never see the light of day.” Foreword waits for your instruction before posting anything. Literary Titan will send the review to you first if you choose that option on the order form, and says it “will not post the review if you do not want us to.”
BookLife reviews are private by default, which sounds like the same arrangement. The decision runs one way only, however: once you make a review public, BookLife states that you cannot make it private again or retract it.
Readers’ Favorite handles the problem structurally instead. It posts only 4- and 5-star reviews, and sends anything lower back to the author as private feedback. That is a reasonable service to offer, but it changes what a good review from them tells a reader, because it was never going to publish the poor ones.
In every case your control ends at publication rather than continuing after it. Approve a Kirkus review and it goes to those licensees; there is no route back.
Do You Have to Say the Review Was Paid For?
Two consumer-protection regimes bear on this question, and neither of them answers it cleanly. Under the US FTC rule on consumer reviews (16 CFR Part 465), which took effect on 21 October 2024, paying for a review on condition that it says something positive is illegal. Paying for an honest review is not: the FTC’s own guidance says the rule “does not prohibit giving incentives for reviews, as long as there isn’t an express or implied requirement that the reviews have to express a particular sentiment.” That same guidance warns that failing to disclose an incentive can breach the FTC Act under its endorsement guides.
In the UK, the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 made it a banned practice, from 6 April 2025, to commission a consumer review that conceals the fact it was incentivised.
Both regimes are written around consumer reviews. Whether a paid trade review, quoted by an author in a field intended for professional criticism, counts as one is a question neither regulator has taken up. We could find no enforcement action and no guidance addressing this exact situation, so it is better treated as unsettled than as settled in your favour. If a great deal rides on it, that is a question for a lawyer rather than a blog.
The cautious course costs nothing, because Amazon asks for it anyway: name the source next to the quote, so a reader can see where the verdict came from and judge it accordingly.
Where Does the Quote Actually Go?
On Amazon, editorial reviews live in Author Central rather than KDP. There is no field for them on the KDP bookshelf, which is where most authors look first and why the question comes up so often. In Author Central you open the Books tab, select the book, choose the edition (you have to do each edition separately), then click Edit book details, which is a US-only option. If you have not claimed your page yet, we cover that in our guide to setting up an Amazon Author Central page; this article picks up at the point where you have a quote to add.
How Many Reviews Can You Add, and How Long Can They Be?
Amazon’s help page for the field sets limits that vary by format. A print edition takes up to five reviews of 4,000 characters each. A Kindle edition takes one. An Audible edition takes three. All of them share a 20,000-character ceiling, and the count includes spaces and any HTML you use for bold or italics.
The list of things you may not include is longer than most authors expect. It rules out web addresses, phone numbers, email and postal addresses; prices, availability and ordering information; time-sensitive details such as event dates; anything specific to one edition; advertisements; profanity or spiteful remarks; obscene or offensive material; customer reviews; and spoilers. Credit the source after the quotation, in Amazon’s own example format: “A fantastic read.” –The New York Times. Changes take three to five days to appear. One trap is easy to walk into and hard to undo: once you edit a section, your publisher can no longer edit that same section.
Where Else a Review Quote Works
Amazon is not the only place a quote earns its keep. IngramSpark’s metadata guidance asks for two to eight review quotes of no more than 50 words each, with accurate attribution, and those travel with your book’s record out to retailer pages and trade tools. Barnes & Noble accepts a fair-use excerpt by email to titles@bn.com, sent with the ISBN and the source credited. And the review may be licensed for your cover: BookLife allows the review or its takeaway there, with attribution to BookLife Reviews.
Paid editorial reviews buy a professional opinion by a known date, and a quote whose placement you control. They do not buy a star rating, a customer review, or any guarantee that a reader will agree. Decide what you want the quote for before you spend the money. If you want a line for the cover and the book page, this is the thing that produces one. If you want reviews from readers, that is a separate job with its own rules, and choosing the right ARC readers is where it starts.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can’t I add editorial reviews from inside KDP?
Because the field is not there. KDP manages your book files, price, categories and description, while editorial reviews belong to Author Central, which is a separate tool with a separate purpose. In Author Central, go to the Books tab, pick the book and the edition, and click Edit book details. The option is available on Amazon.com only, though Amazon says it will add reviews in other marketplaces if you contact it.
Is a BookLife review the same as a review in Publishers Weekly?
No, although they are related. BookLife is Publishers Weekly‘s indie arm, and a paid BookLife review is written by a Publishers Weekly reviewer, but it appears in BookLife’s own section. Publishers Weekly selects the reviews for its own pages editorially, and you cannot buy one.
Are there free ways to get a trade review?
Yes, and they are selective rather than guaranteed. Foreword Reviews magazine reviews around 100 books per issue and asks for titles about four and a half months ahead. Library Journal considers books of national interest and wants copies roughly six months before publication. Readers’ Favorite runs a free route alongside its paid one. All of them want the book long before publication day, which is the practical catch.
Can I put a paid review quote on my book cover?
That depends on the service’s terms, so check them before you design anything. BookLife states that you may quote the review or its takeaway on your cover and in other promotions, with the review credited to BookLife Reviews. Other services set their own conditions, and attribution is the constant.
Do editorial reviews affect my star rating or sales rank?
No. Editorial reviews carry no star rating and play no part in the customer star average, which counts only the reviews shoppers leave. They are there to give a reader a professional opinion at the point of decision, not to change a number.
