Terms of service

Last updated: 8 August 2026

By using Rotten Publishers you agree to these terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the site.

What this site is

Rotten Publishers hosts reviews written by authors about their own experiences with book publishers, literary agencies, and related businesses. Reviews are the personal experiences and opinions of the people who wrote them. They are not statements of fact by us, and we do not verify most of them independently.

Accounts

• You must be at least 16 to hold an account.
• One account per person. Creating additional accounts to post more than one review of the same publisher is a breach of these terms.
• You are responsible for what happens under your account. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has access to it.

What you may post

Write about your own first-hand experience. Specifically:

• Only review publishers you have actually dealt with. Submitting a manuscript, receiving an offer, declining an offer, signing, working there, or freelancing for them all count. Hearsay does not.
• Describe the relationship accurately. Every review displays what you selected, and readers weigh a rejection differently from a completed publishing cycle.
• Be factual about facts. State what happened, with dates and figures where you can. Distinguish what you experienced from what you concluded.
• Do not post confidential material. If you are bound by a non-disclosure or non-disparagement clause, that is between you and the publisher — we cannot advise you on it, and we will not protect you from it.

What you may not post

• Reviews of a publisher you work for, represent, compete with, or have been paid to write about. Undisclosed conflicts of interest are the fastest way to lose an account here.
• Statements you know to be false, or that you have no reasonable basis for believing.
• Private information about identifiable individuals: home addresses, personal phone numbers, private correspondence, or anything else that would put a person at risk. Naming a named public role at a company (“my editor”, an executive acting in their professional capacity) is acceptable; publishing a junior employee’s personal details is not.
• Harassment, threats, or abuse directed at anyone.
• Spam, advertising, or SEO content.
• Anything unlawful.

Moderation

Every review is read by a moderator before it is published. We do this because publishing first and checking later means the damaging window happens in public.

We may decline to publish, edit for legibility, or later remove content that breaches these terms or that we cannot stand behind as written. If we reject or remove your review, we will tell you why, and you are welcome to rewrite and resubmit it.

A rejection is usually not a judgement that your experience was untrue. It is most often that a specific claim is stated in a way we are not prepared to publish.

If you are a publisher

• You may claim your listing by demonstrating that you work for the business. A moderator checks every claim.
• A verified claim lets you correct the listing’s factual details and respond publicly to reviews.
• It does not let you edit, hide, reorder, or remove reviews, and we do not offer that ability at any price. There is no paid tier that suppresses criticism.
• If you believe a review is false or unlawful, use the dispute process. We take those seriously and we act on them.
• Retaliating against a reviewer — threatening them, or using a contract clause to force a review down without going through the dispute process — will result in your claim being revoked and noted publicly on the listing.

Your content stays yours

You keep ownership of everything you write. By posting, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, display, and distribute it as part of the site, including in search results and excerpts. The licence lasts as long as the content is on the site, plus whatever period is needed to handle an active dispute about it.

Our content

The site’s design, code, and editorial material are ours. Publisher names and logos belong to their owners and are used to identify the businesses being reviewed.

Disclaimers

The site is provided as-is. We do not warrant that reviews are accurate, complete, or current, and nothing here is legal, financial, or professional advice. A publishing contract is a long-term transfer of valuable rights — have a literary agent or a lawyer who works in publishing read it before you sign. Do not substitute this site for that.

To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from your use of the site, or from decisions you make based on what you read here. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms. You can close yours at any time — see the privacy policy for what happens to your content when you do.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident elsewhere, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory consumer law in your own country.

Changes

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights, we will email registered users before it takes effect.

Contact

support@rottenpublishers.com