good websites for book reviews

The 13 Best Book Review Sites and Book Rating Sites

Knowing where to buy books can be challenging. So, here are the best book review sites to help you avoid buying books that you'll regret reading.

Nobody likes to spend money on a new book only to face that overwhelming feeling of disappointment when it doesn't live up to your expectations. The solution is to check out a few book review sites before you hit the shops. The greater the diversity of opinions you can gather, the more confidence you can have that you'll enjoy the title.

Which book review and book rating sites are worth considering? Here are the best ones.

1. Goodreads

Goodreads is arguably the leading online community for book lovers. If you want some inspiration for which novel or biography to read next, this is the book review site to visit.

There's an endless number of user-generated reading lists to explore, and Goodreads itself publishes dozens of "best of" lists across a number of categories. You can do a book search by plot or subject , or join book discussions and reading groups with thousands of members.

You can participate in the community by adding your own rankings to books you've read and leaving reviews for other people to check out. Occasionally, there are even bonus events like question and answer sessions with authors.

2. LibraryThing

LibraryThing is the self-proclaimed largest book club in the world. It has more than 2.3 million members and is one of the best social networking platforms for book lovers .

With a free account, you can add up to 200 books to your library and share them with other users. But it's in the other areas where LibraryThing can claim to be one of the best book review sites.

Naturally, there are ratings, user reviews, and tags. But be sure to click on the Zeitgeist tab at the top of the page. It contains masses of information, including the top books by rating, by the number of reviews, by authors, and loads more.

3. Book Riot

Book Riot is a blog. It publishes listicles on dozens of different topics, many of which review the best books in a certain genre. To give you an idea, some recent articles include Keeping Hoping Alive: 11 Thrilling YA Survival Stories and The Best Historical Fiction Books You’ve Never Heard Of .

Of course, there's also plenty of non-reading list content. If you have a general affinity for literature, Book Riot is definitely worth adding to the list of websites you browse every day.

Bookish is a site that all members of book clubs should know about. It helps you prep for your next meeting with discussion guides, book quizzes, and book games. There are even food and drink suggestions, as well as playlist recommendations.

But the site is more than just book club meetings. It also offers lots of editorial content. That comes in the form of author interviews, opinion essays, book reviews and recommendations, reading challenges, and giveaways.

Be sure to look at the Must-Reads section of the site regularly to get the latest book reviews. Also, it goes without saying that the people behind Bookish are book lovers, too. To get a glimpse of what they’re reading, check out their Staff Reads articles.

5. Booklist

Booklist is a print magazine that also offers an online portal. Trusted experts from the American Library Association write all the book reviews.

You can see snippets of reviews for different books. However, to read them in full, you will need to subscribe. An annual plan for this book review site costs $184.95 per year.

6. Fantasy Book Review

Fantasy Book Review should be high on the list for anyone who is a fan of fantasy works. The book review site publishes reviews for both children's books and adults' books.

It has a section on the top fantasy books of all time and a continually updated list of must-read books for each year. You can also search through the recommended books by sub-genres such as Sword and Sorcery, Parallel Worlds, and Epic Fantasy.

7. LoveReading

LoveReading is one of the most popular book review sites in the UK, but American audiences will find it to be equally useful.

The site is divided into fiction and non-fiction works. In each area, it publishes weekly staff picks, books of the month, debuts of the month, ebooks of the month, audiobooks of the month, and the nationwide bestsellers. Each book on every list has a full review that you can read for free.

Make sure you also check out their Highlights tab to get book reviews for selected titles of the month. In Collections , you'll also find themed reading lists such as World War One Literature and Green Reads .

Kirkus has been involved in producing book reviews since the 1930s. This book review site looks at the week's bestselling books, and provides lengthy critiques for each one.

As you'd expect, you'll also find dozens of "best of" lists and individual book reviews across many categories and genres.

And while you're on the site, make sure you click on the Kirkus Prize section. You can look at all the past winners and finalists, complete with the accompanying reviews of their books.

Although Reddit is a social media site, you can use it to get book reviews of famous books, or almost any other book for that matter! Reddit has a Subreddit, r/books, that is dedicated to book reviews and reading lists.

The subreddit has weekly scheduled threads about a particular topic or genre. Anyone can then chip in with their opinions about which books are recommendable. Several new threads are published every day, with people discussing their latest discovery with an accompanying book rating or review.

You'll also discover a weekly recommendation thread. Recent threads have included subjects such as Favorite Books About Climate Science , Literature of Indigenous Peoples , and Books Set in the Desert . There’s also a weekly What are you Reading? discussion and frequent AMAs.

For more social media-like platforms, check out these must-have apps for book lovers .

10. YouTube

YouTube is not the type of place that immediately springs to mind when you think of the best book review sites online.

Nonetheless, there are several engaging YouTube channels that frequently offer opinions on books they've read. You’ll easily find book reviews of famous books here.

Some of the most notable book review YouTube channels include Better Than Food: Book Reviews , Little Book Owl , PolandBananasBooks , and Rincey Reads .

Amazon is probably one of your go-to site when you want to buy something. If you don’t mind used copies, it’s also one of the best websites to buy second-hand books .

Now, to get book reviews, just search and click on a title, then scroll down to see the ratings and what others who have bought the book are saying. It’s a quick way to have an overview of the book’s rating. If you spot the words Look Inside above the book cover, it means you get to preview the first few pages of the book, too!

Regardless of the praises or criticisms you have heard from other book review sites, reading a sample is the most direct way to help you gauge the content’s potential and see whether the author’s writing style suits your tastes.

12. StoryGraph

StoryGraph is another good book review site that's worth checking out. The book rating is determined by the site's large community of readers. Key in the title of a book you're interested in and click on it in StoryGraph's search results to have an overall view of its rating.

Each book review provides information on the moods and pacing of the story. It also indicates whether the tale is plot or character-driven, what readers feel about the extent of character development, how lovable the characters generally are, and the diversity of the cast.

13. London Review of Books

The London Review of Books is a magazine that covers a range of subjects such as culture, literature, and philosophy. Part of its content includes amazingly detailed book reviews. If you feel that most modern book reviews are too brief for your liking, the London Review of Books should suit you best.

You'll gain insight into the flow and themes of the story, as well as a more thorough picture of the events taking place in the book.

Read Book Reviews Before You Buy

The book review sites we've discussed will appeal to different types of readers. Some people will be more comfortable with the easy-to-interpret book rating systems; others will prefer extensive reviews written by experienced professionals.

Although it’s easy to be tempted by a gorgeous book cover, it’s always best to have a quick look at the book reviews before actually buying a copy. This way, you can save your money and spend it on the books that you’ll be proud to display on your shelves for a long time. And check out recommendations, as well, to help you find what's worth reading.

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15 Of The Best Book Recommendation Sites To Find Your Next Book

Abigail Clarkin

Abigail can often be found holding a book in one hand and an ice cream cone in the other. When she is not devouring stories (or dessert), Abigail trains for marathons and writes poetry about growing up with eight brothers and sisters. She enjoys working in marketing for a real estate developer and creating Instagram content for fun (@marathonandmunch) about all the tasty eats found in Providence, RI.

View All posts by Abigail Clarkin

At some point, you’ve likely encountered a long, bleak patch when your reserve of recommended books ran dry. A few years ago, there was a stretch when I didn’t have people in my life who understood my taste in books. I’d finish a fantastic series and then be disappointed when I realized that there was no rebound read to help me recover from the last series. Thankfully for the readers like us who are still nursing book hangovers, there are personalized book recommendation websites across the internet to save us.

If you have run out of books you’re interested in reading, look through these fifteen book recommendation sites.

Subscriptions

Book Riot has its very own subscription service called Tailored Book Recommendations . TBR is made up of staff who dedicate their time to carefully tailoring book recommendations for readers based on what they like to read personally. Sign up for either a recommendations-only level subscription or a hardcover level subscription (which includes having three books mailed to you).

If you’d like free and discounted reading deals sent straight to your email, sign up for BookBub. Based on the genres you choose when signing up, BookBub will send personalized recommendations of ebooks that can be purchased for a reasonable rate. Themed lists are also available on their site.

22 Books Coming in 2018 Recommended by Librarians https://t.co/Sil3Wvs6Lh @tarawestover @thuglibrarian @CommerceLibrary @randyribay @alicewriterland @anglophilelibr pic.twitter.com/Uu6cIJuuxx — BookBub (@BookBub) March 2, 2018

3. Library-Specific Sites

If you’re a patron at a large library, there’s a chance that your library offers personalized book recommendation services delivered via email. A few libraries currently offering this service include New York Public Library , Denver Public Library , and Sacramento Public Library . Ask your librarians to see if this is a resource for you as well.

Themed Lists

4. epic reads.

Epic Reads is one of the largest young adult fiction communities online. Along with their endless energy and passion for YA, one reason for their popularity is their interactive quizzes, lengthy lists, and colorful book charts that point readers towards their next favorite read. A few years ago when I met a reading slump, I worked my way through much of their amazing Young Adult Retelling Chart . Many of my favorites were found through this resource.

5. Penguin Teen

The Penguin Teen website features book lists, news about young adult authors, and a helpful book suggestions tool that focuses on genre specific book recommendations.

6. Reading Rockets

If you’re looking for children’s books for the kids in your life (or for the child in you), check out Reading Rockets. Reading Rockets provides specific, lengthy themed lists for young readers. With list topics ranging from “Books About Kids Who Find Reading Hard” to “That’s So Gross,” you are sure to find a book for any occasion. This site can be a wonderful resource for teachers, librarians, and educators.

Tor is the online hub for fantasy and science fiction. Check out their many lists to find stories that will transport you to fictional lands.

A project from Netgalley, Bookish offers a wide range of book lists, including fiction, audiobook, and young adult. What makes this site stand out is these are all brand new releases or forthcoming titles, so you can get your library holds or preorders in early.

All of the recommendations on Olmenta are submitted by passionate readers. The site allows you to peruse titles by genre or category, and it’s a fun way to let someone else pick a book for you (without needing to do any real work on your end). You can submit your own suggestions, too.

10. Shepherd

Who could offer better recommendation lists than authors, experts, and passionate readers of books on aa topic? Shepherd offers a wide range of book lists, including everything from best YA books about immigration to novels where something queer’s afoot. In the near future, Shepherd will make it possible to sort lists by genre, as well, so you could find books set in China that are romance, nonfiction, YA, or otherwise.

Made-For-You on the Spot

11. whichbook.

On Whichbook, book recommendations are calculated by one out of two categories: 1. Mood, or 2. Character, setting, and plot. The reader has the choice to use sliders on the “Mood” section to rate what they’re looking for in a book. Do you want a book that is completely happy? Or on the border between safe and disturbing? There is also the option to select your desired character characteristics, the story setting, and/or plot points that you’d like included in the recommendation.

Maybe AI knows the perfect book for you. Readow starts by asking you some simple questions about recent reads and uses technology to pair you with your next great book.

13. What Should I Read Next

14. readgeek.

Registering is optional when using Readgeek to receive book recommendations. In order to get ahold of book suggestions, simply rate a few books that you’ve read on a 1–10 scale. After you finish rating as many as you’d like, Readgeek calculates which books you’d most likely enjoy based on your previous ratings.

15. Literature Map

At Literature Map, you can type in an author’s name and then view similar authors that other readers are enjoying. The site generates a map that displays author names in relative states of closeness. The closer the authors, the more likely other readers enjoyed both.

Another simple but fun AI-driven recommendation site is Gnooks. Pop in your three favorite writers and you’ll get a recommended author to try. It doesn’t end there, though: you can rate whether or not you like the author suggested for even more recommendations.

17. Goodreads

Goodreads provides a space for people to track their reading, write reviews, and view books, lists, and authors that align with their interests. When creating an account on Goodreads, the reader has the opportunity to create original book lists. One of my favorites is the “Want to Read” option: every time you view a book description that sounds interesting, you can save the book to a list that is dedicated to books you plan to tackle later. For those of you who are looking to build a never ending To-Be-Read list, Goodreads is a perfect place to start.

18. Narrative Muse

Are you interested in reading books specifically written by underrepresented voices? Narrative Muse serves as a recommendation site for those who are looking for both films and books created by women and nonbinary writers. Create an account to be matched with books that fall under these categories.

19. The Storygraph

Billed as an alternative to Goodreads, The StoryGraph is a book tracking site, a community making site, and offers book recommendations. You can import your Goodreads information to The StoryGraph, and both the website and app have clean but visually appealing interfaces. Here’s our full StoryGraph review .

20. r/books

Numbering at almost 21 million subscribers, Reddit’s main book subreddit is a haven for book discussion and recommendations. Want to know what Reddit users across the massive site are reading? There’s Reddit Reads for that.

Still looking for more ways to find your next favorite book? Take this quiz on what you should read next to receive an immediate recommendation. If you’re willing to look for suggestions in places off of the internet, check out 31 Ways to Find the Best Book Recommendations .

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Independent Book Review

A Celebration of Indie Press and Self-Published Books

30+ Top-Notch Book Review Sites for Readers & Writers

Here are 30+ top-notch book review sites for booksellers, librarians, readers, & writers. Learn more about 30 bookish companies helping spread the word about the best & latest books.

Top-Notch Book Review Sites for Readers & Writers

Book reviews are for all of us.

