A guideline on posting book content on social media in 2026

Sometimes it feels like the online book community is always in some sort of drama. To some extent, this is unsurprising: a lot has changed since lockdown with online spaces, and lots of readers are socially conscious and willing to discuss or challenge different perspectives. But with a thriving global community discussing various topics all the time, you’d be forgiven for finding things cyclical or confusing. Most recently, discussion circled back to a familiar question: should reviewers tag authors in reviews on social media?

I’ve decided to address this one as a post as I think that much of the confusion goes back to the rapidly changing climate, whether people believe authors and readers can or should be in the same spaces, and how they should present and interact. I’ve been on book Instagram for about 8 years now, so I wanted to weigh in with some (hopefully helpful) thoughts as someone who tries to keep their platform reader and author friendly. You can check out the shorter, Instagram version of this post here.

What Started This Round of Debate?

A reviewer posted about an upcoming release, rated it four stars, and wrote a review that was positive overall. However, they also mentioned that they did not like the ending and tagged the author in the post. The author then replied by critiquing the aesthetic presentation of the post and saying that the colours did not match the book. From there, the whole thing rapidly expanded into a wider book community discourse. People began debating who was in the wrong, whether the reviewer had breached some basic etiquette, whether the author had overreacted, whether there even are any agreed rules, and whether everyone should simply know these things by now.

What interests me most in moments like this is not the drama itself (maybe just a little bit); it’s the way these situations expose how many of our so-called community norms are actually unspoken. Most of us learn by watching others, by absorbing habits from the corners of the internet we happen to land in, and by making mistakes in public. That means what feels obvious to one person may be completely unfamiliar to another. I wasn’t aware, until this last incident, that this particular debate has not just been going on in recent times. I found a Reddit post from seven years ago, where a commenter said:

I only tag authors with things the author might be amused to know, like the precise number of copies of the book my students have stolen this year, or what my cat looks like reading their book.

A pretty good strategy, in my book.

Should You Tag Authors in Book Reviews?

My own answer is no, not as a general rule.

These days, I don’t think authors should usually be tagged in reviews, even when the review is mostly positive. The main reason is because people can’t always be aware of which comments are likely to be received as hurtful. Many of us are guilty of expecting other people to receive things based on our intention or our own outlook. This is why I feel it is safer to skip the tags. Especially now. Algorithms are optimised for reaching new audiences on topics they like to interact with. If an author wants to find the review, it is easy for them to do so. This also means that we are not forcing authors into reader conversations.

That doesn’t mean I think reviewers should soften their opinions or avoid honesty. Reviews are useful because they are honest. They are, like any review, for other consumers first and foremost. They help people decide what they might like, what might frustrate them, and whether a book sounds worth their time. They also contribute to broader conversations about craft, taste, trends, and expectations. I have purchased and enjoyed many a book as a result of reading a ‘negative’ review. Some people choose not to post negative reviews to social media at all, which I also support if that’s what makes people feel comfortable with posting online. There is space on social media for book review pages and book recommendation pages, and both give visibility to our favourite stories. 

What I am talking about is not the right to review, but the way reviews are delivered in shared online spaces like social media. For me, the question is not just ‘Am I allowed to say this?’ but also ‘Who is this for?’ If the post is for readers, then it can do its job perfectly well without notifying the author.

Why Tagging Authors in Reviews Can Be Problematic

One of the reasons this issue keeps resurfacing is that people sometimes talk about tagging as if it is neutral. I don’t think it is. A tag is not just administrative. It isn’t the same as mentioning a title in passing or placing a book in a stack of recent reads. It is a direct link to a person or brand account. It creates a notification. In many cases, it functions as an invitation to look.

That matters because reviews are not the same as promotional posts. Even when a review is positive, it still contains judgement. It still involves a reader publicly describing what did (and sometimes did not) work for them. That is entirely fair. But there is a difference between making that judgement available in public and putting it into someone’s direct line of sight, without considering if they are in a place to receive it.

