OnlineBookClub.org Reviews 

-10 stars! I got an email days ago saying that there was a problem with my review. I follow the link and it needed me to verify two other email addresses to my paypal *despite having one already verified and valid.* What has followed has been over thirty email messages with their customer service. This is how every interaction has gone. "Hello how can I help?" "I have a verified email, can we just use that one for payment?" "Im sorry please send a video of your trouble". (Sends video and we have over TWENTY emails back and forth where ALL my questions are ignored!!!) "What seems to be the problem?" "I showed you I had a valid email, can my payment be sent there?" "Please send a video showing your entire email that our emails for validation are not being recieved, proof that your paypal emails are all linked to your account, and explaining your issue." (So I do.) "We're sorry, paypal blacked out the screen, please insert the photo you sent over the black parts of the screen, so IT can see it." (THREE tries later just to edit the video, Im in tears of pure frustration, they appear to recieve it and forward it. In said video I ask again- can we just use my verified email? Can we just delete the 2 I cant verify? And- Am I not getting paid because you cant verify 2 emails *unnecessarily*? I get a response this morning.) "Im sorry I dont understand what you need help with and I watched your video and read the email exchange." WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DONT KNOW WHAT I NEED HELP WITH THEN!!?? I guess I just lost $75 for my review. DAYS of asking the same question, directly and in videos they request, no ones answering. And finally get someone to send me more than a couple sentences and they have no idea what I need. I have never seen customer service this poor. Id rather deal with a limited bot than *30* emails and ZERO answers.

This is a great opportunity to read good books, have your opinion count. It's very easy to join and get paid on top of that. I really enjoy it.

I've been with the OnlineBookClub for over 6 years, and my experiences have been nothing but pleasant. Until recently.

I won the giveaway prize, and I have always sent receipts to their specific email address. Apparently, it was being phased out. Okay, not a problem. I sent a message asking if I need to resend it, as the email I received immediately after sending my receipt said it was being phased out. It was marked as resolved, and they said they would reply back to me.

It is now June 23rd, and I have received no email back about if my receipt was good, and I haven't been paid out at all. I'm not sure if my account has a problem; I logged in and everything was fine. I have tried to get assistance with no response.

Customer service has gone downhill, and I am really disappointed with how this has been handled, or lack thereof. I would have no problem removing or changing this review if or when I get the giveaway prize owed and this becomes full resolved. But I would like this looked into, because I did everything I needed to do.

Unfortunately this is a terrible platform with a bad UI, questionable business ethics, and they pay for Amazon reviews. I joined this platform with high hopes, not just to make some extra cash, but to have the opportunity to review books and chat with others. Let me detail my experience:
1. Was convinced by the platform to buy a $3.00 book with my own money to complete a review. This was a terrible and hard to read book, that was mis-categorized as historical fiction when it was actually erotics. Sex scenes, rapes, and even an illegal abortion. But 7 hours of reading and detailing this smut, I made it through. Then, I had my 500+ word review, I did a grammar and spelling check with AI tools, and answered the multiple questions to submit the review. It was all in all over 8 hours of my time, and was supposed to pay $75 as long as I agree to submit an Amazon review (which is kind of shady as well).
They flagged my review as plagiarized (I wrote it 100% myself and didn't copy anything) then accused me of using AI (which I only used for editing, and no where on their site is that prohibited). I never got paid. The book sucked. While I was waiting for the review to go through, I tried to read another book, which also sucked.
2. The User Interface is straight out of 1990. Hard to navigate, text based, and badly laid out. The menus are not intuitive and the site is compartmentalized.
3. My conclusion is that this is a site with very low quality books that authors PAY for reviews, and readers are treated less than garbage and promised payouts that don't happen. Save your time if you value it, and don't bother.

After quickly checking other reviews here, I am now convinced that this site has a much deeper issue. Aside from unqualified wannabe reviewers who doesn't know the difference of a Review to a Critique, the customer service and issue resolution process is heavily problematic. (It sounds much worse than that)

Main issues I have faced after purchasing a Premium review:

1. Their turnaround times for a level 1 premium review is 4 months. That already exceeds VISA's chargeback guidelines, so there it is - this site already owns you without any guarantee of a refund. Nice trick!

2. As I said, there are people here who wants a quick buck to bash, crucify, and defame authors, especially new indie writers. They try so hard to find anything they can criticize, and use against the author, even going lengths about falsely accusing writers of using AI and running scams. The audacity! And oh, these are all written in the public-facing reviews that Premium users paid for. Who would pay at least 148 bucks to be insulted? They didn't even read the entire book and likely used AI to write their reviews - even got the title wrong. and...

