How to Recognise a Sponsored Book Review

Paid and gifted reviews are a normal part of the book economy, and readers are not expected to be angry about them. They are expected to be able to tell. Two regimes govern this, and between them they establish what must be disclosed.

What the rules require

In the United States, the FTC endorsement guides require that a material connection between the reviewer and the seller be disclosed clearly and conspicuously, placed with the endorsement itself rather than buried at the end of a page. A paid, gifted or free review is a material connection. A free copy counts.

In the United Kingdom, the CMA's code of practice on misleading advertising covers influencer advertising, and the Advertising Standards Authority's guidance is explicit that a gifting arrangement is not a neutral act.

Disclosure is required either way. What varies is what counts as clear and conspicuous.

What a compliant disclosure looks like

Unambiguous, unavoidable, and at the point of the claim. Phrases that satisfy this in practice: received a copy from the publisher, sponsored by, on a gifted copy, this was sent to me free. What does not: a hashtag buried in a long tag block, a disclosure on a linked about page, or a thank you that never says where the book came from.

Tells that remain when nobody follows the rules

• Unusually uniform enthusiasm across many reviews from accounts with no pattern of criticism.
• Reviewed within days of the publication date while every other reviewer is still reading.
• Avoidance of the book. A five-star review that discusses atmosphere but never says whether it is worth finishing is not reviewing a book, it is advertising one.
• No critical detail at all. Every book has a flaw. A review that could describe any book in the genre is describing none.

Why a sponsored review is not automatically worthless

This is the part that gets overstated. A reviewer paid to read a book has still read it. Their account of what is in it is accurate whether or not they were paid to write it. The compromise is the evaluation, not the description.

A useful sponsored review says what the book is, gives a reason the reader can act on, and discloses. A useless one is pure recommendation. You can use the first kind perfectly well, provided you know it is the first kind.