Readers need to know whether books with the best covers are worth the time they’re about to put into it. They find it helpful (and fun!) to check out reviews after reading the books, too, so they can see what other real-life humans had to say about it.

Authors & publishers need to get book reviews to build buzz and credibility for their product. Librarians & booksellers need to hear from trusted sources that the book they are about to buy for their collection has the capability to get picked up & to satisfy. 

Book review sites have transformed the book-recommending landscape.

We can write reviews on product pages, on social media apps, and some of us, for publications that have been around since before the internet. Book reviewing has changed. But maybe it also hasn’t.

What kind of book review sites are you looking for? Chances are, this list has you covered.

Here are 30+ book review sites to read, write, and bookmark. 

1. Independent Book Review

Does this logo look familiar? (Hint: You’re sitting on it).

IBR, the website you’re on RIGHT NOW, is all about indie books . There are so many books in the world right now, but if you feel like you keep seeing the same ones recommended over and over, start reading indie!

Independent presses & self-published authors are doing some incredible work right now. IBR reviews books, curates lists, does indie bookstore round-ups, and uses starred reviews & best-of-the-year lists to show which books are going to blow your mind.

2. Book Marks

Lit Hub rules. You already knew this.

But do you know about Book Marks? They’re a branch of the Lit Hub network, and they are an excellent way for booksellers and librarians to get shorter recaps from multiple sources and voices.

Their staff peruses book review sites and shares pull-quotes from them in book lists & more. By reading all of these sites, they can give the book a rating based on the average: “Rave, Positive, Mixed, or Pan.”

My favorite book-buying platform, Bookshop , uses Book Marks’ scale for their books’ ratings, and I love getting access to that.

3. Publishers Weekly

Publishers Weekly has been around since 1872. By now, they’re a review churning machine. They cover so much of the book industry in so many different ways, reviewing nearly 9,000 books per year and providing publication announcements, agency announcements, industry job listings , bestseller lists, industry stats, a self-publishing partner, and more. 

4. Kirkus Reviews

Another one that’s been around since before the internet! 1933 to be exact. Kirkus is a widely recognized publication that book buyers & librarians follow carefully. I dare you to find a bookstore or library that doesn’t have multiple books with Kirkus Reviews plastered on their front and back covers.

5. Booklist

The American Library Association runs Booklist , a platform dedicated to helping libraries, educators, and booksellers choose books. They’ve got a magazine (since 1905!), book reviews, lists, awards, and one of my favorite bookish podcasts out there: Shelf Care .

6. Library Journal & School Library Journal

As you might be able to guess, Library Journal & School Library Journal focus on librarians too! They review a ton of books, and they write often about library-related news, collection management, technology, programs, and more. If you’re an author hoping to land your book in libraries, these are essential targets.

7. BookPage

You may have seen BookPage in your local library or bookstore. Some shops provide it for free so that patrons can look through it to find which books to buy in-store. Their website is clean and intriguing and always full of the most up-to-date releases and bestsellers.

Speaking of libraries! Have you seen our gifts for librarians ?

8. Foreword

Foreword is such an enthusiastic and dedicated champion of indie books, and they’ve been doing it since the 90s! I love how much attention university presses get here too. Their reviews are well-written & thorough, in both print & digital, and I always find something to speed-purchase once the Foreword Indie winners come out.

9. LoveReading

LoveReading is a top book-recommendation website in the UK. They’ve got starred reviews, lists, staff picks, a LitFest , eBooks, and they even donate 25% of the cover price of their books to schools of your choice. It’s reader-friendly and apparent how much they appreciate the wonder of books. 

10. Washington Independent Review of Books

What’s not to love about The Independent?

Back in 2011, a group of writers & editors were frustrated by newspapers dropping book review sections and decided to do something about it. The Washington Independent Review of Books is quite a lovely something! This nonprofit posts every day: from reviews to interviews to essays and podcasts. They host events too!

11. Book Riot

Try being a reader and not finding something you love on Book Riot. Book lists, podcasts, personalized recommendations, newsletters, book deals—this site is a haven.

It doesn’t post solo book reviews like other sites, but they do share mini-reviews in book lists and talk about reading in unique & passionate ways. The Book Riot Podcast is such a winner too! I love listening to Jeff & Rebecca laugh about the latest in books & reading.

12. Electric Lit

From novel excerpts to original short fiction & poetry, they might not only be a book review site,  but they do offer a lot in the world of book recommendations. Their Recommended Reading lit mag features unique staff picks and short, insightful book reviews.

13. The Millions

The writing in The Millions is something to behold. They are an artful source for all things book reviews & recommendations. They write stunning essays about books & reading and long reviews of new and old books. They’ve got some of my favorite Most Anticip ated lists too.

What are the biggest benefits of reading ? 🧐

14. Bookforum

Did you hear? Bookforum is back ! This book review magazine announced in December 2022 that they were closing, and my heart sank a little bit. This company means so much to the publishing industry and has for 20+ years, so when I saw (last week!) that they are returning, I did more than a few jumps for joy.

Welcome back, Bookforum! Can’t wait to see what you’ve got coming for us in book world coverage.

BOMB is in it for the art. Art, literature, film, music, theater, architecture, and dance. There are reviews and interviews, and the literature section is a real delight. The reviews are like poignant essays, and the author interviews are in-depth and feature some fascinating minds.

16. The Asian Review of Books

The only dedicated pan-Asian book review publication! It’s widely cited and features some of the best in Asian books and art, so booksellers and librarians have a source to trust to stock their collections with high-quality pan-Asian lit.

Have you seen our gifts for book lovers yet?

17. Chicago Review of Books

I love so much of what Chicago Review of Books does. They have a clean & sleek design that features some of the buzziest books as well as plenty of hidden gems from our favorite indie presses. I’m a particularly big fan of the spotlight they put on books in translation .

18. Rain Taxi

I love Rain Taxi ’s style! They champion unique books, publish their own fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, and put a real emphasis on art for their magazine covers . It’s a beautiful print magazine to subscribe to, but they also share free online editions & digital archives. They even run the Rain Taxi Reading Series & Twin Cities Book Festival if you’re a real-lifer in Minnesota!

19. The Rumpus

Oh, The Rumpus ! This mostly volunteer-run online magazine publishes reviews, interviews, essays, fiction, and poetry. The reviews are in-depth and personal and heart-melting, and in addition to the site, they’ve got cool perks like the Poetry Book Club  and Letters in the Mail . The book club is where you get a pre-release book and meet the poet via Slack with other club members at the end of the month, and Letters in the Mail are actual postcards sent in the mail to you twice a month from your favorite authors.

20. Book Reporter

The selection in Book Reporter is carefully curated & enticing: hot new releases, forthcoming books, major presses, & indies. And there are plenty of unique ways to learn about them, like video interviews and monthly lists & picks. It launched in 1996 and is in The Book Report Network, which includes Reading Group Guides , a super useful resource for book clubs.

21. BookTrib .

BookTrib does such a great job of making their site browsable. The different ways you can enjoy what they offer—from book lists to giveaways to ebook deals —are difficult to keep your purchase finger off of.

23. Lit Reactor

Writers & readers—where bookish people meet! LitReactor’s book reviews are in the magazine portion of their website, and they’ve got plenty of them! Reviews, interviews, lists, introspectives, writing tips, and reading discussions. I’ve found some really unique content on Lit Reactor, like this ranking of literary parents . The website is a haven for writers especially, as there are workshops, writing blog posts, and even a forum to participate in.

24. Crime Fiction Lover

Dark alleys. Stray bullets. Hard-boiled detectives. Runaway thrills. If you’re a mystery-thriller reader, you’ve got to know about Crime Fiction Lover. They’ve got a passionate group of readers and writers talking about the best books in the genre and the ones that are soon to come out too.

25. SF Book Reviews

Speculative fiction fans unite! SF Book Reviews has been reviewing sci-fi and fantasy books since 1999, and while they’re a relatively small staff, they publish regularly, feature books of the month, and work wonders for their fantastical community.

26. Historical Novel Society

For all you historical fiction fans out there, the Historical Novel Society has reviewed more than 20,000 books in its twenty years. This one works like a membership for “writers and readers who love exploring the past.” You get a quarterly print magazine as a member, and if you’re a writer, you can join critique groups and ask for book reviews.

27. The Poetry Question

The Poetry Question writes about poetry published by indie presses and indie authors. They are a small passionate team dedicated to showing the world why indie presses continue to be a leading source for award-winning poetry.

28. Goodreads

Did you know that there are over 125 million members on Goodreads? When users review books, they can have conversations with fellow readers and follow reviewers too. If you’re looking for the biggest community, there’s no doubt Goodreads is the one. I like using sites like this because it helps you catalog books, one of my favorite ways to build a strong reading habit . 

29. The Storygraph

A big community of active users that’s Amazon free! Come review books, use half & quarter stars (!), and complete reading challenges. You got this.

29. Bookwyrm

Bookwyrm is small (around 5,000 members at the time of this writing), but doesn’t that sound kind of nice? There are active members and a genuine collective goal in talking books. Grow with it. I think you’ll be comfy here. There are other communities within the Bookwyrm umbrella too, like Bookrastinating .

30. Reedsy Discovery

I hold a special place in my heart for book review sites dedicated to helping writers! I got into this business as a book marketer, and I experienced first-hand, through hundreds of books, how hard it was to get exposure & validation for small press and self-published authors. 

Reedsy Discovery is a branch of Reedsy (the author resource company) that connects authors & reviewers so that people can read free books, sometimes receive tips for it, and authors can get more reviews in the process. Readers can choose from the latest books as well as the ones that are getting the best reviews.

31. Netgalley

Netgalley is a book review site for pre-released books. Reviewers sign up for a free account, request galleys from publishers and indie authors, and get to read them before they’re published so that they can leave reviews for the book, preferably on Amazon, Goodreads, or their blog. They also run Bookish , the editorial arm of Netgalley, which has book recommendations, interviews, and more.

32. Online Book Club

This review site combines a bunch of cool things! The 4-million member community gives me a lot of Goodreads vibes, especially with the Bookshelves app . But Online Book Club is a place for you to get eBook deals and talk about books in reviews and forums.

What are your favorite book review sites to follow? Let us know in the comments!

Thank you for reading “ Top-Notch Book Review Sites for Readers & Writers !” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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Check out http://www.literaryvault.com for best book reviews and author interviews. The literary Vault is a blog run and owned by a 13-year-old passionate reader who loves to share her passion and recommendations with others.

Thank you for the information!

Book review sites serve as invaluable resources for both readers and writers, offering insightful critiques, recommendations, and discussions on a wide range of literary works. Whether you’re seeking your next captivating read or looking to promote your own book, these platforms provide a wealth of information and opportunities for engagement. https://ghostwritersplanet.com/

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20 Great Book Websites for Finding What to Read Next

I’m writing this list of the best websites about books for me five years ago. Back then I was deep in the beginning of learning about book world and would have welcomed a list of the great book websites to help me learn what to read next. Getting to know the publishing industry is a lifelong process of book discovery, and the Internet makes the literary community more accessible and inclusive than ever. These 20 book websites (plus a few extra way down at the end) are the places I go to find out about new books being published, to deepen my understanding of literature and reading, to get book recommendations, to grapple with critical book reviews, and more. I hope you’ll find your next favorite book through this list of great book websites to grow as a reader.

20 Best Book Websites for Book Recommendations, Lists, and More

(1) amazon book review.

Love it or hate it, but Amazon is a quality place to go to find out about new books. The Omnivoracious Amazon Book Review is a flagship for good book content, with recommendations from celebrities and other notable readers being a unique feature. I love the author interviews they have on their site, with writers like George R. R. Martin , Holly Black , and Charlie Jane Anders recently stopping by for a chat, often on the podcast. Amazon’s Best Books of the Month list is one I check religiously for new books to add to my TBR. They often surprise me with little-known reads I wouldn’t otherwise have on my radar (even if I think they make YA an afterthought), which is why I rate them highly for “new book discovery,” meaning a place where you can learn about books to read.

Strengths: Author interviews, previews of new releases, lists of recent award winners, podcast, new book discovery

(2) Book Bub

When Book Bub first came on the scene about five years ago, I signed up for their signature daily newsletter with hot deals on eBooks. I scored a lot of great books to load up my Kindle, but I didn’t really follow the site for a few years as I wasn’t reading too much on my eReader. Now they’re everywhere, moving beyond the email list to create original bookish content. It’s now totally expected to have one of their many comprehensive book lists pop up in a search for new books. The only downside that I see is that now you have to have an account to view their book lists or other blog content . I do like how they track book recommendations from authors like Stephen King, Jill Shalvis, and Nora Roberts.

Strengths: Book list articles, book recommendations, eBook deals, new book discovery

(3) Book Marks

One of the sites associated with Literary Hub or “Lit Hub,” which I write up as #12 below, Book Marks is the place to go if you want to find book reviews of the latest big books. Book Marks’ specialty is aggregating adult literary fiction and nonfiction book reviews and then assigning them a score card so you can see how many reviewers gave the book a Rave, Positive, Mixed, or Pan. Without a doubt, if you want to find out the critical consensus on a book before buying it or checking it out of the library, Book Marks should be your first stop. I also like how the site regularly interviews book critics to ask them more about their bookish lives. The site also reprints classic book reviews.