3. Customer service is an aboslute nightmare. Really. Aside from the inconsistency, long response times, different people responding, the issue is NEVER addressed. They are insistent, and absolutely focused on one thing: RIPPING PEOPLE OFF! That's right. They are so active in sending marketing emails that will take more of your money, but takes a very long time to address an issue.

4. Even if the premium customer did not get what they paid for, this site just won't give your money back. It's like buying a premium product and not getting anything but an empty box. That's what this site does.

Conclusion: I agree with the other people's reviews, and this is an honest one:

OnlineBookClub.org is an absolute Ripoff. Do not fall for it! Most newly published independent authors trying to enter the business (like me) are one of their primary prey. They know how desperate we are in having a decent, professional review to boost our sales.

Heed our warning, everyone. This site is NOT going to help you at all. This site is just aimed to syphon money off authors.

Now, let's see how fast you respond to this. It's probably much faster than your response time on the emails, and you probably spent more energy and attention responding to this than addressing customer issues. Am I right?

So, how does it feel? This is an honest review, though not as brutal and objectively false as your so-called 'professional reviewers' does, but this is a real, authentic, experience-based, verified review. Come on, try and deny.

I found this service to be excellent, as it provided me with a great insight into the readability of my new novel. The review helped me see what others thought of my writing and indicated how I could make edits. Let's face it, when you have gone over your draft a number of times, you become word blind. This service helped me see exactly where I was floundering.

Scott Hughes has consistently told me that he will go "above and beyond" to make things right, but he has never suggested what that could be. He brags that he has over 5 million members, but what he actually has is a lot of people looking for quick and easy money by reviewing books. These reviewers, many of whom are unqualified to review anything of a technical nature, will not care about an author's deeper insights, and once a book has a review, it is unchangeable. What happened to me can only be described as fraud and a scam.

Have been working with this platform for a while, getting help reviewing my book. I felt confident that they could help.

ONline Book Club is a scam. They asked me to review a book. I sent them the review. They asked for my bank account so that they could pay me. Instead they debited my bank account twice with amounts of £42. They keep asking me where the review is and sending me threatening emails, saying they will block me as a reviewer. They deducted money under the name XR
Academy.
I would Like to add that the director of XR Academy was BAHRA, Taranjit Singh of 87 Greenridge Road, Birmingham, West Midlands, England, B20 1JN. The company was dissolved on 6 February 2024.

They accused me of using AI, claiming I reviewed the book too quickly—even though I actually listened to the audiobook. The AI detection percentage was extremely low, which should have been enough for them to use common sense and recognize it was my own writing. But instead, they insisted on their decision regardless.

I can’t help but think their real issue was my honest review of a book filled with racism. Frankly, content like that—sex, excessive profanity, blatant racism—shouldn't be something unsuspecting readers are subjected to.

Apparently, if you want to get paid for a review, you have to sugarcoat it to their liking. That’s not something I’d ever waste my time doing. And to make matters worse, one of them even suggested I might have copied someone else’s review—an insulting, baseless accusation that made the entire experience a complete waste of time.

I signed up for this website about 2 years ago but had never used it as I was too busy at the time. However they kept sending me emails to review this book ' Deceptive Calm' and I would get paid $50. I eventually took up the offer , read the book and put up my first review. I got a response back few days later and asked to resubmit because it had a few grammatical errors, I fixed them and resubmitted but after almost 3 weeks I haven't been scored on my resubmission but that's not even my main compliant. My real issue is to do with the payment. I received an email acknowledging that I was due for payment but had to submit my ID for verification for that to happen. The instruction was I had to take a selfie of me holding the ID. I sent in the picture and a few days later received an email asking me to verify my ID once again but this time I had to use an online verification system called Stripe, I did as instructed. Waited for a response none came. A few days later another email, asking for the same thing. When I complained about this, citing that I had already done this twice I was now asked to send a video proving that I had done the verification process. That's when I realized that this was useless and not worth it. I had read a review that they make you jump through hoops inorder to get payment and unfortunately that has been my experience I have decided to unsubscribe from the site because it's more stress than actually having the pleasure of just reading and reviewing books. For a first time reviewer I'm highly disappointed with this site.

I signed up for this because I'm an avid reader who worked in a library. Writing reviews seemed like fun. So, I did my first review after graduating with my master's and had more time (I only mention this for irony). My review was cited as AI generated and how it "could apply to any book" even though I did my best to cite instances for examples without revealing plot - as requested. Funny thing is I did a project on AI in my masters program and thought it was hilarious. AI detectors are not reliable and to say it's AI generated while using AI to detect it is just downright funny. People may have a different experience but after spending an hour to write an honest, professional review only to be accused of AI, is just downright disappointing. They need to be careful and probably hire someone who knows more about this. The guidelines suggest using autocorrectors - however many autocorrectors are considered AI. 🤔 It stated "flagged by many AI detectors" but didn't cite what checkers they used. Suspicious . . . Might be because I didn't write a glowing recommendation for a subpar book. The other comment was I didn't cite all grammatical errors - but we are not supposed to put pages down due to it not being accurate. And honestly that sounds like free editing when it's supposed to be just a review.

