Dear Sunday,
It is unfortunate to see you may have a misunderstanding on how our platform works. I'll do my best to clarify this for you.
We welcome professionals from all around the globe to join our platform, so long as they meet our selection criteria. We take pride in only working with the very best talent available in the industry, and so, our curation team is quite strict when evaluating potential freelancers to join our Marketplace.
We encourage you to carefully read our selection criteria guide to learn more about how we select professionals to work with us: https://blog.reedsy.com/freelanc...
You can also take a look at our Marketplace, where you will quickly see we have people from different countries and ethnicities offering their services, including people from the nationalities you mentioned.
We are hopeful you can realize that misrepresenting our platform does not shed a positive light upon you as a professional editor, and we are also confident you will find a platform akin to your talents so you can offer your services online.
All the best,
Where do I start? Had the worst experience ever. Had a Slavic language and history academic, reviewing an Australian motor racing memoir (ROSCO The Fastest Aussie on Earth). He completely missed the point of the book. made assumptions, which were all incorrect, accusing me of only listening to tapes and copying them.
Although there was some input from the subject via 8 x 10-minute recordings, I had to completely rewrite what he said. I also wrote at least 70 percent of the book from my own knowledge. I have an in-depth knowledge of Rosco and his racing career, having worked closely with him for 15 years.
I asked them to get someone with knowledge of my book's subject to review it, but Reedsy refused.
My book has had 27 verified reviews on Amazon, all 5 stars. I sold 800 copies in the first month. Reedsy reviewer gave it 3 stars. What a joke, do not get them to review your work.
Dear Mark, first of all, I should highlight that 3 stars is a good rating on Discovery. 3 stars means the reviewer enjoyed the book and thought it was a good read. As opposed to other reviewing platforms, we encourage our reviewers to distribute their starred ratings more. After all, if 90% of all books reviewed on Discovery were 5 stars, then the star rating would pretty much lose its meaning, wouldn't it?
Second, while we thoroughly vet and verify our reviewers, their reviews remain their subjective opinion about your book. You might have a different personal opinion, and other readers will have their own opinion as well. So unless the review breaches our review guidelines, we cannot legally remove it. The same as Product Hunt wouldn't remove our review if we asked them to — even though we consider you're making incorrect assumptions in it as well.
I would encourage you to come back to this review with a fresh perspective, and try to understand what might have given the reviewer this experience. I understand that you question the reviewer's knowledge of the topic, but is your book only intended for the small niche of Rosco die-hard fans? If it's intended for a broader market, then the opinion of this reviewer should actually matter to you.
Finally, I'll reiterate that a 3 star review is actually positive. It would be much easier for us if we forced our reviewers to only give 5 star reviews — for one thing, we wouldn't have to reply to reviews like yours… — but it would make Reedsy Discovery meaningless to readers.
Wishing you all the best for the book regardless.
I used Reedsy to promote my book. Lucas Jones was the person who was meant to promote my book. He did absolutely nothing except steal my money. I contacted Reedsy and they agreed not to take any further charges and then they debited my account. Reedsy is a complete ripoff and should not be used.
Hi Bronwyn,
All payments are scheduled between yourself and the professional, and they are processed automatically according to the dates you've chosen. If there is ever a need to adjust the dates, you can contact the professional to move them.
In this case, we did postpone the payments at your request and asked you to discuss how to proceed with Lucas. Unfortunately, there was no further contact from you to Lucas, and a few weeks later, the next scheduled payment went through.
We are already investigating your complaint under our Project Protection Policy and will be in touch with more details as soon as possible.
Best,
I submitted my first book to Reedsy Discovery, got picked up for review, and had a great experience! Would highly recommend this service for young authors/self-publishers!
Do not do business with Reedsy. The company is actually a vanity press posing as a reputable editorial company. They lack integrity, proper vetting or training of their editors and staff. They focus primarily on making money, adding steep fees to both writers and editors. In general, vanity presses posing as editorial services are big, red flags. Choose a reputable editorial company. There are many from which to choose. Resources such as Poets & Writers, Duotrope.com, Publishers Lunch and Writers Digest are good sites for finding reputable editors and publishers.
Hi Jan,
Please note that Reedsy is not a publisher of any kind, therefore we cannot be a vanity press. We’re a platform connecting authors with top editorial, design, and marketing talent so that you can self-publish your book.
We carefully select and verify our professionals from thousands of applicants, in fact, we accept less than 1% of professional applications. You can read more about our vetting process here - https://blog.reedsy.com/how-does....
If you have any kind of an issue with a professional on Reedsy, then you are covered under our Project Protection Policy, this means that if you’re not happy with your collaboration, we’ll act as a mediator and help you come to a resolution. You can read more about Project Protection in our terms here - https://reedsy.com/about/tou#:~:...
If you'd like to contact us to discuss whatever issue you faced we'd be happy to help you.
Lastly, I believe that after leaving a negative review for your editor you asked us if you could re-write it because you had changed your mind. Perhaps you would like to do the same with this review.
All the best,
Chris
Customer Manager
Absolute worst company. There may be a couple good editors but others are TERRIBLE with total ego problems who tear authors apart to belittle and condescend. If you have an issue at all reedsy you will not back the author they are there too back the people that work for them and will make them money. It’s an absolutely terrible company with no ethics, no morals, and who do not follow their own terms and conditions. Google editors and don’t use this garbage site!
Hi Mya, sorry to hear about your negative experience. We definitely understand that receiving editorial feedback can sometimes be a difficult experience at first. Most of our editors will offer feedback in a kind and understanding way, though some will sugarcoat it more than others (who prefer a "tough love" approach). Similarly, some writers prefer that tough love approach, which for others (like yourself) might not be as effective.
This is why we encourage authors to first get a clear sense of the editor's communication and editorial style before you hire them. For example, ask to see a sample of their work on a previous client's manuscript — or even a sample on your own book.
All that said, I'd encourage you to revisit the feedback you received from your editor. It might have felt harsh and hurt your confidence in the first place, but if you come back to it with a fresh mind, you'll probably find a lot of suggestions to improve your manuscript (and your writing in general).
Hi George,
I'm very sorry to hear that you weren’t happy with your review. While Discovery offers you the opportunity to receive a thoughtful review, we cannot guarantee that everyone will love your book.
If a review violates our Terms of Use, we will remove it and find a replacement for your book. In cases where a review is dishonest, unfair, and biased, please let us know by reporting the review under Your Submissions, and we will look into it.
Lastly, we can only remove reviews that don’t comply with our Terms of Use, and cannot remove reviews upon request.
Hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any questions.
All the best,
Chris
Customer Manager
Be aware that this company doesn’t care about your time or efforts, hide important information on their payment system and their support is almost non-existing. P.S. if you are not an American they are not going to work with you and find other excuses just to ghost you. They use Stripe processing and it also has tons of restrictions.
Dear Luci,
We'll do our best to help clarify the points you are bringing up, as it appears you may have misunderstood how our platform works.
We are deeply committed to helping professionals on our platform get fair remuneration for their work. We have features in place such as upfront payments integrated into our system, and cancelation and kill fees can be requested by any professional to help protect their time and effort whenever working with their clients.
Our payment information and fees are publicly available in our FAQ section. We encourage all our users, but especially the professionals offering services in our Marketplace, to go over these. You can check them out at any time: https://reedsy.com/faq/common-qu...
We encourage professionals from all over the world to apply to work in our Marketplace, and we place no limitations based on nationality or geographical location.
It is unfortunate to hear your experience in our platform was not the best, but you can surely see how misrepresenting Reedsy in your review can reflect poorly upon yourself.
Best Regards,
Reedsy
