Reviews are a “precious commodity” for authors. 

Almost everyone in the publishing industry will tell you that it’s much more important to have a large number of reviews—even if those reviews include a spattering of the dreaded 1-star variety—than it is to have a handful of 5-star ones.

MWSA Reviews—The “Author Veto” and Credibility

• Since MWSA’s main mission is to help our members, we will not “slam” an author with a purely negative review, nor will we keep any review on our website if the author requests that we remove it.

  • Just ask the Awards Directors, and we’ll remove it—for any reason, or no reason at all.  Period!

  • This is the “Author’s Veto.”

• To maintain our credibility as an organization doing reviews, we cannot provide 100% positive (or “pure marketing”) reviews to every book submitted by our authors.

  • To ensure that MWSA reviews are credible, if a book’s numerical evaluation (the combined average scores of all three reviewers) fails to reach a certain threshold, our MWSA review is required to mention the shortfall(s).

• If this happens, one of our Awards Directors will contact the author and…

  • inform him/her that the scoring threshold was not met.

  • forward our reviewer comments (but not scores).

  • provide a draft review, which will include the applicable critical comments.

  • ask the author to choose to accept the review or not (see the “Author Veto” discussion above).

How to use your MWSA review

• Once it’s posted on our website, the review is now yours—feel free to copy it onto your website and your own social media sites. 

• When you copy it, please remember to attribute it to us. The best way to do this is by copying the “MWSA Review” at the top of the review or by adding “MWSA” before the reviewer’s byline along with the review.
  Example: MWSA Review by Ruth Reviewer (June 2025)

• Once your review is posted to our website, MWSA will also “blast” your book and its review to our social media websites (see our social media page for a listing of those sites). Make sure that you check your book’s page periodically to see if anyone has posted a comment, like, etc.

• Do not post our MWSA review on any website that requires adding a star rating (e.g., Amazon). Only MWSA, not the author, can decide on the number of stars to award. To post our review on Amazon, we suggest you copy it into the “Editorial Reviews” section of your book’s Amazon listing.

Spreading the Word and Outside Reviews

• Since your MWSA review will be attributed to the individual reviewer (always the #1 reviewer), that #1 is able to copy their MWSA review onto other websites (most likely on Amazon) under their own name.

  • Please keep in mind that 1) this additional “outside review” is purely voluntary on that reviewer’s part, and 2) the additional review cannot be posted until AFTER the awards ceremony.

    • Why wait?  Because no one will know the actual MWSA medal result until the day of the awards banquet and ceremony. 

    • Any early release of an Amazon review with a star rating, would represent a “sneak preview” of our MWSA scoring before the actual announcement.

What ABout My Reviewer Comments?

• MWSA strongly recommends that all authors have a look at their reviewers’ comments. Although all authors will receive their reviewers’ comments, we release themat three different points, depending on how well your book scored.

  • Our awards finalists have the longest wait. We don’t share our finalists’ comments until after the awards banquet—where everyone learns who won gold, silver, or bronze medals. We release our list of finalists via a recorded video announcement, which normally happens between mid-July and mid-August.

  • Authors of books that did not qualify as finalists will receive their reviewer comments via email shortly after we announce our finalists.

  • Those books whose final scores fall below the minimum scoring threshold will receive their comments as soon as we complete our evaluation and send you an email notification.

• Remember, if your book scored higher than the low-score threshold (i.e. you were not notified of that fact when your review was posted on our website), your book is still “in the running” for an award.

• What about my scores? MWSA never shares individual reviewer names, scores, or confidential comments with anyone. Of course, everyone will know the number 1 reviewer’s name because it’s appended to their review.

• Why don’t we release all comments immediately? We don’t release them too early so that we don’t “spill the beans” about who won which award.

 Updated 5/23/2024