Strengths: Book reviews, coverage of new books, literary criticism, book news, essays

(4) Book Riot

Sure, I might be a little biased to include Book Riot in my list of the best book websites since I write for them , but the fact is, Book Riot is one of the leading destinations on the web for book lovers and certainly one of the top best sites for new books. Book Riot’s got all areas of the reading life covered and does an especially good job at highlighting diverse authors, featuring all genres, and amplifying thoughtful and at times controversial opinions about books, publishing, and reading. The annual Read Harder Challenge pushes readers beyond their comfort zone with categories like “A book by an AOC (Author of Color) set in or about space” and “A novel by a trans or nonbinary author,” and a thriving community of challenge takers trade book recommendations and ideas. Book Riot’s many book podcasts are also must-listens for readers wanting to learn about new books and what to read next.

Strengths: Diversity, essays, book list articles, all-genre coverage, podcasts, book news, reading challenge, new book discovery

(5) Brain Pickings

Looking for engrossing essays about books that will push you emotionally and intellectually? You’ll definitely want to stop by Brain Pickings, the literary love child of Maria Popova, a blogger who decided to create an “inventory of the meaningful life” more than a decade ago and share it with other readers. Popova’s one-woman show is an intensely personal exploration of art and ideas, with coverage of children’s literature alongside philosophy, literary fiction, and creativity. Sign up for her newsletters to get a hit of thought-provoking writing a few times a week, guaranteed to break up your mundane day. Popova is author of two books: Figuring (2019), which highlights the hidden legacy of influential female thinkers, scientists, and creators, and A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader (2018), a book for younger readers that collects essays about reading from leading creative thinkers like Neil Gaiman, Shonda Rhimes, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Elizabeth Gilbert.

Strengths: Literary criticism, essays, backlist coverage, newsletter

(6) Bustle Books

The website Bustle is designed for the modern woman, and the ample literary coverage on their standout Bustle Books channel reflects that. Here readers will find profiles and interviews with female authors, lists that focus on feminism, and personal essays that explore the experience of being a female reader in today’s world. Bustle Books is known for provocative articles challenging the publishing world to be more diverse and more female inclusive. You’ll also find fun articles, too, about books, TV and film adaptations, and books in pop culture.

Strengths: Feminism, diversity, essays, book list articles, all-genre coverage, new book discovery

(7) CrimeReads

Like Book Marks, CrimeReads is a branch of Literary Hub (discussed in #12 below). This book website has a niche focus on “crime” in literature: through true crime, mysteries, thrillers, fiction about crimes in general. On CrimeReads, you’ll find essays about writing and reading crime fiction, appreciation of and interviews with crime fiction authors both well known and underrated, reading lists for crime fiction and nonfiction, and coverage of crime in TV, movies, and other media. CrimeReads also has essays and original reporting on true crime. If you’re a mystery and thriller lover, appreciate a good courtroom novel, or just love reading about true crimes stories, you’ll definitely want to head over to CrimeReads and marathon read their quality content.

Strengths: Mystery/thriller/suspense, true crime, nonfiction, the writing life, book list articles, essays, literary criticism, new book discovery

(8) Electric Literature

With its signature tagline of “Reading Into Everything,” Electric Literature hosts an eclectic mix of bookish coverage, ranging from highbrow literary criticism to horoscopes for writers and everything in between. A hallmark of Electric Literature is a focus on reading more diversely, and a regular feature called Read More Women asks writers to recommend books by women (a response to male authors who only recommend books by fellow male authors). One thing I love about Electric Literature is how often they touch on writing and the life of being a storyteller. (I’m a bit biased because I’ve written for Electric Literature and consider it one of my proudest accomplishments to have my writing on there.) Electric Literature also publishes original fiction in its literary magazine , so keep your eyes peeled for some of today’s best authors and new and emerging voices alike converging there.

Strengths: Literary criticism, diversity, essays, author interviews, the writing life, all-genre coverage, book news, book list articles, new book discovery

(9) Epic Reads

Oh, Epic Reads: what started as an arm of HarperCollins publishing house has turned into the go-to destination for YA book fans. Readers of young adult literature love Epic Reads for the humorous tone, creative article ideas (bookish horoscopes, fan reactions to plot twists, book title or song lyric? challenges, etc.), addictive quizzes, and, of course, the many TBR-exploding lists. You’ll also find book trailers, cover reveals, and details on the latest books and tour dates for YA authors. Even though Epic Reads is part of HarperCollins, they don’t only put the spotlight on books through their publishing house. Epic Reads is simply and purely about celebrating YA literature, no matter whose imprint is stamped on the book jacket. So often YA can be a heavy genre, with books tackling serious themes, but Epic Reads always reminds me that reading ( and YA) can and should be fun, too.

Strengths: Young Adult (YA) books, quizzes, book list articles, new book discovery

(10) Five Books

Five Books has a niche formula and does it well: a list of five great book recommendations. This powerhouse book website solicits a fascinating mix of today’s most interesting, creative, and thoughtful “Experts” —like Mary Beard , Madhur Jaffrey , Mia Farrow , and Jo Nesbø —to offer five book recommendations on a specific topic, such as “The Best Prose Poetry,” “Congress,” and “Zombies.” An additional nice feature of Five Books is the ability to make your own lists and share your expertise. The site lives up to its tagline of “The Best Books on Everything” as you’ll find as wide a variety of book lists and book coverage as anywhere on the web.

Strengths: Book list articles, book recommendations, new book discovery

(11) Goodreads

In the 9 years that I’ve been a member of Goodreads, I’ve seen the site change a lot—for the better. Goodreads is perhaps the most essential website for readers as it allows you to track the books you’ve read, want to read, and are reading and add custom shelves to sort books. Connect with other readers in groups and follow authors for updates and exclusive information. The Goodreads lists are a rabbit hole to tumble down and find out more about books. I’ve found that the user-generated reviews have also improved over the last few years, going from one-line snarky hot takes to more thoughtful reviews. Plus they are home of the popular Goodreads Reading Challenge, an annual self-challenge to set a goal of how many books you want to read that year. (I’ve been known to argue against the challenge on this blog and offer alternatives to the Goodreads challenge , yet what can I say… I do it almost every year.) Even the Goodreads blog is getting better at publishing creative articles about the bookish life.

Strengths: Community, reading data tool, book list articles, user-generated reviews, reading challenge

(12) Largehearted Boy

Largehearted Boy is a book and music blog established in 2002 by David Gutowski and an essential corner of the literary internet. Obsessed with best-books-of-the-year lists? Make sure you bookmark Largehearted Boy, which compiles an index of the best-of lists you can peruse till your heart’s desire. Check out last year’s “Online ‘Best Books of 2018’ Book Lists” for a TBR-buckling example. (Full disclosure: I’ve submitted my best-of lists from this blog before and been included.) Also great for book discovery is the weekly “Books of the Week” that Montreal bookstore Drawn & Quarterly hosts on Largehearted Boy. What I love about Largehearted Boy is the thoughtful and honest book reviews, the blending of music and literature with the “Book Notes,” where an author matches a mix tape to their new book. Like Brainpickings, Largehearted Boy traces a very personal experience of inquiry into being a reader, writer, listener, and human being to provoke our own consideration. It’s an honor to share in it.

Strengths: Book list articles, author interviews, essays, book reviews, new book discovery

(13) Literary Hub (a.k.a. “LitHub”)

The parent site of the aforementioned Book Marks and CrimeReads, Literary Hub pumps out new book content for readers on the daily. I also suggest signing up for the LitHub newsletters as they come out each day with a summary of new posts not just on LitHub but elsewhere on the Internet. The weekly edition is a must-read, too, and it’s where I get many of the interesting bookish links I post on the Facebook page for this blog . On LitHub, you’ll find an endless stream of great writing about books, including essays on writing and reading, author interviews, highbrow intellectual literary criticism, book lists, and new fiction. Browsing LitHub is like reading a digital version of a literary magazine (like The New York Review of Books ) that you actually want to read. Unquestionably LitHub’s specialty is literary fiction, though they do also cover various genres, too. However, you likely won’t find much YA and children’s literature coverage on LitHub, excluding when they come up in personal essays about reading or writing kidlit.

Strengths: Literary criticism, literary fiction, nonfiction, essays, book list articles, author interviews, new book discovery, book news

(14) The Millions

Established in 2003, The Millions is one of the oldest book websites around, and over the past 15 plus years it has built up a reputation for being a gathering point for intellectually curious readers. Head over to The Millions if you want to check out the latest buzzy literary releases, hear more from authors about how they conceptualized and wrote their new book, discover the most anticipated books published in the month ahead, and find out what books were nominated for awards. The strength of The Millions is definitely literary fiction and nonfiction. Two of the best recurring features on The Millions are the annual Year in Reading , in which notable creatives and thinkers share a little about their year in reading, and The Millions’ Most Anticipated: The Great First-Half Year 20XX Preview, a TBR-toppling list of the most anticipated books of the year. This list comes out in two parts: January for the First-Half and July for the Second-Half. (Example: here’s the First-Half of 2018 Preview and Second-Half .) You’ll want to comb through these articles with your TBR ready, and you can find all The Millions lists on Goodreads for easy record keeping. I look forward to them every year as traditions, almost holidays, on the bookish calendar.

Strengths: Literary criticism, literary fiction, nonfiction, essays, author interviews, book list articles, previews of new releases, book news

(15) The New Yorker ‘s Books Section

Arguably the best literary magazine in America, The New Yorker is also a flourishing website with tons of great book content, most of it found on The Page-Turner blog . On The New Yorker ‘s Books channel, book reviews, publishing news, essays and articles from the magazine about writing and literature, and New Yorker staff book recommendations. Note that you’ll need a subscription to view more than a few articles a month. I admit I’m a proud subscriber of the magazine; I never recycle the issues, and they take over every corner of the house like an invasive species, but I wouldn’t have it any other way!

Strengths: Literary criticism, essays, literary fiction, nonfiction, author interviews, book reviews, book recommendations, book news

(16) The New York Times Book Review Online

It would hardly be a list of the best book websites without including The New York Times ‘ Book section. After all, The New York Times Book Review is one of the most prestigious and influential periodicals in publishing, and landing a coveted spot on its bestseller lists is just about every writer’s dream. Fortunately, the Review ‘s virtual presence is a worthy digital companion to the supplement you’ll find in Saturday’s paper. Online, you’ll get the same great book reviews, essays, and humor sketches, plus some podcasts going inside the Book Review and publishing that week that are seriously worth checking out. Every week I look for the New & Noteworthy feature, which highlights new releases you should put on your radar, and the Editors’ Choice: New Books We Recommend This Week, a weekly list that includes extracts from the critics’ reviews that’ll make you want to read these fresh books. One of my favorite recurring series in the Book Review is the By the Book interviews with writers, thinkers, and creatives, which discuss the bookish life and always includes interesting books to add to your TBR. You can find all of these digitized and uploaded weekly .

Strengths: Book reviews, book recommendations, author interviews, literary criticism, book news, podcasts, previews of new releases, new book discovery

(17) NPR Books

National Public Radio (NPR) has always been ear candy for readers, but now you can get all their great book programming online in one spot. The NPR Books site collects all the author interviews, book reviews, and stories about the reading life that you’ll get on the radio. If you’ve ever had the experience I have where you’ve gotta turn off the car in the middle of a story and you don’t have a pen or paper ready to record a book title or author name, they’ve got you covered. Beyond audio programming, NPR Books has a solid stream of book reviews and feature articles about writing and reading with a focus on diverse authors. Breadth and depth of coverage is a signature of NPR, which is why you’ll find articles about children’s books alongside graphic novels and comics and highbrow literary fiction. NPR Books is known for one more thing: the annual end-of-the-year book concierge . This behemoth of a book recommendation machine is a slick book discovery tool to find more than 300 of the best books of the year. Yes, I said 300. I’ve found so many great books this way, ones that were otherwise overlooked in best-of-the-year lists, and the methods to sort by what you’re in the mood for make this giant list manageable, with some seriously high-quality UX. Oh, yeah: you’ll be working through that list for the rest of the upcoming year.

Strengths: Book reviews, diversity, book list articles, author interviews, book news, all-genre coverage, new book discovery

(18) Publishers Weekly

If it’s publishing industry news you want, Publishers Weekly should be your first stop. Publishers Weekly (PW) is packed with insider-y gossip-y content about what’s hitting the shelves now and soon. Writers will want to check out PW’s articles to get an idea of what agents are buying and what trends are moving through books. I also sometimes mine the announcements that publishers make of new and upcoming books to get ready for upcoming releases and add them to my calendar.

Strengths: Book news, publishing industry information, book list articles, previews of new releases, new book discovery

(19) Read Brightly

Kid lit fans, this one is for you. Read Brightly is an online children’s literature website that’s part of Penguin Random House. Read Brightly is an excellent resource for readers of children’s literature and the adults who help children learn to love reading. One great feature of this website is the way each article is broken down by reading levels, a key distinction that takes the guessing game out of trying to connect children to the most age and reading level appropriate books. A flurry of articles celebrate kid lit, with creative and diverse book lists around categories like “Move Over, Rover: 10 Picture Books That Feature Unusual Pets.” Each month, Read Brightly hosts a reading challenge for kids designed to help them stretch themselves and discover new books. Like Epic Reads, this book website is hosted by a publishing house but features books from all parts of the children’s literature publishing world. Read Brightly truly lives up to its motto “Raise Kids Who Love to Read” as that passion for literacy and raising bookworms comes through in every story they write.

