Disputes & takedowns

Last updated: 8 August 2026

If you are a publisher and a review about you is false, unlawful, or breaches our rules, this is how to get it dealt with. We would rather you use this process than a solicitor’s letter, and we act on these properly.

Consider responding first

Claim your listing and reply in public. A specific, measured response — acknowledging what went wrong, correcting what’s inaccurate, saying what changed — does more for how you read to a prospective author than a removed review ever could.

Readers are markedly better at spotting a defensive non-answer than most companies expect. A good response is the strongest tool available to you here.

How to raise a dispute

Email disputes@rottenpublishers.com with:

1. A link to the review.
2. The specific sentences you say are false — not the review as a whole. “This entire review is defamatory” is not something we can act on.
3. Why each is false, and any evidence you can share: contracts, statements, correspondence, dates.
4. Your name, role, and confirmation you are authorised to act.

What happens next

1. Acknowledgement within 2 working days.
2. Review within 10 working days. We re-read the review against our review policy and weigh your evidence.
3. We usually contact the author, share the substance of your complaint, and give them a chance to respond, correct, or supply their own evidence. We do not disclose your correspondence verbatim, and we do not disclose an anonymous author’s identity to you.
4. We decide and tell you both, with reasons. Every decision is recorded permanently.

Possible outcomes

• No change — the review is within policy and the disagreement is about opinion or interpretation.
• Amended — a specific claim is corrected or removed while the rest stands. This is the most common outcome when a dispute has merit.
• Annotated — the review stays with a note recording the disputed point.
• Removed — where the review is false, unlawful, breaches policy, or comes from someone who never dealt with you.

Where a review is removed, the publisher’s rating is recalculated immediately so the score reflects only live reviews.

What we will not do

• Remove a review because it is negative. An accurate account of a bad experience is exactly what this site is for.
• Remove reviews for payment. There is no fee, no tier, and no commercial relationship that changes a moderation decision. If anyone claiming to represent us offers you this, it is a scam — please report it.
• Disclose an anonymous author’s identity to you, absent a valid court order.
• Remove a review solely because it breaches a non-disparagement clause you had the author sign. That is a matter between you and them. In some jurisdictions such clauses are unenforceable against consumer reviews.

Formal legal notices

If you are sending a formal notice, send it to legal@rottenpublishers.com. Please still identify the specific statements complained of and why each is false — a notice that asserts defamation without particulars gets the same answer as an email that does.

We would rather resolve a genuine inaccuracy in ten days than litigate it. We are also not going to remove truthful criticism because a letter arrived on headed paper.

If you are an author whose review was disputed

We will tell you what has been alleged and give you a chance to respond before we decide. If we amend or remove your review, you get the reason in writing. You can rewrite and resubmit.

If a publisher contacts you directly to pressure you into withdrawing a review, please forward it to moderation@rottenpublishers.com. Retaliation against reviewers costs a publisher their verified status and is noted on their listing.