I Don’t Post Bad ARC Reviews. I Send the Author a Note.

A book can be fixed. A review is forever.

That one fact decides how I handle an advance reader copy I don’t love.

If I can’t give a book five stars, I don’t post a review at all. I write the author a note instead, tell them what I found, and give them the chance to fix it. Typos, a plot hole, a chapter that drags, a character whose motive never shows up on the page: all of that can be corrected and republished. A two-star review sits under the book’s listing for the rest of its life, long after the problem that earned it is gone.

I don’t take many ARCs anymore. It’s been years since I read them regularly. But the policy hasn’t changed, and a question in an ARC reader group this week reminded me that plenty of people think it’s dishonest.

Is it dishonest for ARC readers to skip negative reviews?

The question came from someone new to ARC reading. They’d joined a group for advance readers and noticed a pattern. Every time somebody asked what to do about a book they didn’t like, the answer was the same: send the author feedback, don’t post a review. They wanted to know whether that’s deceptive. Isn’t a free book in exchange for silence about the bad ones just a payment for positive reviews?

It’s a fair question, and the answers split the room. Some authors said to post an honest review, period, because that’s what an ARC is for. One said she’d rather get a bad review than a private message, and told her readers not to contact her.

Others asked readers to hold low ratings until a week or two after launch, because an early one-star can sink a new book’s visibility. A reader who’s done hundreds of ARCs said she posts honest low ratings for bad writing and missing editing, and skips reviews only when she didn’t finish. Another said that seeing nothing but five-star ratings makes her suspicious, so she reads the lowest reviews first.

I come down on the reader’s side. A reader who chooses to send a note instead of posting a bad review isn’t lying to anybody. Silence isn’t a false statement. Nobody is obligated to review every book they read, paid for or free, and most readers never review anything. A note to the author, with the low rating kept off the listing, is a courtesy, and I’ll keep doing it.

Why a note to the author beats a bad review

An ARC goes out before a book is truly finished, at least in the author’s head. Most self-published authors can still change the file. They can fix the errors, rewrite the muddy chapter and upload a corrected version, and every reader who buys after that gets the better book.

The review doesn’t update. It describes a version of the book that may no longer exist, and it keeps steering buyers away from the fixed one. On Amazon, a reviewer can edit or delete their own review, but almost nobody goes back to do it. The author can’t touch it at all.

A note does the job a review can’t. It tells the author exactly what’s wrong while they can still act on it. One author in that thread said a two-star ARC review showed him his main character’s motivation wasn’t clear enough. Imagine he’d heard that in a private message two weeks before launch. He could have fixed the book, and the two stars would never have been needed.

Most of what makes me unable to give five stars is fixable. Sloppy editing. A first chapter that starts in the wrong place. Dialogue that all sounds like the same person. Those are craft problems, not character flaws, and the author deserves a shot at them before the world sees the scorecard.

What my note to the author says

A useful note is specific. “I didn’t like it” helps nobody. I tell the author what I’d have needed to give the book five stars: the errors I found, with page numbers when I can, the scene where I lost track of who was talking, the chapter where I stopped caring and why.

I keep it kind and short. The author spent a year or more on the book, and a note that reads like a takedown gets deleted unread. I’m not their editor, and I don’t pretend to be. I’m one reader telling them where the book lost me.

When you send it matters too. A note that lands a week before launch can still change the book. One that shows up a month after release is a review in disguise. I send mine as soon as I finish, through whatever channel the author gave me, whether that’s the ARC platform, their email or their assistant.

Then I let it go. What they do with it is their call.

Where does the line between courtesy and review manipulation fall?

This is the part of the thread that made me wince. Several people talked about authors who ask, or require, that readers hold low reviews, send negative feedback privately, or skip reviewing if they didn’t like the book. One reader described being blocked and dropped from an author’s ARC team after she left an honest two-star review and messaged the author about it.

That’s the author’s side of the transaction, and it’s a different animal from a reader’s personal choice. A reader deciding not to post is a reader using their own judgment. An author running an ARC program that steers negative opinions away from the listing starts to look like manipulation.

The Federal Trade Commission thinks so too. Its updated Endorsement Guides, finalized in 2023, tell businesses to stay away from procuring or suppressing reviews in ways that distort what consumers think of a product, and not to put extra barriers in front of negative reviews.

A trade regulation rule on consumer reviews, effective October 21, 2024, bars paying for reviews that express a particular sentiment and bars attempts to suppress negative reviews outside narrow exceptions. Amazon’s rules let you hand a reader a free copy if the only thing you request is an honest review, with no rating attached.

One commenter claimed it’s an FTC violation for an author to try to influence or delay a reader’s review. That overstates what the rules say. Neither one mentions delaying reviews by name. But an author who builds an ARC team where low ratings are discouraged and the readers who post them get dropped is walking straight toward the conduct the rules describe. My advice to authors: send the book, ask for an honest review, and take what comes.

What about readers who want the truth?

The strongest argument against my policy came from readers who’ve bought books with glowing reviews and found them terrible. That’s a real problem, and I don’t dismiss it. If every ARC reader followed my rule and no author ever fixed anything, the listings would fill up with five-star reviews of books that don’t deserve them.

But that isn’t what happens. ARC readers are a small slice of the people who review a book. Readers who paid for the book review it too, and they don’t owe the author anything. A book with real problems collects low ratings from strangers soon enough. As a buyer, I read the description first, then maybe a review or two, and I think most people decide on the cover and the description anyway.

There’s also a difference between a book that’s broken and a book that isn’t for me. If I picked up a romance with a trope I hate, the problem is my taste. A two-star review from me would tell buyers nothing about the book and a lot about me. Several readers in the thread made the same point about genres they don’t read. They’re right.

I’ll grant one exception without hesitation. If a book is deceptive, the readers deserve to know. A novel marketed as a romance with no happy ending, a nonfiction book whose claims are flat wrong, a manuscript with an AI prompt left in the middle of chapter six. Those aren’t matters of taste, and a reader who calls them out in a review is doing everyone a favor.

How do authors handle negative ARC reviews?

From the other side of the table, I’ve sent out a lot of ARCs. When Focus on LinkedIn first came out, over a thousand advance copies went out, and 78 reviews came back. That’s normal. Most ARC readers never review anything. I went through the numbers in ARC reviews and their real follow-through rates.

I don’t read reviews of my own books at all. That’s a policy too. One harsh review can throw me for weeks, and it wouldn’t make the next book any better. If a reader had something specific to fix, I’d have wanted a note. If you’re an author staring at a one-star right now, my piece on how to handle a bad book review walks through what to do with it, starting with not answering it.

What I’d never do is punish a reader for an honest review. The reader didn’t ask to love your book. You asked them to read it.

A note costs nothing

If you’re an ARC reader with a book you didn’t love, you’ve got choices, and none of them makes you a liar. Post your honest review if that’s what you believe in. Hold it until after launch if the author asked and you’re willing. Or do what I do, and write the author a note that tells them what to fix.

If you’re an author, ask for honesty and mean it. The Publishing and Marketing Hub covers launches, reviews and everything around them, and if you want help getting a self-published book right before the reviews start, my self-published author service is built for that.

Books get fixed every day. Reviews don’t. Send the note.

From the author

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Reviews are one piece of a launch. I wrote this one from launches that worked and launches that flopped, so you can see what marketing a book looks like without the hype.

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