Badges
Book Country Badges are awarded for community activity and accomplishments. You can earn badges for positive contributions to the site, such as writing a highly rated book, or contributing many reviews and discussions.
Each badge comes in bronze, silver, and gold. You’ll start with bronze, and then earn silver and gold as your activity grows. There are also versions of each badge at the genre level, master genre level (i.e., SF, Romance, etc.), and for all of Book Country. Our staff is always working hard to ensure fairness and good karma. The more you participate, the more rewards you’ll receive.
What are Preferred Genres?
Preferred Genres help you track your interests and Connect with similar members. You can select as many genres as you like.
The Top Books and Top People in your Preferred Genres will automatically appear on your home page, updating every two weeks.
How do Recommendations work?
Recommendations make it easy to share interesting content with other Book Country members. You can recommend a book, discussion, person, or article to your Connections, and they can make Recommendations to you.
Recommendations appear in your notifications bar.
What are Connections?
Connections are your friends and colleagues on Book Country who you have allowed additional access to your work.
Accepting a Connection request lets that member read all of the fiction you’ve posted (there is no word limit). Connections can also view who you are Connected to, as well as the books, People, Discussions, and Industry Topics you are Following.
You can also receive Recommendations from your Connections and make Recommendations to them.
To add a new Connection, send a Request to Connect. The member to whom you would like to Connect must accept your request to make it official.
What is Following?
Following is a way to casually keep in touch with a person on Book Country.
By Following a person, you will receive updates on their public activities on the site, such as uploading a new book or responding to a discussion.
People you Follow can’t see your Connections, make Recommendations to you, or see that you are Following them.
What are Private Books?
Private books cannot be read by site visitors or community members. Private books do not appear on the Genre Map or in searches. Some writers may choose to temporarily make a book private during revisions or while meeting with agents and publishers.
You can repost a private book to make it visible again. All comments and ratings will be saved.
What are Deleted Books?
Writers can Delete their books at any time, for any reason.
On rare occasions, the Book Country staff may Delete a book for copyright violations.
Deleted books are completely removed from Book Country, along with all comments and reviews. Deleted books cannot be recovered.
Peer Reviews
As a community for writers and readers, we want our members to receive thoughtful and constructive feedback on their work. Book Country Peer Reviews are designed to help writers improve in their chosen craft.
You must be a member to rate and review. Members can review a book once per draft.
Each review has several sections:
Overall Impressions
Share your general thoughts on the book. Did the writer categorize the book accurately on the Genre Map? Were you engaged by the material? What really worked and what needs work? Comment on whatever else you like.
Feedback Criteria
When uploading a book, writers can select two areas on which they’d like guidance. Provide more detailed feedback based on these criteria.
Star Ratings
Give each section a star rating from 1 to 5. This will help us determine how the book compares to others in the community. Your must rate each section to save your review. But remember, star ratings are not just a scale of bad to good; it’s also a scale from rough draft to polished manuscript.
Saving Your Review
It’s easy to work on your review over a period of time with our “Save for Later” feature. Please be aware, though, that if you have a review saved and the writer of the book changes his/her feedback criteria, the feedback that you’ve inputted for any old criteria will be automatically removed. Additionally, if the writer uploads a new draft of the book, your review will be lost. So don’t sit on it too long!
Reviewing Published Books
When writing your review of a published book, please bear in mind that the author is not longer revising the project. For example, you may want to write your review as if you are giving your opinion to other potential readers.