How Time-Based Review Timing Works (And What Happens If Your Book Isn’t Picked Up in Time)

TLDR;

• Timed tiers set a target for when your books get checked out, not a guarantee
• As your deadline approaches, our system automatically sweetens the deal with free gifted bonus tokens
• If the window passes, your book gets escalated with bonuses unlocked for a wider audience
• Genre is one wildcard — niche genres with few buyers may still take longer, even at maximum bonus
• Review options matter — the more formats you accept (PDF, EPUB, KU, Audible, purchase), the bigger your reviewer pool
• To use the time-based system, choose “Standard, quick, very quick, or fastest” when you are publishing your book. If your book is already published and you want to make this change, you’ll have to unpublish it first. There is also an advanced custom option if you want to set the bonus values yourself and bypass our time-based system.

What Are Bonus Tokens?

Bonus tokens are extra rewards that reviewers earn for picking up your book. The more tokens attached to a book, the more appealing it is to reviewers who are browsing available titles.

Normally, Standard and Limited members cannot earn bonus tokens. However, time-reviews changes that — it uses gifted bonus tokens as the engine to drive faster pickups.

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The Time-based Speed Tiers

If you’ve published a book for a Time-Based Review and selected a speed tier, you might be wondering: what do those timeframes actually mean, and what happens if nobody picks up my book within that window?

This is a great question — and the honest answer is that there’s a lot working behind the scenes to make sure your book gets reviewed. Here’s how it all works.

When you publish a book to the Read & Review library for a Time-Based Review, you choose a speed tier. The faster target windows require you to issue a base bonus amount, whereas the standard target window does not take any tokens from your account and only gifts bonus tokens from GBR if your book gets close to the last day of the target window. Each one represents a target window for how quickly you’d like your book to be checked out for review:

These windows are goals, not guarantees. What actually determines how fast your book gets picked up is reader demand for your genre and how attractive your book looks to available reviewers — and that’s where the bonus token system comes in.

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What Actually Happens During Your Review Window

Here’s the timeline of what our system does automatically on your behalf:

As your deadline approaches: Our system begins automatically gifting bonus tokens to your book. You don’t have to do anything — this happens in the background. The closer you get to your final day, the more aggressive the free bonus becomes.

If your window expires and the book still hasn’t been claimed: The book moves into the standard member review area — but with a bonus attached. This is significant because Standard and Limited members do not normally have access to bonus token opportunities. Our system unlocks that access specifically for your book to expand the pool of available reviewers.

The result: Your book is now visible to a to our entire membership with a bonus added.

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Advanced Custom Bonuses

Alternatively, if you do not want to use the time-based review system, which will issue your book free tokens, you can use the advanced option to enter a custom bonus value. Each review type that you’re offering can have its individual bonus adjusted to any value you like, as long as it stays under the maximum token value allowed. We restrict the maximum number of tokens you can offer to ensure accessibility for new members.

Custom bonuses are capped at 4X the base value of each review type. This maximum amount has been put in place to ensure new members in our network are competitive during their trial, before they have had time to accumulate a surplus of tokens.

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Why a Book Might Still Take Longer Than Expected

Even with an escalating bonus, there are two factors that no amount of tokens can fully overcome: genre and review options.

Genre: If your book is in a niche genre with a small pool of active readers, the system will hit a ceiling. There is a maximum number of tokens that can be gifted per book, and if your genre simply doesn’t have enough active buyers in that category, the timeframe will stretch regardless. This isn’t a flaw in the system — it’s an honest reflection of reader demand. A horror thriller with broad appeal will almost always move faster than a highly specialized non-fiction title in a narrow subject area.

Review options: This one is often overlooked. If you’re only accepting verified purchase reviews — meaning the reviewer must buy the book — you’re targeting a smaller audience from the start. Many GBR members prefer or plan to read via PDF or EPUB, and others rely on subscriptions like Kindle Unlimited or Audible. If those options aren’t available for your book, those members simply can’t help you, regardless of how attractive the bonus is. The more review formats you accept, the larger your potential reviewer pool — and the faster your book is likely to move.