Strengths: Children’s literature, Young Adult (YA) literature, book list articles, previews of new releases, reading challenges, all-genre coverage, book discovery

Last but definitely not least, Tor is the go-to destination for science fiction and fantasy readers on the literary web. Tor has long published books, but their online presence takes their mission to highlight great voices in speculative fiction and pushes it further, creating a space for a community of SFF fans to grow and thrive. On Tor, you’ll read honest book reviews that are fair and critical of the books and authors in question, original fiction, lists of books, personal essays, eBook deals, SFF industry news, and coverage of SFF-related media, like Game of Thrones . What I like about this site is the freedom that Tor gives its bloggers and staff writers to really speak their minds about books. You might find articles about super-super niche sub-sub-sub genres you didn’t even know were a thing, but you definitely won’t find BS here. This makes Tor a leading place to go for readers who want to dig into the issues behind books.

Strengths: Science fiction, fantasy, SFF related TV shows and movies, book news, book reviews, essays, book list articles, book discovery

More great book websites

Here are a few other book websites you’ll definitely want to check out but didn’t make the full list (because I ran out of time!): Atlas Obscura’s Books Section , Catapult , The New York Review of Books , and Vox.com’s Books Section .

What are some of your favorite book websites? What did I miss? Leave a comment!

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Where Writers Win

Marketing, websites, training and tools for emerging authors, the ultimate list of book review websites.

Nearly all book review sites experience lots of web traffic. They’re great places to find a read, no matter your genre preference, and better places to place yourself as an author. Many offer links to your website, author interviews (print, podcast, even video), guest author blogs and more.

So let’s create the ULTIMATE list! Here are TWENTY — a mere starter dough of potential review sites to get you rolling. And, to be politically correct (since traffic comes and traffic goes), we’ve listed them in alphabetical order.

NOTE: Each entry links to that review site’s URL. Please do add more sites — or your comments about the sites we’ve listed — in our comments section below. Or, comment at any of the various LinkedIn or Facebook groups where we’ve posted this challenge. Within a couple of weeks we’ll cobble together what WILL be the ultimate list and put it all in a Google doc for anyone to access and add to…

• Allreaders.com (it’s not sexy, but it’s functional, and you can submit a review and be a “scholar”)
• Alltop.com (specifically books.alltop.com – a list of blogs related to books and an easy place to begin your search).
• Bookfetish.org (specializing in genre fiction reviews from horror to true crime to romance).
• Bookpage.com (with hundreds of reviews a month, it’s a great place to discover new talent).
• Bookslut.com (gotta’ love the name – Bookslut is a monthly web magazine and daily blog dedicated to those who love to read)
• ForewordReviews.com (ForeWord has exclusively reviews books from small presses)
• Goodreads.com (The “Razzles” of book review sites – it’s reader candy and social networking gum to chew on all in one neat package)
• Galleycat.com (with great traffic, great lists, great reviews and great e-blast updates, this one is a great favorite of the WWW team!)
• IndieAuthorNews.com (book reviews, interviews, ebooks, even self-publishing advice)
• LibraryJournal.com (news and reviews from Library Journal staffers)
• LibraryThing.com (like GR, a hybrid community of readers, writers and reviewers, boasting 1,500,000 readers)
• MidwestBookReview.com (lots of resources and easy links to get a book reviewed or become a reviewer)
• WriteMyFirstEssay.com (like other essay services, but with good customer support to help with reviews and books in coursework)
• NPR.org (with an ongoing commitment to serious books and authors, lots of lists, author interviews and reviews)
• NewYorker.com (Page Turner is the name of the blog here, with “criticism, contention, and conversation about books that matter.”)
• NYBooks.com (The New York Review of Books – great traffic, lots to read)
• NewYorkTimes.com (okay, not everyone can crack the NYT best-seller lists, but the lists will surely lend insights… 50 Shades of What?!)
• PublishersWeekly.com (a world unto itself)
• Riffle.com (brand new – click on the link to get invited to its anticipated launch)
• Shelfari.com (owned by Amazon, you can click thru to buy in an instant – and like Goodreads has the benefit of “groups” where you can find your reading tribe)
• ← Writing Rules!
• POD Publishers: Scams and Frauds →

12 thoughts on “ The Ultimate List of Book Review Websites! ”

The Ultimate List of Book Review Websites! | Where Writers Win, was a fantastic name to give this valuable blog post. Exactly where can I actually browse more related to this?

Here are 7 more for you. Make sure that you *always* check their review policy page as sites open and close for reviews depending on their reading backlog. Enjoy!

http://shewolfreads.com http://wefancybooks.blogspot.com http://www.sithereandread.com http://www.roofbeamreader.net http://manoflabook.com http://fadeintofantasy.com http://novelreaction.com

GREAT! Will add to list and publish soon!

Thanks for the mention Adonna!

Also look at these: http://greenmanreview.com/ http://www.rambles.net/

And, with all modesty: http://johnadcox.wordpress.com

Great — will add ’em to list — thanks so much (think these will get us over 50 so far…)

Excellent info in this post. I’ve updated my book review database to include some of your suggestions.

Jane Lassar Publicist Blog: “Dear Author; A publicist’s guide to the ever-changing world of book PR” http://www.janelassar.wordpress.com @clevelandbookpr

Bookgasm: http://www.bookgasm.com/ Also, http://popcultureguy-don.blogspot.com/ reviews books if they are pop culture related, but that might be too specific for your list.

No, these are both great – thanks! (We’ve got one for just paranormal, so there ya go!)

I will run a reference to it in the August 1 issue of Publishing Poynters. BTW, you might like to divide the list in the those that review free and those that charge.

Bitten by Books http://www.bittenbybooks.com

Great – thank you!

Comments are closed.

Top 5 Book Review Sites Every Author Should Submit To

Written By Write With Light Publications, LLC

0 comment(s), october 13, 2021, don’t rush your book.

We can’t say it enough and yet we see it happen all the time.

When on the verge of publishing a book, we see one big mistake happen, especially if the author is rushing the publication process of their book.

Many times, we see them write, edit and then publish, giving no time or space to properly market or get the word out about their book.

So how is a reader supposed to find your book if it’s not even out there yet? How will they see it without proper awareness?

Authors who self-publish for the first time (usually) are missing a crucial piece to the publishing process: Submitting their book to book review sites.

Why Do I Need to Submit My Books for Review?

Submitting your book to review to a good review source can help you leverage your book before it’s even launched.

Having people review your book from these five book review sites we are talking about later, even if the reviews are positive or negative, can be powerful.

There are a few reasons all authors should be submitting their book for review.

• You can gain quality reviews
• Create awareness for your book
• Book reviewers could possibly share your work with others (word of mouth marketing)
• Can influence readers to pre-order your book
• It’s free marketing!

Although sharing your work with others to get their opinion on your book is daunting, it’s still a necessary step to take before you even publish. Don’t forget this crucial step in the publishing and promotion process if you don’t want to sabotage your book .

How Long Does the Review Process Take?

The review copy process can take some time, which is probably why a lot of people skip the process. But if you want a good quality review from a quality source, you need to take the time to fit a book review process into your book publishing timeline.

The review copy process can take anywhere from 3-4 months. So why is that?

A majority of book reviewers and credible book review sites require at least 3-4 months after submission and before launch to review your book.

Reviewers get a lot of inquiries and a lot of books, some of which they give to two different readers for review. If they choose your book for review you need to give them 3-4 months to review it.

The downside is, you just have to be patient.

When Should I Submit My Books For Review?

If you’re finished writing your book, we highly recommend getting it edited by a professional before handing it off to reviewers.

Before you even submit your books for review, edit your book. Period.

Even if you have an amazing cover with a captivating synopsis, it will mean nothing if you send a book in with a wealth of mistakes roaming freely.

Reviewers will not read through your book if there are mistakes. Only send your book out for review when it is 100% ready.

Who Should I Be Submitting Books to For Review?

If you do decide to work this book review timeframe into your schedule, there are five sites you can get started with, some of which are free and some of which are paid.

So the top 5 book review sites you absolutely should at least consider,

• Publisher’s Weekly
• Write With Light Publications

We’ll explain all of them and their benefits below!

It’s also important to keep in mind that there are multiple other avenues for getting book reviews including having bookstagrammers on Instagram review your work, or sending it out to other smaller publications that would fit your niche.

For now, we’ll just cover some of the essential sites that will give you actual reviews without you having to ask freelance book reviewers.

Kirkus (Paid)

Kirkus has been around since 1933 and was founded by Virginia Kirkus. Back then, she realized there was a need for book reviews not backed by the publisher themselves. Seeing this need, she started a business that would give writers the book reviews they need while also allowing American booksellers to buy products backed by unbiased opinions.

As far as book review sites go, Kirkus is one of the most prestigious and trusted book reviewers in the business and offers an unbiased assessment of your book—which could be negative or positive. But their outstanding reviews come at a price. That being said, the review is worth it to many.

Here are some of the prices for Kirkus Reviews:

• Traditional Reviews: Costs $425 for a 250-word review.
• Expanded Reviews: Costs $525 for a 500-word review.
• Picture Book Reviews: Cost $350 for a 200-word review.

All of the reviews are turned around in 7-9 weeks but can be expedited for an additional fee. After receiving your review, you can add some of the best quotes to your product listings on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites to help promote the book.

You also have the option to publish your review on Kirkus if you like what they have to say. If you do choose to publish it, Kirkus may consider your review for publication in their magazine which reaches 50,000 users.

If you’re ready to get your book reviewed, visit Kirkus to get started .

Booklife (Paid)

To receive another guaranteed book review for a price, you can also choose Booklife .

Booklife is an extension of the popular site, Publisher’s Weekly, and provides publishing advice and assistance to find authors.

Booklife is usually great for indie authors who need a great review from a reputable source. It is also slightly less in cost than Kirkus.

A Booklife review costs $399 for 300 words.

Authors will get their review back in an estimated 4-6 weeks. The one downside of submitting for review with Booklife is there is a word count limit. Only books 100,000 words are less can be considered for a review.

The upside is the review with be featured on Booklife’s website and Publisher Weekly’s website. To learn more about the submission guidelines and get reviewed, visit Booklife’s Review FAQs page .

Reedsy (Paid)

Probably one of our favorite places to get books reviewed is Reedsy .

We love this site because it is so affordable and you get an honest book review from a professional book reviewer. See a Reedsy book review for one of our authors!

Like Booklife and Kirkus, you will get a quality book review but at a much lower price and it is guaranteed. Reedsy can also be synced with Goodreads, which allows your reviewer to publish their review before the book even launches.

Authors who choose to get their books reviewed with Reedsy will spend only $50 per book for a lengthy review from a frequent book reviewer.

The great thing is, your book is available to be reviewed by anyone who is interested. Additionally, you can contact the reviewers to ask them to review your book

On Reedsy, your book can only be reviewed once, although, we really wish they would allow more, especially if other reviewers want to take a peek.

Publisher’s Weekly (Free)

Like we mentioned earlier, Publisher’s Weekly is associated with Booklife, which is a paid review service.

Publisher’s Weekly, however, is a free review service , which will bring a smile to most indie authors who are on a tight budget with marketing.

The one downside of submitting a book review to Publisher’s Weekly is your review is not guaranteed. Publisher’s Weekly reviewers take a very slim amount of submissions for review, which means they take the elite when it comes to books.

If your book is chosen for review by Publisher’s Weekly, you’ve probably got yourself a great book. Although there is no guarantee for a book review, it’s worth submitting anyways.

To get your book reviewed with Publisher’s Weekly, check out their submission guidelines .

Write With Light Publications (Free)

We know we have a long ways to go to be as great and revered as websites like Publisher’s Weekly and Kirkus. But hey! We all have to start somewhere!

At Write With Light Publications, we have a deep desire to help indie authors get their books out there in the world. One of the best ways to do that is to read your book and give you a quality review.

Our reviews are completely free to you as long as you follow our strict guidelines.

To learn more about our book reviews, check out our submission guidelines !

New More Publishing Help?

Write With Light Publications offers a variety of publishing services that are intended to support indie authors with their self-publishing endeavors.

If you’re feeling lost with marketing, publishing, or even creating your book, consider getting some assistance from us!

You can see more about our services here .

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Best Paid Book Review Sites for Authors

Reviews are the lifeblood of your book’s success. Getting them is vital throughout your author journey, starting from before until long after you launch your piece of writing. Paid services are, of course, well aware of this fact. There are so many to choose from, so if you’re wondering what the best paid book review sites are, keep reading!

Dozens and dozens of companies are happy to take your money in exchange for the promise of landing you some good reviews.

With the many book review sites out there, you might be wondering which one should you choose.

Not All Paid Book Review Sites Are The Same

You can easily find plenty of companies out there that promises reviews in exchange for dollars. But, as much as you’d want them to be, not all of them will turn out effective. In fact, you may come across some that aren’t even legit.

Rather than take you through all the options available, I’ll share the tried-and-tested ones we use to help get your search narrowed down.

Here at Book Launchers, we use:

• BookSirens, and
• Booksprout for our authors.

Now, you might be thinking, “ A review is a review. So why so many different sites for the same thing?”

Well, if you haven’t noticed, paid book review sites aren’t all the same. Your book category, overall strategy, goals, and who you’re targeting are essential aspects to consider before going with a review company.