Overall, the instructions are confusing, the editors a bit insulting, and the website is so out dated with tons of ads.

Update: Apparently, I'm far from the first person who has done a negative review on this specific book and was accused of it being AI generated. I was confused when I saw that said book was highly recommended on Onlinebookclub (with high 5s which is supposed to be nearly impossible) but had a slew of negative comments on other sites. I've deleted my account for fear of my data.

I was super excited to be able to read books and give my honest opinion but then something strange happened. Hours after signing up, getting a book and going through that process, I got a Amazon verification code. I thought it was weird because all the ones I requested were sent on time and were approved. I went to see details and apparently the request was from an apple iPad from Massachusetts (I have picture proof). What.the.heck. I instantly denied it, changed my Amazon password and deleted all the cards from the account. I've given no friends or family access to my account so it's definitely not that. I've also never had this happen before. After changing my password in the account, I went back to the website and saw if I could still go onto the book, which I couldn't. It asked me to sign in again (with the new password). Also super sketchy because I was already signed in and it was the same browser.
All in all, please just avoid! 🙏

Timely review and support.

This company is very trustworthy worthy. It's easy to be fooled by companies making promises they don't keep but OnlineBookClub.com is trustworthy. I read a book, made a review and they gave me a score for my review and then sent my payment for the review. It doesn't get any easier than that!

Online book club is a site that claims to pay readers for honest reviews but I cannot really vouch that this is the case. Plus they will make you jump through hoops and do everything possible to avoid paying you

1. Each time you submit a review, they ban you for plagiarism saying it is AI generated. I appealed twice before an admin rechecked and said it’s not AI generated, they dont know what the previous reviewer was talking about.

2. After that hassle…. The next one was leaving Amazon review. They kept claiming that they couldn’t find my Amazon review despite multiple submissions of the link and every other person could see the review via the link. Later they said it was a review mismatch. They said I rated the book a 4 out of 5 instead of the excellent 4 out of 4 I gave on OBC. I said, but on OBC I rated the book 4 out of 5 and Amazon is asking for my rating out of 5 not out of 4. Why should I give a 5 out of 5 when I clearly rated the book a 4 out of 5 on OBC. They said I should change my rating to a 5 out of 5. They refused to approve my payment until I changed my rating. They finally paid me after 31 days of back and forth over one problem or the other plus 2 free reviews later. For your mental health, just avoid them to be honest.

Did not get paid for my first review, email stated I was to receive $60. This company has had me jumping through hoops, getting my PayPal info just to tell me I have no reviews to be paid for!

STAY AWAY FROM THIS SHAM OF A COMPANY! DONT BE TOO SMART WHEN WRITING YOUR REVIEW, IMMEDIATELY YOULL GET BANNED AND ACCUSED OF USING AI! THEN YOULL GET HOUNDED TO REMOVE YOUR NEGATIVE REVIEW TO PROTECT THEIR INTEGRITY! WHAT A LAUGH!

Write your book review for anyone else BUT this company! Screwed me out of what I'm owed. Since they refuse to pay me I refuse to take this down!

Disgusting!

Book Deceptive Calm

oh now I gotta wait for some AI mod to get back to me. At this point, I can care less. You had me doing all this crap for your ego. hope you're happy.

Ban me I don't care.

Y'all should've paid me!

After receiving an 80% personal recommendation along with a score of 93% from the first editor for a review I wrote to be honest and thorough, I made the necessary changes that were suggested.

The very next day, a different editor rated the same review with a close to 0 score for “not inserting a rating sentence” and docked points for a singular comma and a paragraph break. On top of that, they provided a meagre 10% personal recommendation which — for a review that was coherent, well written, and useful — made no sense.

No matter how much I revised after this, my score still did not change due to tiny details. The lack of encouraging language paired with a cold, mechanical tone made the entire experience feel unwelcome.

If your entire system relies on two editors who contradict each other completely, then it's not a fair evaluation process — it's a gamble. We, as writers, are entitled to a higher level of respect and uniformity. The system needs fundamental changes before I would recommend working here.

I have used Scott Hughes and OnLineBookReviews.org. I was very pleased with the product and the turn-aroung time. Scott is an open and honest business man. What he says you will get, you get. I was very satisfied with my last experience and am looking forward to the results from this experience.

OnlineBookClub.org is for readers and, therefore, it's for authors, too. OBC is a well-established source of honest (sometimes brutally honest) reviews that readers value. It features savvy, professional reviewers (who never promise favorable reviews) and it also invites reviews from the general public (who are not paid, and thus have zero conflict of interest).