Rating and Reviewing Policy
ALL books will be read and reviewed on a “first come, first serve” basis. When you send in a request for your book to be reviewed on Literature Approved, you are agreeing that any of the Contributor reviewers may read and review your book. For more details visit the Partner & Contributor Reviewers page or meet the reviewers.
At Literature Approved, all the reviewers are Christians and our reviewing and rating is based on Christian morals. However we do not review only Christian books, but rather seek out general market books as well, for the purpose of giving a Christian-based review on books of all kinds. Our meaning of “Christian-based” review is:
To make note and inform readers of Christian content (if any), how graphic the action is (if any), how explicit the spice/sexual content is (if any), and how vulgar the language is (if any), so that readers can choose books according to their personal and/or religious preferences, while also evaluating and providing an opinion of story from the reviewer’s standpoint.
The content mentioned in reviews does NOT automatically deduct stars as some other sites do. Reviewers are given the freedom to rate books based on personal morals and personal opinions, so long as they mention the content for future readers. So, though a book may have cursing in it, that does not necessarily mean that it will receive a star reduction (depending on the reviewer) but it will be mentioned in the review regardless. When you submit your book to us, please tell us what to expect regarding content, so that reviewers can better select whether your book is a good fit for us.
NEW AS OF NOVEMBER 2023: Due to the growth of the site, as a reviewing team, we have elected to withhold reviews of books that would be rated 1 or 2 stars and quietly notify the author instead. Many of us are authors ourselves and we do not take lightly the trust given to us as reviewers, so rather than publishing 1 or 2 star reviews on the site for our 1000+ followers to see, if we feel that we cannot give a book at least 3 stars, we will notify the author that our review will not be published. We ask, in exchange for this mercy, that you, as the author, respect our reviewer’s decisions in these instances and not harass them. Some reviewers may provide more detailed feedback than others, but ultimately, we want you to understand that we are always looking out for our authors and would never want to publicly humiliate a book or its author, which we feel that 1 or 2 star reviews do. We have a thorough vetting system and our reviewers have been trained to only accept books that they genuinely believe will be a good fit for them to minimize the possibility of low ratings, however, on the rare occasion that a reviewer recognizes that she isn’t a good fit for the book, we will notify the author. Thank you for understanding and entrusting your books with us, we are truly honored to read your stories!
Content Rating*:
*Numbers in red are tolerated by only a few of our reviewers, therefore you should definitely disclose this content in your request! If your book has content on the scale below that has a strikethough, we are NOT your target audience!
Spice/Sexual Content Rating System:
0. None
1-Romance with very mild content (feel good vibes but nothing physical–not even kissing)
2-Romance with mild content (holding hands and mild kissing)
3-Romance with moderate romantic content (heavier kissing/making out scenes, but no grabby hands)
4-Romance with a bit more moderate content (fade to black/no sex on the page/closed-door romance)
5-Romance with strong content (a singular on page sex scene & tame descriptions)
6-Romance with stronger content (Multiple on page sex scenes & tame descriptions)
7-Romance with intense content (a singular on page sex scene with explicit descriptions)
8-Romance with more intense content (multiple sex with explicit descriptions)
9-Romance with extreme content (go ahead and your imagination)
10-Romance with very extreme content (erotica)
Cursing Rating System:
0. None
1-Infrequent and substitute cursing (less than 10 “craps”, “hecks”, and/or ONLY book-specific words, etc.)
2-Frequent substitute cursing (commonplace “craps”, “hecks”, includes the British curse words like “Bloody”, etc.)
3-Infrequent and mild cursing (less than 10 “h*lls”, “*ss”, “sh*ts”, and “d*mns”)
4-Frequent and mild cursing (commonplace h*lls, sh*ts, and d*mns” paired with British curse words like “Bloody”, etc.)
5-Infrequent and moderate cursing (less than 10 mild curse words paired with less than 2 or 3 strong words: think PG-13 movie rating. They drop an f-bomb in a couple of scenes)
6-Strong cursing (mild cursing paired with 3-10 strong words: f-bombs, b*tch, etc)
7-Intense cursing (all words used frequently)
8-Very intense cursing (every character curses nearly every time they speak)
9-Extreme cursing (multiple, strong curse words on every page)
10-Very extreme cursing (does this person even know how to speak English without a curse word?)
Gore/Injury Rating System:
0. None
1-Little to no action (might mention a papercut or something)
2-Very mild action (mentions common injuries, like broken bones, without gruesome details)
3-Mild action (common injuries with some details)
4-Some action (some mildly detailed battle sequences and/or fights)
5-Action present (frequent and mildly detailed battle sequences and/or fights)
6-Strong action and gore (most action sequences describes blood loss and the injury to a clear picture, albeit brief or infrequent scenes)
7-Very strong action and gore (action scenes are more common and are described to the reader with the intention of producing a mental image)
8-Intense gore (action scenes take a bit of a morbid turn here with abnormal deaths that are detailed and prolonged; torture, war crimes, etc.)
9-Very intense gore/mild horror (infrequent, morbid deaths that are detailed)
10-Horror (holds nothing back, included to horrify the reader)
HORROR AND EROTICA WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED BY ANY OF OUR REVIEWERS NOR FEATURED ON OUR SITE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
Fiction and Nonfiction (Adult/Young Adult):
All adult and young adult fiction is rated and reviewed based on quality of the storyline, characters, writing, and how much the reviewer enjoyed the book. Other aspects of reviews will be on content (language, sexual, gore, etc.). Our reviewers love books and all have different elements of fiction that they like to focus on and place an emphasis on in their reviews so some things may be more important to reviewers than others.
Nonfiction is rated and reviewed on a similar basis, but instead of storyline and characters, nonfiction is reviewed on the above and how easy to understand, how engaging, and how well the author articulated his/her point.
Children’s books/Middle Grade:
We rate and review children’s books based off of family qualities and learning opportunities. In our opinion, a book read to a child needs to be more than just a story; it needs to have lessons on that child’s level, well-done pictures, and to have engaging writing. Kids need to be read to in order for them to grasp a love for learning and reading at a young age.
Reviewing on other sites:
We always post our reviews on the following (so there is no need to ask us to do so in your inquiry):
- AMAZON
- GOODREADS
Also, we only post reviews on the above so please don’t ask for other websites (unless your book is not available for purchase on Amazon).
All links to reviews will be shared ONCE on Facebook 🙂 Books will be featured on our Instagram account at the choice of our Instagram Manager. For additional promotional services and extended advertising, please visit this page.