Still, every review site has the same ultimate goal: increase your exposure, find new readers for your book, and bump up those review counts.

Not all sites can make sense for every author. The best course of action would be to pick those that best suit your unique needs.

Here are the four best paid book review sites you can rely on for non-fiction authors, each with its distinctive features.

#1 goodreads.

Goodreads is the most popular review site in the publishing industry today. It remains the top on-line community for book lovers and authors alike.

Amazon runs it, so it boasts some perks for authors with books in the Amazon database.

Right through the site, you can claim your profile and earn a badge that verifies your identity. You’ll also be able to access a wealth of statistical information on your books listed on KDP.

So, how do you know if Goodreads is the way to go? Well, if you want your book to go viral and gain as much exposure as possible, Goodreads could be your ticket.

Here, the strategy is to get people to add your book to their virtual bookshelves, and of course, leave some reviews on it.

This way, your book gets raised visibility. Other users can now see it in their friends’ feeds, giving it a much better chance to be added to their reading list.

Think of it as like playing a giant book-fueled game of telephone with 80 million people.

Speaking of games, did you know that we have an entire YouTube channel dedicated to guiding authors like you to create an excellent self-publishing game plan. Check it out, and if you like what you see, let’s see how fast you can smash that subscribe button.

Back to our topic, you can also run a giveaway on Goodreads, a surefire way to get book reviews. It’s something we do regularly for our clients.

All active giveaways are listed on the giveaway section of the website. Your fans can link to it and encourage their friends to enter the giveaway.

Here’s a video dedicated entirely to helping you get all the goods you can get on Goodreads.

#2 NetGalley

Next up on the paid book review site list is NetGalley. NetGalley is a service that delivers digital Advanced Reader Copies, better known as ARCs.

This service provides ARCs of your book to professional readers. We’re talking about reviewers, media, journalists, bloggers, librarians, booksellers, podcast hosts, and many others.

These professional readers use NetGalley to access digital copies of your book, making it an effective marketing tool not just for your book but for your entire brand as an author.

It allows your work to be made available to people who want to read it in their professional capacity.

A NetGalley promotion offers your ARC three months to be highlighted in their database’s recently added and read now sections. The promo also lets you showcase your book to the sections specific to your title’s categories.

By opting for this promo, all users will see your book listed on the NetGalley website.

There’s a lot more to NetGalley when it comes to figuring out if it’s the right one for you.

To help you out, we have a video that goes into all the details of this review site. We also dive deep into costs because it can be pretty expensive and may not be worth it for all books. Stick to the end of this video to make sure if this review site is for you.

The following two on this list are similar to NetGalley. These two book review sites also deliver your ARC copy to both readers and reviewers. But, they focus more on getting your ARC securely to reviewers, bloggers, and your book army.

#3 BookSirens

BookSirens boasts over 10,000 readers across various genres with an average review rate of 75%, making it an attractive site to get book reviews.

The high average review rate is because their users are vetted and accepted as serious book reviewers. Before users can get approval to join BookSirens, they must have posted at least 20 starred ratings on Goodreads.

How this works is that you first need to send your book to the BookSirens team for evaluation. They will then confirm if it is a quality book – something that they want to offer to their users. Once approved, they will add your book to its appropriate category where users can discover it, download the ARC, and start reading.

A remarkable feature of BookSirens, which leads to their 75% success rate, is that readers can only download one ARC at a time. They can’t download a new ARC until they finish reading and reviewing their active one.

This feature is pretty cool for authors because your advanced reader is much less likely to ghost you without leaving a review. And they’re entirely focused on one book at a time.

BookSirens will also give you a direct link that you can send to your book army. So, those folks can hop on over there and securely download their ARC for free.

You also have the option of choosing whether your reviews are posted on Goodreads, Amazon, or both. Now if you’re wondering about getting book reviews from your book army (And how to keep them from being removed) – check out this article .

#4 Booksprout

Booksprout is another option to consider if your main priority is a prelaunch review push.

Similar to BookSirens, Booksprout is a review site that automates the delivery of your ARC to over 40,000 users.

Their average review rate is around 79%. Even your book army will find it challenging to beat that.

Before you get all excited, we’ve been testing this one for some time, and we’re getting mixed results.

Self-Publish and Succeed , well after launch, got four reviews from a single Booksprout listing. Yet, the other books we tested did not bring any results.

Right now, we’re playing with it to figure out whether it’s a timing issue, a topic, or something else.

We’ve experienced the same thing with BookSirens. My book wasn’t even accepted by them for their reviewers. So, I only used BookSirens for ARCs, but some authors from our client base have gotten good reviews.

BookSirens Vs. Booksprout

So what’s the difference between the two paid review sites? Which one is better for you? Let’s discuss the main differences between BookSirens and Booksprout:

• Booksprout focuses on getting reviews by a specific date, while BookSirens focuses on getting a particular number of reviews.
• On BookSirens, you can post your book and have the reviews roll in for as long as your little heart desires. But on Booksprout, your reviewers have a time limit to read and write their review.
• Booksprout also limits the number of reviewer downloads depending on your subscription level. The more money you spend on their service, the more downloads you can do.
• BookSirens is a fee-per-book service, letting you choose the number of downloads from as little as 5 to as many as 250.

On the plus side, you can request Booksprout reviews posted on up to eight different sites rather than just Goodreads or Amazon. They include options like Kobo, Apple Books, Google Books, and even BookBub.

Whether you go with BookSirens, Booksprout, or both, these two book review sites are easy to use. They’re effective if you need a little help building up your audience.

If this is your first book or your book army looks a little sparse on the prelaunch battlefield, one of these two review sites, or maybe both, could be your answer.

Now that you know some of the best sites that can help you get book reviews in bulk, maybe it’s time to get in touch with us. See what we can do to help you take off even further, even months post-launch.

Here at Book Launchers we help authors like you in every stage of the self-publishing process. Whether you write the book yourself or with our help, we’re with you every step of the way.

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Last updated on Feb 07, 2023

How to Get Book Reviews in 5 Steps (2024 Update)

Imagine the day of your book launch. You’re sitting in front of your computer, blissfully imagining all the five-star book reviews that will soon be yours. Yet the days pass... and the reviews don't come.

Needless to say, you'll want people to buy and read your book ASAP so they can leave you some good reviews. But you may see the Catch-22 here: in order to make your first sales, you’ll need to display positive book reviews. So how do you get the chicken before you’ve got the egg (or vice versa)?

Enter book bloggers , who are your new best friends! For this post, we asked our top Reedsy publicists to share their best tips on how to get book reviews from book bloggers — and we've condensed their advice into these five essential steps, plus a few bonus tips at the end.

You can also check out this Reedsy Live on how to get your first book reviews, with advice from author and book marketer Debbie Drum.

Those who prefer their tips in written form, let's dive right in with the very first step of the review acquisition process!

1. Identify your audience

A quick preliminary note: you want to start the review-gathering as early as possible. If you can, plan your book review campaign 4-6 months in advance of your publication date. Because if you want your reviews to be in place by then, you’ll need to give people time to actually write them!

Now, using the "5 W’s of Storytelling," let's talk about the first thing you should be asking yourself: who? Who will be reading your book, and who is best positioned to promote it to that audience? The following tips will help you answer these questions.

Build a questionnaire

Here are a few more specific queries to help you clarify your "who":

• Who reads in my genre?
• What magazines, websites, forums, or blogs do they frequent?
• Where might they find reviews of my book that will entice them to buy it?

Indeed, publicist Jessica Glenn recommends building a full-length questionnaire to identify your audience and where you might find them on the Web (or in real life!).

“Most, if not all, publicists and publishers send authors a very long questionnaire to fill out when they start their marketing plan ,” she says. “That's so we can dig into any useful piece of bio, community, or regional info to figure out who and why people will be interested in your book.”

Your questionnaire will direct you to your target audience and help you create a  proto-persona.  This is the "ideal reader" of your book, so to speak — a perfect blend of the traits you'd expect them to have. (For example, if you've written a YA paranormal romance novel, your proto-persona might be a 14-year-old girl who's obsessed with Twilight .) And whoever they are, you'll keep them in mind every time you make a marketing decision.

Think about comp titles

Another great way to get a handle on your target audience is to figure out your comparative titles — books that are a) similar to yours and b) share the same general readership. When pitching to book reviewers, these are the titles you'll use to sell your own  book . For instance, "My book is  Normal People meets The Incendiaries ."

According to Jessica, you should have at least 15 potential comp titles for your book, ideally a mix of bestsellers and well-reviewed indie titles. “Many first-time authors balk at this," says Jessica, "as they believe there is no true comp for their book — but dig deep and you'll find them!”

Comp titles are critical because they act as a compass, pointing you towards a ready-made audience that enjoys works in the same mold as yours. This is a huge help in determining your target readers, as well as which reviewers will cater to them. Speaking of which...

2. Find relevant book blogs

Now that you’ve got a strong sense of your audience, you're ready to find blogs that will provide the best exposure to that audience. We recommend starting with our directory of 200+ book review blogs , but feel free to do your own research as well!

As you dig into book review blogs, check on these two things first:

• Is the site active? Has the blogger published a post within the last month or so?
• Are they currently accepting queries? If they're closed at the moment, it could be months before your book gets a review — if at all.

And if you want to confirm your book marketing strategy when it comes to book review blogs, we recommend first taking this quick quiz below!

Which book review site is right for you?

Find out here! Takes one minute.

Once you've confirmed that a book review blog is both active and open to queries, think about whether it's right for your  book. Here are some important factors to consider:

• Genre . Don't waste your time on blogs that don't review books in your genre. "Be very mindful of a publication’s particular audience and target market when pitching for review. If their readership is science-fiction, do not pitch a commercial crime novel!” says publicist Hannah Cooper .
• Traffic . High-traffic book blogs might seem like your highest priorities, but this isn’t necessarily true. “Don't shy away from the smaller blogs,” says publicist Beverly Bambury . “They can sometimes foster a real sense of community and starting off small is just fine."
• Posting frequency.  Another consideration is how often the blogger in question actually publishes reviews. Too often, and your book will get lost in the shuffle; too seldom, and they're likely to lose readers. Try to strike a balance with about 1-2 reviews per week — no decent reviewer can turn them out faster than that, anyway!

Track down your comp titles' reviewers

Remember those comp titles you came up with earlier? You can use them not only to pitch your book, but also to find potential reviewers , as they will correspond perfectly with your genre and target audience.

“Once you have your 15-or-so comps, you can research where each book has been reviewed,” says Jessica. “With luck, you will find at least a couple of book reviews per title, which will give you many more outlets to investigate further.”

Now, as an author, you might be wondering: “How can I begin to find all the places where a given book was reviewed?” Don’t forget the power of Google! Try searching the following terms to find reviews for a given title:

• [Title] + book review
• [Title] + review
• [Title] + Q&A

And here's one last tip to give you a boost — sign up for a "Mention" account and/or set up Google alerts to get a notification every time these titles appear online.

Once you’re armed with a bundle of suitable book review blogs, you've arrived at the third (and perhaps most crucial) step in this process. This is, of course, creating the pitches you'll send to reviewers.

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3. Write pitches for them

Pitching a reviewer is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is a) keep it short, and and b) personalize it as much as possible. However, before we get to our publicists’ actionable tips on pitching, there’s one more thing that you absolutely HAVE to do. And that thing is...

Read the review policy!

Before you pitch any blog, make sure you read the blogger’s review policy. Some blogs will have a form to fill out; others might ask you to email them directly. Still others might not welcome any queries from self-published authors . Whatever they say, make sure that you follow it to a T.

“There are two main benefits to reading and following the review policies closely,” says Beverly. “First, you show the reviewer that you respect and appreciate them when you follow their instructions. This is important when asking someone to do you a favor.

"Second, you may find that even if the site is closed for review queries, it's open to publicity queries — where you might be able to place an excerpt or do a Q&A or occasional blog post. You'll never know if you don't take the time to read the review policy first.”

More tips for pitching reviewers

Now that you’re clear on what the blogger wants, you can start pitching them with confidence. Here are three more key tips for pitching book reviewers:

1. Never send out bulk pitches. "When you pitch each outlet individually, specifically write that you read their positive book review of your comp and what that comp title was,” says Jessica Glenn. Or if you didn't find them through a comp title, mention other  aspects of their blog and why you think they would be great to review your book!

2. Be concise and direct. “Include your title, publisher, date of release, and genre in the first paragraph,” notes Beverly Bambury. “Then you might want to include the cover copy or a brief description of the book. Finally, be direct and ask for what you want. If you want a review, ask for it! If you want an excerpt placed, ask for that.”

3. Appeal to their commercial side. “All reviewers want the opportunity to discover the next 'big thing’ — particularly with fiction — so make them feel as though they have the opportunity to get the word out first," says Hannah Cooper. Indeed, if you can convince a reviewer that you are doing them  a favor, you're practically guaranteed to get a review.

Basically, try to get reviewers to think, “Oh, if I enjoyed [comp title], I’ll enjoy this person's book too,” or “They've done the research to know that I’m a good fit for their book.” If you can do that, you’re already much closer than everyone else to obtaining high-quality book reviews !

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4. Send out your book

This is the step before the moment of truth (the review itself), so it's extremely important to get everything right. To ensure you're complying with each reviewer's guidelines, review their policy again before you send them your book. Some bloggers might prefer digital copies of manuscripts, while others might want a physical ARC — be prepared to accommodate.

