FAQ

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No. Reviews are always optional, never required, and never scored by us. We track whether you snagged, fetched, and finished a book — not whether you reviewed it.

After you fetch the file, a short wait applies before you can mark it finished (about one minute per page, using the author’s page count or 150 if missing). When that wait is up, Mark finished awards points.

An unopened or unfinished snag blocks new snags until you fetch the file or release it. Releasing it frees up your slot with no penalty beyond that.

You can have up to 3 books out at a time, up to 12 a month total. If you're at your limit, finish or release something first.

You can read one book from the same author every 180 days, and up to two books total from that author, ever. This keeps things spread out and matches how Amazon expects genuine reader activity to look — not stacked reviews from the same person for the same author. You'll still see all their books on the shelf; ones you're not eligible to snag yet just show greyed out with an explanation.

Not currently — browse any shelf and snag what you want. Life changes; you’re never locked to one genre.

Reach out through the Contact page and we'll help sort it out.

Yes. We never require, track, or report reviews to Amazon or anyone else. What you do on Amazon is entirely separate from your account here.

You earn points by finishing books, not by snagging them. Points move you up through four tiers — Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Diamond — based on both your points and how often you actually finish what you snag. Higher tiers unlock things like extra snag slots and early access to new books.

The leaderboard has two views: This Month (default) counts only finishes in the current calendar month (America/Chicago), and All-Time is cumulative and never resets.

Your @username is a unique public handle for the leaderboard and activity ticker. Keep it friendly — no curse words or political handles (for example attacking a public figure). Email stays private and is only used to log in. You can set it free the first time, then change it at most once every 30 days.

Only if you want them to. You can opt out of the leaderboard and activity ticker entirely in your account settings — your snags and finishes stay private, and it doesn't affect your account otherwise.

Mutual snags between two accounts are limited for 30 days. Reciprocal / review-swap arrangements violate Amazon's rules and Snag a Book's — we also block snagging your own book.

Sign up as an author and submit your finished, published nonfiction book through your dashboard.

Readers who've selected your book's genre/shelf are eligible to snag it. We route matches to keep things spread out rather than piling every reader onto the same book at once.

Not directly — matching happens through the genre system, not manual author selection.

Unopened snags expire and free up automatically, so your book stays available to other readers.

No, and we never will. We connect you with readers who actually chose your genre. What they do after reading is up to them.

We're built around Amazon's core rule: no compensation contingent on a review or its content. Readers get books for free regardless of whether they review, and we never require, track, or reward reviewing itself.

No. Reciprocal / review-swap arrangements are against Amazon's rules and against Snag a Book. We block you from snagging your own book, and if account A has snagged (or finished) a book by account B within the last 30 days, B cannot snag a book by A until that window expires (and vice versa).

Check the Shelves page for the current list — we add shelves as we have enough books to fill them properly rather than launching empty categories.

Once we hit 200 books on the platform, every new submission requires that you've finished a book yourself first — in a genre other than your own. It keeps the platform balanced between books and actual readers instead of turning into a pile of unread submissions.

Non-Fiction is an underserved market. A lot of reader–author sites treat it as secondary to fiction — if they carry it at all. We built Snag a Book around finished Non-Fiction on purpose: practical shelves, real readers who finish Non-Fiction, and no fiction filler competing for the same slots.

No swap requirements, no review-for-review quotas, no paying for stars. Readers snag books because they want to read them — reviews are never the price of admission.

Basic account info, your genre preferences, and your snag/fetch/finish activity. See our Privacy page for full details.