NetGalley, a platform that helps promote books by getting digital ARCs into the hands of reviewers said on their blog:  ‘Authors deserve the right to protect and preserve their mental health.’ They go on to say: ‘Like everyone, they deserve a social media experience where they can enjoy connecting with peers and followers, rather than being notified every time a reader does not like their work.’

The fact that a review has a high rating does not necessarily make it better. A four-star review, for example, can be warm, enthusiastic, and generous but it can also include unwanted comparison, or be built around a criticism that happens to matter a great deal to the author. A review can be ‘good’ overall and still contain the line that stings most.

How Book Review Etiquette Has Changed on Social Media

Part of the confusion around this issue comes from the fact that online book culture has changed quite a lot over the years. People who have been in these spaces for a long time will remember a period when tagging authors, especially indie authors, was much more common and almost always felt like a gesture of support – allowing your carefully curated community know where to find and connect with their new favourite authors. It was often part of what made the community feel so warm and connected.

That is not really the environment we are in now. Platforms have become much more discoverability based. Posts travel beyond follower lists, sometimes without even landing on the grids of our followers! Authors can be tagged into praise, critique, marketing, discourse, memes, and arguments, sometimes all in one post. It can easily feel like less like community conversation and more like an emotional overexposure fun bag.

Do Authors Want to Be Tagged in Reviews? It Depends

Another reason blanket rules can become unhelpful is that authors are not a monolith, just like readers aren’t. Some authors don’t mind being tagged in reviews at all. Some actively encourage it, especially if they enjoy engaging with readers or want the visibility. Others would strongly prefer not to see reviews unless they choose to seek them out. Many fall somewhere in between.

This variability is exactly why assuming can be risky. Reviewers may assume a tag is supportive when the author experiences it as intrusive. Or the tag and the caption might be fine, but then the comments underneath go left and that’s when the author finds the post. Or other people see one tag and see it as permission to tag their less favourable posts.

It is also worth saying that people’s thresholds can fluctuate. Someone may genuinely welcome tags in one season of their career and find them overwhelming in another. A debut author dealing with release-week nerves may not respond the same way as a seasoned author with a larger team around them. An indie author building visibility may welcome a type of contact that another author, perhaps already overstretched, would rather avoid.

This is why I think caution is wiser than assumption. If there is no clear invitation to tag reviews, I don’t think it should be the default.

What to Do Instead of Tagging Authors in Reviews

None of this means readers should stop supporting authors publicly. Quite the opposite. There are many contexts in which tagging authors makes perfect sense and feels clearly celebratory (see cat-related Reddit comment in the intro). Bookmail posts are an obvious example (or pre-order excitement – pre-orders are SO important for authors). If you are excited to show what arrived, thank the publisher, or spotlight a forthcoming release you are eager to read, tagging can be part of that enthusiasm and can help you find others who have an interest in the same books. The same is true of release day posts, cover reveals, recommendation round-ups, curated reading lists, event announcements, and those lovely moments when you spot a book in a shop or library and want to celebrate it.

Bookstagram Etiquette: My Current Approach

My own system on social media has developed over time and is very much shaped by the kind of space I want my page to be.

1. I do not tag authors in reviews. I also do not use star ratings in my social media review posts anymore (I only decided on this one last year). That is partly because star ratings flatten a lot of nuance if people don’t read on, and partly because I do not love the idea of someone being confronted with a number attached to their work while casually scrolling. I tried putting star ratings at the end of my reviews, but I wasn’t convinced it made much difference. I am not against ratings. I just save them for review platforms now. It hasn’t made any difference to likes or engagement.
2. I tend not to post full social media reviews of books I completely disliked. That does not mean I think critical responses should be hidden. It simply means that I use other spaces for that level of critique. Goodreads, StoryGraph, and this blog all provide a more suitable context for fuller commentary on my experience, because people go there looking for that kind of detail. Social media, at least for me, works better when I assume people are mostly just passing by. I still love a chatty caption though.