Also, as you begin sending your book to various outlets, you should track your progress in a spreadsheet. Record which blogs you’ve submitted to so far, which blogs have responded, and which blogs you plan to submit to, so you don't accidentally double-submit or skip over anyone.

Formatting your book

Other than double-checking the review policy, the most important thing to do here is to format your book in a professional manner . After all, you want the presentation of your content to match the quality! Even though it shouldn't technically matter, reviewers will definitely judge your book by how it looks, inside and out.

The good news for self-formatters that you probably won't need to send physical proofs, and ebooks are much easier to format than hard copies. Digital copies also cost next-to-nothing to produce, so you can easily send multiple copies of your book out to different reviewers. You may want to check out apps like Instafreebie and Bookfunnel , which make it easy to generate individual ARC download links that you can send to the reviewers.

Pro tip : If you’re searching for a good book production tool, the Reedsy Book Editor can format and convert your manuscript into professional EPUB and print-ready files in a matter of seconds!

5. Follow up after a week

A week or more has passed since you queried a book blog, and so far… crickets. What do you do now? Why, follow up,  of course!

When it comes to this stage, keep calm and follow Hannah Hargrave’s advice: “Don't bother reviewers for an answer daily. I will usually chase again after a week has passed.

"If you receive a decline response, or no one responds to your third chase-up, assume this means they are not interested. Any further follow-ups, or aggressive requests as to why your work's not being reviewed, will not be viewed kindly. Above all, be polite and friendly at all times.”

That said, someone rejecting your book for review is a worst-case scenario. Best-case scenario, the blogger responds favorably and you’ve bagged yourself a review!

What comes next, you ask?

The reviewer will post their review of your book on their blog — and on Amazon, Goodreads, and any other platforms that they’ll name in their review policy. This is yet another reason why it's vital to read that policy carefully, so you know exactly where  the review will be seen.

If all goes well, the reviewer will publish a positive review that you can use to further promote your book. Maybe you'll even get a decent pull-quote for your book description ! Not to mention that if you ever write a sequel, you can almost certainly count on them for a follow-up review.

Pro-tip: Want to write a book description that sells? Download this free book description template to get a headstart. 

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But what if you don't get any bites from book bloggers, or — horror of horrors — one of them gives you a negative review? Fortunately, the next two sections should help you deal with each of these possible dilemmas.

Bonus ways to get book reviews

Though book bloggers are the most reliable and professional source of reviews for independent authors, you may want to try other avenues to maximize your chances! Here are three more ways to get book reviews  for your work, so you can bolster your Amazon profile and start making some serious sales.

1. Tell your followers about your book

Though Amazon prohibits reviews from close friends and family , you're free to tell your random social media followers about your book and hope they leave good reviews. It obviously helps if you have a large following on Twitter or Instagram, even more so if some of those followers are fellow authors who appreciate the significance of reviews.

That said, NEVER offer "review swaps" or any kind of promotional enticement for customers to leave reviews, as this would also be against Amazon's terms. Simply let your followers know you've got a book out and that you'd love for them to read it; the rest is in their hands. However, when it comes to reviews, any amount of awareness is better than none.

2. Submit to Reedsy Discovery

Finally, for a professional review option that's a bit less time-and-effort-consuming on your part, you can submit your book right here on Reedsy Discovery! The platform allows authors to share their books with readers who are right up their alley, plus get the chance to be reviewed by one of our Discovery writers. If they leave a good review, you'll be featured in our newsletter, which goes out to thousands of subscribers every week.

Sounds pretty sweet, right? And it only takes a few minutes to submit .

Is your book ready for Discovery?

Take our quiz to find out! Takes only 1 minute.

How to deal with negative reviews

Once your work is out there in the world, you can’t control other people’s reactions to it. “Remember, by submitting your book for review, you're accepting that some people might not enjoy it,” says Hannah Hargrave. “It can be very tough after you’ve spent months or years crafting your novel, only for some reviewer to tear it apart. But you need to be prepared."

In that vein, here are some final tips on how to deal with bad reviews:

1. Have someone else read them first . This might be your agent, your friend, or your mom — anyone you trust to pre-screen your reviews. They can inform you whether each negative review is a worthwhile (if humbling) read, or just too nasty to stomach.

2. Ignore unreasonably hateful reviews . Easier said than done, yes, but really try to tune out these people! For example, if they're clearly not your target audience, but insist on pretending like they are. Or people who pick apart your sentences word-by-word, just for the "fun" of it. There's no sense in agonizing over readers who are determined to hate you, so block them on every platform and refuse to read anything else they write.

3. Address valid criticisms . You're only human, and your book won't be perfect. If someone points this out in a constructive way , acknowledge it and do what you can to fix it. This may be as simple as editing a misleading blurb, or as complex as restructuring your entire series. But if you're the author we know you are, you'll be up to the task.

Every author's book is different, but the process for getting book reviews is reassuringly universal. To recap: identify your audience, find relevant blogs, pitch them, send out your book, and don't forget to follow up! On top of that, feel free to try alternative strategies, and remember not to take the bad reviews too personally.

Yes, marketing a book may be madness, but the process of getting reviews lends method to that madness. So go forth and get your reviews — you deserve them! 🙌

Special thanks to book publicists Jessica Glenn , Hannah Hargrave , Hannah Cooper , and Beverly Bambury for their input and suggestions throughout this article. If you have any more questions about how to get book reviews, let us know in the comments!

2 responses

Elena Smith says:

25/09/2018 – 22:33

Excellent Write up. I have thoroughly gone through the article and according to my personal observations you have done a great job writing this Article.Being associated with writing profession, I must mention that AcademicWritingPro are quite helpful nowadays.Furthermore, quality is also an important aspect.

Team Golfwell says:

11/12/2018 – 05:38

We do free book reviews if your book interests us. We are a group of retired people in New Zealand who play golf, read books, write books, and do free book reviews if we like your book. We write books too, so we like to see what other authors are currently doing and it is amazing to see what writers are creating. We try to post our reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble and our social media. See our book review page for more info > > https://www.teamgolfwell.com/free-book-reviews.html #bookreviews #kindlebookreviews #amazonbookreviews #indiebookreviews https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/4ad92dde2f70456000bf5c44af3489ee638dae511be91f7b8cb1545acb388cdb.jpg

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Our recommended books this week include two very different kinds of memoirs — RuPaul’s “The House of Hidden Meanings,” about the drag icon’s childhood and path to superstardom, and Alexandra Fuller’s “Fi,” about the death of her 21-year-old son — as well as a biography of the art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner, a study of Germany’s self-reckoning after World War II, a look at what Abraham Lincoln’s era has in common with ours and a history of baseball in New York.

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10 best apps and websites for downloading free books in 2024

Reading is a pastime that has only benefited from the expansion of smart devices like phones , tablets , and e-book readers . No longer chained to the confines of flimsy paperbacks and weighty hardcovers, you can carry your favorite reads on any number of your devices without worrying about weighing yourself down, damaging the fragile paper, or just losing them.

There’s also no shortage of e-books to read, with nearly every bestseller and classic now available in a digital format for your perusing pleasure. But free e-books ? That’s a different ballgame altogether. finding them can be on the tougher side. Thankfully, there are a number of apps and websites that either specialize in providing free e-books or have sections where you can find them.

While you’re unlikely to find the latest bestsellers for free, you are likely to find some public domain classics and some newer, but less well-known titles. Go find your next read with the help of one of these services.

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The king of the e-book reader is, unsurprisingly, one of the most solid ways to get a hold of free books. It’s also one of the best ways to get free e-books for a Kindle since they’ll be delivered straight to your device, unlike with a number of these other apps and websites.

Finding free books on Amazon isn’t the easiest process in the world, but it’s also far from the most difficult. If you’re using the website, then you can head to a category of books, then select Best sellers , then  Top 100 free to see a breakdown of the most popular titles in that particular category. You can also search for “free books” to find a list you can look through or narrow down to a certain category. It’s also possible to do this on the Amazon app, but keep in mind you can’t currently purchase e-books through the app due to disputes with Google and Apple.

It’s also worth mentioning there are Amazon services that furnish you with free books. Kindle Unlimited is a subscription service that gives you access to a vast range of e-books, as does Prime Reading as part of the Amazon Prime subscription. While neither is technically free, Prime Reading is a good bonus if you’re already subscribed to Amazon Prime, while Kindle Unlimited may be worth it for people who can read through multiple books a month or even a week.

Amazon is a solid way to get hold of free books, but it has some downsides. As you’d expect, it only really works for Kindle devices and the Kindle app, and you won’t be able to easily download these book files to send them to another device. It also requires an Amazon account and a checkout process of sorts, even if you’re not paying anything. Oddly, it’s also not particularly easy to find free books on the Kindle itself, as the storefront doesn’t really have the best browsing options.

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Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is the place the go for free downloadable classics. The website, which stretches back to 1971, is the world’s oldest digital library and hosts over 70,000 titles. It’s the best place to look for titles in the public domain, and it’s here you’ll find a bunch of downloads for older classics, like Moby Dick , the collected works of Shakespeare, and even a lot of Agatha Christie’s books. The downloads are available in a number of formats, including simple EPUB files, as well as files tweaked to work on Amazon Kindles.

The sheer amount of file types on 0ffer can be a little confusing, though. Do you want the EPUB3, EPUB, or Kindle formats? Or is reading online better? And while you can find books in other languages here, most are in English. Some titles may also not be free to download outside of the U.S., so it’s sometimes not that straightforward. Finally, if you want an app, there’s no app here, as it only works as a website.

However, if you’re looking for an older classic, then this is where you should go first.

Google Play Books

Google Play Books is often seen as the poor cousin of Amazon’s Kindle service, but it’s nothing of the sort. If you’re looking to pivot away from Amazon’s seemingly all-encompassing monolith, then Google Play Books is a good alternative. It has a massive selection of e-books in general, but you can also find some great free options if you know where to look.

The first and principal place to find free books is the app’s home page. Scroll down to the eBook charts to can find a category marked  Free . Here, you’ll find the top 100 e-books that have been added to other people’s libraries, giving you a useful barometer of popularity. If none of these tickle your fancy, or if you’re looking for something in another genre, your options are unfortunately a little more limited. You can search for “free [genre]” to find books, or just search for your desired genre and then select Free  from the price filter. There’s no dedicated “free” section to browse, unfortunately.

However, there’s another big plus here, and it’s the selection of free audiobooks on offer. Yes, free audiobooks. They’re “auto-generated”, so not read by people, and are limited to just classics in the public domain. But that includes books you may have always wanted to read, like Dracula and  Frankenstein , or nonfiction like The Prince . Since they’re not read by a human, but a computer-generated voice, there’s a touch of uncanny valley about it, but if you can stomach that, this is a great option.

Downsides for Google Play Books include the aforementioned difficulty in finding free titles, but also keep in mind that it can be tough to get these titles onto e-book readers. Unless your e-book reader allows for third-party apps, you’re going to have to find a way to download the files and send them to your e-book reader of choice. Also, you’ll need a Google account to use and access the app.

Google Play Books website Google Play Books Android app Google Play Books iOS app Free audiobooks

The best way to get free books is from your local library — but it’s not like you can just walk in and take out a digital e-book. But what you  can do is use Libby to borrow e-books from your local library using your library card.

Libby is replacing the service previously known as OverDrive and functions much the same way. Get a library card from your local library and then sign up for Libby. Enter your library card details, and presto — it will let you know which books are available for loan. It’s simple and free, and if you’re in the U.S., it links up to Amazon Kindles, making it even easier to read them.

There are some problems with Libby, of course. If you’re not in the U.S. or don’t have a Kindle , then you’re restricted to reading your books using the Libby app, which may not be to your tastes or as easy as using an e-book reader. As it’s a library copy, there’s also a restricted number of licenses, meaning you may have to wait to get hold of a book, especially if it’s in demand.

Libby has some shortcomings that can make it a bit of a tougher sell, but if it’s free books you’re after, and you already have a compatible library card, then it costs you nothing to sign up and check out what you can get.

Libby website Libby Android app Libby iOS app

ManyBooks offers exactly what the name implies: It has many books, and they come from a wide variety of genres and times. ManyBooks offers over 50,000 titles on its website, and while there’s the usual selection of public domain classics to pick from, you’ll also find a whole heap of books from newer authors. You can download each book in multiple formats, so you can transfer them to your e-book reader, or you can read them using ManyBook’s online reader instead.

You’ll need a free account to download, or you’ll be sent over to Amazon instead, in which case you’ll need an Amazon account. Also, contrary to what the website states, not all of the books are available for free. However, those books are clearly marked and often available at a low price anyway, so it’s easy to forgive.

ManyBooks website ManyBooks Android app ManyBooks iOS app

Open Library

The Internet Archive holds a lot of great e-books, but it lacks an easy way of browsing those titles — and that’s why we have Open Library . Open Library pulls from the Internet Archive and presents it in a way that’s a lot more user-friendly and easy to browse. There are tons of titles here to pick from, including all the usual public domain classics, as well as some seriously famous books up for grabs — including A Game of Thrones  by George R. R. Martin and  Deep Six  by Clive Cussler. Granted, these more famous titles will only be available on a borrowing basis, but they are there and available if you want them.

