Book Reviews

Can I contribute a book review to Open Library?

Open Library supports adding any number of pre-defined tags to a book as a review. Patrons can also
leave a star rating for a book. Both of these options apply to the work, not individual editions.

Free-form text reviews are not currently supported.

Community Book Reviews

What are community book reviews?

By using Open Library's community review feature, patrons can select predefined tags that best describe a book. Statistics about a book's tags are displayed in the "Review" section of the book's page:

Who will know which books I have reviewed?

Only you. Review results displayed on book pages are anonymized.

How do I review a book?

You can submit reviews on a book page by opening the review modal. There are two ways to open the modal:

1. Click the review icon (located in the sidebar, next to the star rating UI)

1. Click the "Add your community review" link, found at the bottom of the review section

The review modal

The review modal contains three important sections:

1. The top section contains your selected review tags, if any.
   
2. The middle section displays all of our review categories.
   
3. Review tags for the selected category appear at the bottom of the modal.

Clicking any tag in the bottom section will automatically save your selection and add the tag to the "Submitted Tags" section of the modal. Tags can be removed by deselecting the tag in the "Tag Options" section, or by clicking the tag's 'x' in the "Submitted Tags" section.

How do I manage my reviews?

You can view, update, or delete all of your reviews from your account page, here. Reviews can also be updated on book pages, but this may be less convenient if you intend to update several reviews.

Star Ratings

Patrons can rate books one to five stars (five being the best). A book's average star rating is displayed beneath the book's title.

How can I submit a star rating?

Star ratings can be submitted and updated by using the star ratings UI, found in the sidebar of the book page.

Clicking a star automatically saves your rating. To delete a rating, click on "Clear my rating".