Editorial reviews
A review with a byline you can put on the book.
Kirkus Indie charges upward of US$450. Entrada and its peers hover near US$200. This desk reads the same way and charges R1 350 — about US$75 — because it is in Cape Town, not Manhattan.
Sample editorial review · literary fiction
Hallam writes grief the way weather happens — quietly, and then all at once. The Salt House is a small novel with a long reach, and its final thirty pages earn every inch of their silence.
What an editorial review is — and what it is not.
It is
A trade-style critique you own
The kind of review that runs in a trade journal: a considered assessment of what the book is doing, written for buyers rather than for the author. It goes in the Editorial Reviews block on your Amazon Author Central listing, on your back cover, in your press kit, and in your ads.
Amazon permits paid editorial reviews in that section. This is the same category of thing Kirkus Indie, BookLife and Readers' Favorite sell.
It is not
A customer review on your product page
Amazon prohibits paying for customer reviews — the star-rated ones under your listing. I never post there, never ask anyone else to, and never arrange swaps. If a service offers to put stars on your product page for money, walk away from it.
Keeping the two apart is what makes an editorial review safe to buy and safe to display.
The deliverable
What arrives, exactly.
- One 400-word editorial review. Genre-aware, spoiler-free, written to be quoted rather than summarised.
- Three pull-quotes. Sized for a cover flash, an Amazon block and a social card respectively.
- A ready-to-paste version with the attribution line already formatted for Author Central.
- Your choice of British or American conventions, applied consistently throughout.
- Kill Clause cover. Under three stars and nothing public is written. Read the policy.
Reading, honestly accounted for
A 90 000-word novel takes eight to twelve hours to read properly, and the review itself takes another three or four to draft, cut and set. That is the real cost of this service, and it is why the turnaround is 21 business days rather than 48 hours. Anyone promising a considered review of a full novel by Friday is not reading the novel.
The baseline covers manuscripts to 100 000 words. Longer books are welcome — epic fantasy included — at R220 per additional 10 000 words, quoted in writing before you pay a cent.
Not sure where the review goes once you have it? There is a step-by-step walkthrough, with video, for adding an editorial review to your Amazon book page — including the paragraph-break problem in the Author Central review field.
Already published? Send the retailer link and I will buy my own copy. It costs you nothing extra and means the review is written from the edition your readers actually see.
Genres this desk reads well.
Honesty serves you better than a list that says “everything”. These are the shelves I know from the inside.
Comfortable ground
- Cozy and traditional mystery
- Crime and detective fiction
- Gothic, paranormal and supernatural
- Historical fiction
- Literary and upmarket fiction
- Speculative fiction and light SFF
Happy to take on
- Thriller and suspense
- Contemporary and book-club fiction
- Romance with a strong plot spine
- Memoir and narrative non-fiction
- Self-help and wellbeing
- Young adult across the above
Not my desk
- Erotica and explicit romance
- Poetry collections
- Technical and academic non-fiction
- Children's picture books
- Anything requiring specialist clinical, legal or religious authority
If your book sits here, say so anyway — I will point you at someone better rather than take the work.
Tell me about the book.
No payment is taken until the brief is read, the word count is confirmed and the price is agreed in writing. If the book is not a fit, I will say so and point you somewhere better.