Multiple download formats are available, and you can also search by language, which is a nice addition. However, it can be hard to find books available in your language, as sometimes a book will be listed as available, but only be borrowable in Spanish. This is fine if you speak Spanish, but not great if you don’t. Still, it’s definitely worth having on your radar. There are apps available for Android and iOS.

Open Library website Open Library Android app Open Library iOS app

Books aren’t the only way to read, and audiobooks are rapidly gaining interest for those who want a way to keep reading their favorite books while driving, walking, or doing chores. Getting free audiobooks can be a bit of a challenge, though, which is why it’s nice that LibriVox exists. LibriVox offers free audiobooks in a range of genres and languages. It’s especially good for children’s books, and while you’re again relying on public domain titles, it’s nice to have such a massive number of titles available for free.

It’s volunteer-run, which is why audiobooks can be offered for free. However, that’s a double-edged sword as quality can vary from book to book, with much depending on the individual skill of the volunteer who read that specific book. This can make it a bit of a tougher sell than you might originally think, but if you find the right audiobook, then all is forgiven. There’s a website and an app for Android and iOS.

Librivox website LibriVox Android app LibriVox iOS app

Free-ebooks.net

Another website that does exactly what it says on the tin, Free-ebooks.net offers, well, free e-books. There’s a massive selection to choose from here, with options ranging from classics to a whole bunch of newer titles you’ve probably never heard of. This wide variety also comes with some audiobooks as well, really boosting the options available to you.

The catch? You’ll need to register for free, and you can only download five books per month. That’ll be fine if you’re a slower reader, but if you devour books, then you’ll need to get more of your fix from elsewhere, too.

Free-ebooks.net website Free-ebooks.net Android app Free-ebooks.net iOS app

While eBooks.com is technically a marketplace, it doesn’t shy away from offering a bunch of books for free. Four hundred of them, to be exact, which is enough to keep even the most avid and active reader busy for a little while. They’re available to download or read online, though it’s worth keeping in mind that all of these free e-books come as an ACSM file, which means they’re locked down pretty tight with DRM and can only be read using Adobe’s software on a Mac or PC, or by using one of eBooks.com’s recommended reading apps on mobile. That’s a disappointment, but since you’re getting some solid free e-books, it’s hard to complain that they require a few small hoops to jump through.

eBooks.com website eBooks.com Android reader app eBooks.com iOS reader app

There’s something to be said for the benefits of quick and dirty, and Authorama is both of those. It’s stocked with pretty much just public domain books, but they’re well reproduced and high quality. The website itself is extremely simple and bare-bones to the extreme — it’s just a white space with an alphabetical list of titles. As a result, it’s very easy to use; just scroll down the list and find what you want.

The downsides? There aren’t very many options to pick from, and it lacks many books from languages other than English. It’s also not much to look at, and there are no advanced search features to be found here. It’s also largely restricted to just reading from the website, which can be a chore. But even with these downsides, it’s a good catalog of free books.

Authorama website

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Mark Jansen is an avid follower of everything that beeps, bloops, or makes pretty lights. He has a degree in Ancient & Medieval History, which obviously makes him a shoo-in to write about technology for a living. He currently contributes to the Mobile section on Digital Trends, with a particular emphasis and expertise on exploring the weirder side of smartphones, from tiny rugged phones to massive gaming phones. You'll most often find him seeking out leaks and rumors on upcoming devices, and playing with a variety of new apps for both Android and iOS.

Kindle deals aren’t just restricted to discounts on the devices themselves but services relating to them too. Right now, you can sign up to three months of Kindle Unlimited for free so you don’t have to worry about the monthly fee of $12. That works out as a saving of $36 across the three months while also allowing you to check out a near-endless supply of books too. Whether you’ve just bought a Kindle or you’re settling down for better habits this year, this is a great deal for anyone who hasn’t already signed up for it in the past. Keen to learn more? Let’s take a look at what Kindle Unlimited has to offer.

Why you should sign up for Kindle Unlimited Kindle Unlimited is basically Amazon’s book-borrowing service. It works just like a virtual library allowing you to check out up to 10 items at once. Not just e-books are catered for here with audiobooks and comic books also available, along with many magazine subscriptions. It’s possible to borrow titles as often as you like with no due dates if you don’t return them by a set time.

Samsung, Google, OnePlus, and even Motorola have been coming out with fast new Android phones that match a number of lifestyles and design tastes. And that means you'll need apps that can take advantage of those larger screens and faster processors.  They're how we communicate with friends, watch movies, stay productive, and so much more. You can have the best Android phone on the market, but if you don't also pair it with the best Android apps, you're missing out.

There are millions of Android apps on the Play Store. Many of them are great, some are fine, and others are bogus. To help you sift through everything and focus on the apps you should actually care about, we've rounded up 50 of our favorite ones right here. If you're looking for games, check out our list of the best Android games. And if you are in the market for a new Android phone, make sure to check out our latest smartphone reviews.

The Apple iPhone keeps getting better each year with features and new hardware specs that companies can take advantage up, and we have the new Apple iPhone 15 just around the corner. Whether you just want to doomscroll all day, communicate with others, check the weather, or even find your next soulmate, there's going to be some kind of app to help you satisfy those digital cravings.

But the App Store is filled with thousands of apps — where do you even begin? Don't worry, we're here to help. We've gone through the many apps on Apple's digital storefront so you don't have to. Here are the best apps for your iPhone, whether it's an iPhone 11 or an iPhone 14 Pro.

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Donald Trump and Megan Mullally performing the Green Acres theme song at the Emmy Awards, Los Angeles, September 2005

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In the Warsaw Ghetto in October 1941 Mary Berg, then a teenager, wrote in her diary about the improbable persistence of laughter in that hellish place:

Every day at the Art Café on Leszno Street one can hear songs and satires on the police, the ambulance service, the rickshaws, and even the Gestapo, in a veiled fashion. The typhus epidemic itself is the subject of jokes. It is laughter through tears, but it is laughter. This is our only weapon in the ghetto—our people laugh at death and at the Nazi decrees. Humor is the only thing the Nazis cannot understand.

Berg here movingly expresses a common and comforting idea. Laughter is one of the few weapons that the weak have against the strong. Gallows humor is the one thing that cannot be taken away from those who are about to be hanged, the final death-defying assertion of human dignity and freedom. And the hangmen don’t get the jokes. Fascists don’t understand humor.

There is great consolation in these thoughts. Yet is it really true that fascists don’t get humor? Racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, xenophobic, antidisabled, and antiqueer jokes have always been used to dehumanize those who are being victimized. The ghetto humor that Berg recorded was a way of keeping self-pity at bay. But as Sigmund Freud pointed out, jokes can also be a way of shutting down pity itself by identifying those who are being laughed at as the ones not worthy of it: “A saving in pity is one of the most frequent sources of humorous pleasure.” Humor, as in Berg’s description, may be a way of telling us not to feel sorry for ourselves. But it is more often a way of telling us not to feel sorry for others. It creates an economy of compassion, limiting it to those who are laughing and excluding those who are being laughed at. It makes the polarization of humanity fun.

Around the time that Berg was writing her diary, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer were pointing to the relationship between Nazi rallies and this kind of comedy. The rally, they suggested, was an arena in which a release that was otherwise forbidden was officially permitted:

The anti-Semites gather to celebrate the moment when authority lifts the ban; that moment alone makes them a collective, constituting the community of kindred spirits. Their ranting is organized laughter. The more dreadful the accusations and threats, the greater the fury, the more withering is the scorn. Rage, mockery, and poisoned imitation are fundamentally the same thing.

Donald Trump is not a Nazi, and his followers are (mostly) not fascists. But it is not hard to see how this description resonates with his campaign appearances. Trump is America’s biggest comedian. His badinage is hardly Wildean, but his put-downs, honed to the sharpness of stilettos, are many people’s idea of fun. For them, he makes anger, fear, and resentment entertaining.

For anyone who questions how much talent and charisma this requires, there is a simple answer: Ron DeSantis. Why did DeSantis’s attempt to appeal to Republican voters as a straitlaced version of Trump fall so flat? Because Trumpism without the cruel laughter is nothing. It needs its creator’s fusion of rage, mockery, and poisoned imitation, whether of a reporter with a disability or (in a dumb show that Trump has been playing out in his speeches in recent months) of Joe Biden apparently unable to find his way off a stage. It demands the withering scorn for Sleepy Joe and Crooked Hillary, Crazy Liz and Ron DeSanctimonious, Cryin’ Chuck and Phoney Fani. It requires the lifting of taboos to create a community of kindred spirits. It depends on Trump’s ability to be pitiless in his ridicule of the targets of his contempt while allowing his audience to feel deeply sorry for itself. (If tragedy, as Aristotle claimed, involves terror and pity, Trump’s tragicomedy deals in terror and self-pity.)

Hard as it is to understand, especially for those of us who are too terrified to be amused, Trump’s ranting is organized laughter. To understand his continuing hold over his fans, we have to ask: Why is he funny?

This is not the 1930s or the 1940s, and we should not expect this toxic laughter to be organized quite as it was then. Trump functions in a culture supersaturated with knowingness and irony. In twentieth-century European fascism, the relationship between words and actions was clear: the end point of mockery was annihilation. Now, the joke is “only a joke.” Populist politics exploits the doubleness of comedy—the way that “only a joke” can so easily become “no joke”—to create a relationship of active connivance between the leader and his followers in which everything is permissible because nothing is serious.

This shift has happened in Europe, too. Think of Boris Johnson’s clown act, his deliberately ruffled hair, rumpled clothes, and ludicrous language. Or think of Giorgia Meloni, the first Italian prime minister from the far right since Benito Mussolini, posting on election day in September 2022 a TikTok video of herself holding two large melons ( meloni in Italian) in front of her breasts: fascism as adolescent snigger. It is impossible to think of previous far-right leaders engaging in such public self-mockery. Only in our time is it possible for a politician to create a sense of cultlike authority by using the collusiveness of comedy, the idea that the leader and his followers are united by being in on the joke.

Trump may be a narcissist, but he has a long history of this kind of self-caricature. When he did the Top Ten List on the David Letterman show in 2009, he seemed entirely comfortable delivering with a knowing smirk the top ten “financial tips” written for him, including “When nobody’s watching I go into a 7/11 and stick my head under a soda nozzle”; “Save money by styling your own hair” (pointing to his own improbable coiffure); “Sell North Dakota to the Chinese”; “If all else fails, steal someone’s identity”; and “The fastest way to get rich: marry and divorce me.” This performance, moreover, was the occasion for Trump’s entry into the world of social media. His first ever tweet was: “Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night with David Letterman as he presents the Top Ten List tonight!”

At the 2005 Emmy Awards, Trump dressed in blue overalls and a straw hat and, brandishing a pitchfork, sang the theme song from the 1960s TV comedy Green Acres . Trump is a terrible singer and a worse actor, but he seemed completely unembarrassed on stage. He understood the joke: that Oliver, the fictional character he was impersonating, is a wealthy Manhattanite who moves to rustic Hooterville to run a farm, following his dream of the simple life—an alternative self that was amusing because it was, for Trump, unimaginable. But he may have sensed that there was also a deep cultural resonance. The Apprentice was “reality TV ,” a form in which the actual and the fictional are completely fused.

Green Acres , scenes from which played on a screen behind Trump as he was singing, pioneered this kind of metatelevision. Its debut episode set it up as a supposed documentary presented by a well-known former newscaster. Its characters regularly broke the fourth wall. When Oliver launched into rhapsodic speeches about American rural values, a fife rendition of “Yankee Doodle” would play on the soundtrack, and the other characters would move around in puzzlement trying to figure out where the musician was. Eva Gabor, playing Oliver’s pampered wife, admits on the show that her only real talent is doing impressions of Zsa Zsa Gabor, the actor’s more famous real-life sister.

The critic Armond White wrote in 1985 that “ Green Acres ’ surreal rationale is to capture the moment American gothic turns American comic.” Trump playing Oliver in 2005 may be the moment American comedy turned gothic again. Whoever had the idea of connecting Trump back to Green Acres clearly understood that “Donald Trump” had by then also become a metatelevision character, a real-life failed businessman who impersonated an ultrasuccessful mogul on The Apprentice . And Trump went along with the conceit because he instinctively understood that self-parody was not a threat to his image—it was his image. This connection to Green Acres was reestablished by Trump himself as president of the United States. In December 2018, as he was about to sign the Farm Bill into law, Trump tweeted, “Farm Bill signing in 15 minutes! #Emmys #TBT,” with a clip of himself in the Green Acres spoof. Hooterville and the White House were as one.

What is new in the development of antidemocratic politics is that Trump brings all this comic doubleness—the confusion of the real and the performative, of character and caricature—to bear on the authoritarian persona of the caudillo, the duce, the strongman savior. The prototype dictators of the far right may have looked absurd to their critics (“Hitler,” wrote Adorno and Horkheimer, “can gesticulate like a clown, Mussolini risk false notes like a provincial tenor”), but within the community of their followers and the shadow community of their intended victims, their histrionics had to be taken entirely seriously. Trump, on the other hand, retains all his self-aware absurdity even while creating a political persona of immense consequence.

