Do You Need Book Reviews?

We can't guarantee numbers — but here's what our beta testing showed: review rates ranged from 44% to 64% of sign-ups actually leaving a review. For comparison, industry average for cold-outreach ARC campaigns is usually cited around 10–20%. Even our lowest-performing test campaign had 72 readers claim a copy. Our best campaigns saw hundreds of sign-ups, with a few outliers pulling in thousands of interested readers. It all varies on lots of factors outside of our control e.g. your cover, your blurb, your genre

No — and we never will. We don't guarantee star ratings, review counts, or what readers will say. Our readers review honestly, not to order. What we do guarantee is us doing our best to have a genuinely engaged pool and a system built to give your book the best possible shot.

Yes. We support both pre-release ARCs and review campaigns for already-published books. One thing to flag: if your live book is in Kindle Unlimited, you'll need to pull it out of KU for the duration of the campaign to stay within Amazon's terms — that part's down to you to manage.

We only run 1 campaign a month from 2027. With hundreds of authors in the Hive, spots go fast and are first come, first served. We keep it limited this way to ensure that your book gets the most traction it can for that month.

For just £50, we'll:

• Put your book in front of our ARC & review reader pool, sourced from our mailing list and website traffic - mailing list just under 10k, average monthly traffic around 30k

• Actively nudge readers to follow through on reading and reviewing multiple times

• Keep our reader list trimmed on our chosen ARC platform, so readers who consistently don't review don't get invited back

• Handle the chasing and admin so you don't have to

• Pay & pick your date — Choose your preferred campaign date from the availability list below, and then state it in the notes section when you pay via PayPal.

• We get in touch via email — We'll email you a week to a few days before your slot, to get your information and let you know the date your campaign will go out. You need to mark theindieauthorhive@gmail.com as NOT spam. Or else you may miss an email.

• You send us your book — At that point, we'll need your EPUB file and any relevant book information. We promise not to share it with anyone unauthorised, or use it in any manner that would break your copyright. We simply upload it to booksprout, and offer that reading link to our audience.

• Tell us your platform priority — Let us know which platform(s) you most want reviews on (Amazon, Goodreads, etc.) so we can steer readers accordingly.

• We handle the rest — We upload your book to Booksprout, get it in front of our reader pool, and chase readers to follow through.

• We leave your book live for 4 weeks with the main deadline to review, and an extra 2 weeks after that for late stragglers.

• We nudge the readers to leave reviews if they have not done so already, and we prevent those with outstanding reviews from claiming another book until they have reviewed the prior one

• Once your book has been live for the month, and gone past the two week review deadline, we’re happy to email you about your stats so you know how your book performed if you would like to reach out to get the information. Obviously, a large volume of reviews can come in after this date, but the option is there if you wish to see more information.