This comic-authoritarian politics has some advantages over the older dictatorial style. It allows a threat to democracy to appear as at worst a tasteless prank: in the 2016 presidential campaign even liberal outlets like The New York Times took Hillary Clinton’s e-mails far more seriously than Trump’s open stirring of hatred against Mexicans and Muslims. Funny-autocratic functions better in a society like that of the US, where the boundaries of acceptable insult are still shifting and mainstream hate-mongering still has to be light on its feet. It allows racial insults and brazen lies to be issued, as it were, in inverted commas. If you don’t see those invisible quotation marks, you are not smart enough—or you are too deeply infected by the woke mind virus—to be in on the joke. You are not part of the laughing community. The importance of not being earnest is that it defines the boundaries of the tribe. The earnest are the enemy.

The extreme right in America was very quick to understand the potency of “only a joke” in the Internet age. In a 2001 study of three hate speech websites sympathetic to the Ku Klux Klan, Michael Billig noted that each of them described itself on its home page as a humorous exercise. The largest, called “N…..jokes KKK ” (the ellipsis is mine) carried the disclaimers: “You agree by entering this site, that this type of joke is legal where you live, and you agree that you recognize this site is meant as a joke not to be taken seriously”; “And you agree that this site is a comedy site, not a real racist site”; “We ARE NOT real life racists.”

What does “real life” even mean when Klansmen are not really racist? The power of this “humorous” mode of discourse lies at least partly in the way it blurs the distinctions between the real and the symbolic, and between words and actions. Consider the example of some of the men tried for their alleged parts in a 2020 plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic governor of Michigan. One of them, Barry Croft, insisted at his trial in 2022 that he was joking most of the time when he posted on Facebook questions like “Which governor is going to end up being dragged off and hung for treason first?” Another, Brandon Caserta, was acquitted in 2022 in part because he successfully pleaded that violent statements he made on Facebook and in secretly recorded meetings of the group were not serious. These included claims that the Second Amendment sanctions the killing of “agents of the government when they become tyrannical.” “I may kill dozens of agents but eventually die in the process,” Caserta wrote on Facebook in May 2020. He later posted that he would beat government agents so hard they would “beg til they couldn’t beg any more because their mouth is so full of blood.”

At Croft’s trial, his defense attorney put it to an FBI witness that a meme Croft posted showing thirty bullets as “30 votes that count” was “A little tongue-in-cheek? A little bit funny?” On the second season of Jon Ronson’s superb podcast series for the BBC , Things Fell Apart , Caserta acknowledges that, on the secret recordings, he is heard to urge his fellow militia members that any lawyers advocating for the Covid vaccine be decapitated in their own homes, speaks of “wanting Zionist banker blood,” and advocates blowing up buildings where the vaccine is manufactured. He nonetheless insists to Ronson:

This isn’t something I’m dead serious about. This is nothing I ever planned. It’s funny, dude! It’s funny! It’s fun to blow stuff up. It’s fun to shoot guns. It’s fun to say ridiculous offensive shit. And if it offends you, so what? I don’t care about your feelings and how you feel about words. Sorry!

The twist of logic here is striking: Caserta equates blowing stuff up and shooting people with saying ridiculous offensive shit. Violent words and violent actions are all covered by the same disclaimer—one that Trump’s apologists use to blur the relationship between his words and his followers’ actions in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. In the Trumpian twilight zone where democracy is dying but not yet dead, the connection between words (“fight like hell”) and deeds (the armed invasion of the Capitol) must be both strong and weak, sufficiently “no joke” to be understood by the faithful yet sufficiently “only a joke” to be deniable to the infidels. The comic mode is what creates the plausible deniability that in turn allows what used to be mainstream Republicans (and some Democrats) to remain in denial about what Trumpism really means.

For those who love Trump, there is something carnivalesque in all of this. In his discussion of “mediaeval laughter” in Rabelais and His World , Mikhail Bakhtin wrote that “one might say that it builds its own world versus the official world, its own church versus the official church, its own state versus the official state.” Bakhtin suggested that the

festive liberation of laughter…was a temporary suspension of the entire official system with all its prohibitions and hierarchic barriers. For a short time life came out of its usual, legalized and consecrated furrows and entered the sphere of utopian freedom.

Trump and many of his followers have made this quite literal. They create their own America, their own republic, their own notions of legality, their own church of the leader’s cult, their own state versus what they see as the official state. In this way, extreme polarization becomes a sphere of utopian freedom.

This is the capacious zone in which Trump’s comedy operates, an arena that admits everyone who gets the joke, from those who fantasize about killing tyrants, decapitating lawyers, and torturing government agents to those who just like to blow off steam by listening to their hero saying stuff that riles the woke enemy. It is crucial that in Trump’s delivery there is no shift from mockery to seriousness, no line between entertainment and violence. His singsong tone is generous and flexible, serving equally well for vaudeville and vituperation. In his streams of consciousness, they flow together as complementary currents.

In the recent speeches in which he has upped the ante on openly fascist rhetoric by characterizing his opponents as “vermin” and accusing immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country,” it is notable that his cadence is soft, almost lilting. There is no warning to his audience that these comments are of a different order. They are not even applause lines. By underplaying them, Trump leaves open the fundamental question: Is his mimicking of Hitler’s imagery just another impersonation, all of a piece with the way he does Biden and Haley in funny voices or even with the way he sings the theme song from Green Acres ?

Even when Trump actually goes the whole way and acknowledges that his rhetoric is indeed Hitlerian, as he did in a speech in Iowa after the alarmed reaction of liberals to his previous “poisoning the blood” speech, it is in a passage that jumbles together murderous intent, complaint about the media, and comic acting: “They are destroying the blood of our country. That’s what they’re doing…. They don’t like it when I said that. And I never read Mein Kampf .” But he makes the “Kampf” funny, puckering his lips and elongating the “pf” so it sounds like a rude noise. He continues: “They said ‘Oh, Hitler said that.’” Then he adds his defense: “in a much different way.” It is the stand-up comedian’s credo: it’s not the jokes, it’s the way you tell ’em. And this is, indeed, true—the difference is in the way he tells it, in a voice whose ambiguous pitch has been perfected over many years of performance.

The knowingness is all. In the speech in Conway, South Carolina, on February 10, in which he openly encouraged Russia to attack “delinquent” members of NATO , this startling statement, with potential world-historical consequences, was preceded by Trump’s metatheatrical riff on the idea of “fun.” What was fun, he told his followers, was the reaction he could provoke just by saying “Barack Hussein Obama”:

Every time I say it, anytime I want to have a little fun…even though the country is going to hell, we have to have a little bit of fun…. Remember Rush Limbaugh, he’d go “Barack Hooosaynn Obama”—I wonder what he was getting at.

He then segued into another commentary on his own well-honed send-up of Joe Biden: “I do the imitation where Biden can’t find his way off the stage…. So I do the imitation—is this fun?—I say this guy can’t put two sentences together…and then I go ‘Watch!’” (He said the word with a comic pout.) “I’ll imitate him. I go like this: ‘Haw!’” Trump hunches his shoulders and extends his arm, in a parody of Biden’s gestures. In this burlesque, Trump is not just mimicking his opponent; he is explicitly reenacting his own previous mocking impersonation, complete with commentary. He is simultaneously speaking, acting, and speaking about his acting.

It is within this “fun” frame that Trump proceeded to insinuate that there is something awry with Nikki Haley’s marriage: “Where’s her husband? Oh he’s away…. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband! Where is he? He’s gone. He knew, he knew.” He and presumably many members of the audience were aware that Michael Haley is currently serving in Djibouti with the South Carolina National Guard. But as part of the show, with the funny voices and the exaggerated gestures, that lurid hint at some mysteriously unmentionable scandal (“He knew, he knew”) is somehow amusing. And then so is Trump’s story about telling an unnamed head of a “big” NATO country that the US would not defend it from invasion and—the punch line—that he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want.” Here Trump is acting in both senses, both ostentatiously performing and exerting a real influence on global politics—but which is which? How can we tell the dancer from the dance?

This shuffling in a typical Trump speech of different levels of seriousness—personal grudges beside grave geopolitics, savage venom mixed with knockabout farce, possible truths rubbing up against outrageous lies—creates a force field of incongruities. Between the looming solidity of Trump’s body and the airy, distracted quality of his words, in which weightless notions fly off before they are fully expressed, he seems at once immovable and in manic flux.

Incongruity has long been seen as one of the conditions of comedy. Francis Hutcheson in Reflections Upon Laughter (1725) noted that it is “this contrast or opposition of ideas of dignity and meanness which is the occasion of laughter.” The supposedly dignified idea of “greatness” is vital to Trump’s presence and rhetoric. But it is inextricably intertwined with the mean, the inconsequential, even the infantile. He is at one moment the grandiose man of destiny and the next a naughty child—an incongruity that can be contained only within an organized laughter in which the juxtaposition of incompatibilities is the essence of fun. This is why Trump’s lapses into pure gibberish—like telling a National Rifle Association gathering in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on February 9 that the Democrats are planning to “change the name of Pennsylvania” and that, in relation to the marble columns in the hall, it was “incredible how they could [have been built] years ago without the powerful tractors that you have today”—do not make his fans alarmed about his mental acuity. Cognitive dysfunction is not a worry with a man whose métier is cognitive dissonance.

Part of the dissonance is that Trump’s stand-up routine is completely dependent on the idea that he and his audience most despise: political correctness. Like much of the worst of contemporary comedy, Trump both amuses and thrills his audience by telling them that he is saying what he is not allowed to say. “Beautiful women,” he said at the rally in South Carolina after pointing to a group of female superfans in the audience. “You’re not allowed to say that anymore, but I’ll say it…. That usually is the end of a career, but I’ll say it.” There are so many layers to a moment like this: the idea that the woke mob is stopping manly men from complimenting attractive women, a sideways nod toward the “pussygate” tapes that should have ended Trump’s political career but didn’t, a dig at the Me Too movement, a reiteration of Trump’s right to categorize women as “my type” or “not my type,” the power of the leader to lift prohibitions—not just for himself but, in this carnivalesque arena of utopian freedom, for everyone in the audience.

Flirting with the unsayable has long been part of his shtick. If we go all the way back to May 1992 to watch Trump on Letterman’s show, there is a moment when Trump silently mouths the word “shit.” He does this in a way that must have been practiced rather than spontaneous—it takes some skill to form an unspoken word so clearly for a TV audience that everyone immediately understands it. Letterman plays his straight man: “You ain’t that rich, Don, you can’t come on here and say that.” But of course Trump did not “say” it. A sympathetic audience loves a moment like this because it is invited to do the transgressive part in its head. It gets the pleasure of filling in the blank.

Trump’s audiences, in other words, are not passive. This comedy is a joint enterprise of performer and listener. It gives those listeners the opportunity for consent and collusion. Consider a televised speech Trump gave at the Al Smith Dinner, hosted by the Catholic archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, in October 2016, near the end of the presidential campaign. The dinner, held to raise money for Catholic charities, is traditionally the last occasion on which the two main presidential candidates share a stage—Hillary Clinton was also present. Trump deadpanned that he knew he would have a receptive audience because “so many of you in the archdiocese already have a place in your heart for a guy who started out as a carpenter working for his father. I was a carpenter working for my father. True.”

What is the joke here? That Trump is like Jesus Christ. Imagine if Clinton had attempted an equivalent gag. There would have been outrage and uproar: Clinton has insulted all Christians by making a blasphemous comparison between herself and the divine Savior. But the cameras cut to Dolan, a sycophantic supporter of Trump, and showed him laughing heartily. And if the cardinal found it funny, it was funny. It was thus an in-joke. If Clinton had made it, it would be the ultimate out-joke, proof of the Democrats’ contempt for people of faith.

But what is allowed as funny will sooner or later be proposed seriously. Many of those attending Trump rallies now wear T-shirts that proclaim “Jesus Is My Savior. Trump Is My President.” Some of them illustrate the slogan with a picture of an ethereal Christ laying both his hands on Trump’s shoulders. What begins as a risqué quip ends up as a religious icon. There is no line here between sacrilege and devotion, transgressive humor and religious veneration.

Just as Trump’s jokes can become literal, his ugly realities can be bathed in the soothing balm of laughter. Long before he ran for president, he was indulged on the late-night talk shows as the hilarious huckster. In 1987 Letterman tried repeatedly to get Trump to tell him how much money he had, and when he continually evaded the question, Letterman broke the tension with the laugh-line, “You act like you’re running for something.” In December 2005 Conan O’Brien asked him, “You also have an online school? Is that correct?” Trump replied, “Trump University—if you want to learn how to get rich.” The audience howled with laughter, presumably not because they thought he was kidding but because the very words “Trump University” are innately absurd. When he did that Top Ten List on Letterman in 2009, Trump’s comic financial advice included “For tip number four, simply send me $29.95.”

But these jokes came true. Trump wouldn’t say how much he was worth because his net worth was partly fictional. Trump did run for something. Trump University was an innately funny idea that people took seriously enough to enable Trump to rip them off. And Trump does want you to send him $29.95—the first thing you get on Trump’s official website is an insistent demand: “Donate Today.” This is the thing about Trump’s form of organized laughter, in which the idea of humor obscures the distinction between outlandish words and real-life actions. Sooner or later, the first becomes the second. The in-joke becomes the killer line.

March 21, 2024

Who Should Regulate Online Speech?

Small Island

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Fintan O’Toole is the Advising Editor at The New York Review and a columnist for The Irish Times. His most recent book, We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland , was published in the US in 2022. (May 2024)

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