Not everyone will agree with my way of doing things, and that is fine. My point is not that everyone should adopt my exact system. Everyone’s use of social media isn’t the same. It is that reviewers benefit from being intentional and aware of who might be watching. What you post when your account is a bit smaller or private, might not warrant the same approach as it grows. It helps to know, before a situation arises, what kind of tone and boundary you want your page to have. I have some general guidelines at the end that might be useful if you want more ideas.

Should Authors Even be in Reader Spaces?

This is another debate that comes up probably more often than anything else, and would probably warrant its own post, but I personally feel that readers and writers are two sides of the same coin and are therefore part of the same community. Most authors were first readers. But there is a different dynamic once someone is a published author when interacting about books online. It is astonishingly easy for a simple response to a post to turn into a pile on. And yes, I do understand that there are people who welcome this response, but is that the type of community we want?

Many of the clashes that occur online are not examples of one set of people who are intruding on a space belonging to someone else. They are examples of ordinary people having public human reactions in a system that rewards immediacy, sensationalism and rage, and makes grace harder to practise. That does not make every response equally acceptable, but it does suggest we should be careful about how we show up in our communities online.

The Real Issue: There Is No Rule Book for Book Communities

People talk about ‘book community etiquette’ as though it is stable, widely taught, and universally understood. In reality, much of it is informal, inherited, and highly platform-specific. What one part of Bookstagram treats as obvious another part may barely have considered. What feels normal on BookTok may feel strange on Instagram. What made sense in a smaller indie reading circle may not work in a much larger mixed audience. Even the meanings of support, kindness, and professionalism are interpreted differently depending on where people are coming from.

This matters because shame often enters the conversation where education would be more useful. People say, ‘They should have known better,’ when it may be more accurate to say, ‘They did not know what this would mean here.’ If someone has acted out of malice, that is one thing. If someone has misread a social norm, or simply not known about it, that is another. Sometimes it really is better to assume the best.

Likewise, telling authors to ‘just turn off tags’ might not be a fair suggestion. Authors are not only tagged by reviewers. They may be tagged by booksellers, event organisers, interviewers, publicity teams, readers sharing excitement, librarians, festival programmers, and friends. Telling them simply to disable tags may mean missing many forms of professional visibility and community interaction. It also places the burden entirely on the affected party rather than our community aiming to act in a way that is as safe and positive for everyone.

A Simple Rule for Tagging Authors in Reviews

If I had to reduce my view to one principle, it would be this: do not put someone in direct contact with criticism unless there is a clear reason to do so.

The review does not become more honest, more intelligent, more useful, or more legitimate because the author has been tagged. The only real difference is that the author is more likely to see it and potentially takes away their choice over the matter. Authors will already have editors, ARC readers, their agent, alpha or beta readers, and a whole host of other people read their book before it reaches everyone else. Whether or not they want more feedback should be their decision. Tagging the book under hashtags or using SEO will be enough for those who want to interact with reviews to do so.

Final Thoughts: Kindness, Not Perfection

I do not think the aim here should be to create a book community in which nobody ever gets anything wrong. That is not realistic, and it would probably make these spaces unbearable anyway. People are going to misread tone, misjudge context, assume too much, react too quickly, and bring different expectations with them. All of us have our dodgy moments.

What I do think is possible is a community where a matter can be discussed without anyone being treated as though they are morally defective or unintelligent for not having absorbed or been aware of an unspoken rule.

If we want book spaces to be thoughtful, welcoming, and genuinely enriched by the values we so often celebrate in literature, then we need to carry those values with us into the way we speak to and about one another.

That, to me, is the real etiquette worth protecting.

Practical Guidelines

These guidelines are based purely on my own ideas. Let me know if you have any other tips or do things differently in the comments:

• As a general rule, do not tag authors in reviews.

• If you want to support an author publicly, tag them in promotional or celebratory posts instead, such as bookmail, release day posts, curated recommendation lists, event announcements, or sightings of their book in the wild.

• If you are reviewing an ARC or want to acknowledge where a book came from, consider tagging the publisher or imprint rather than the author.

• If an author or their publicity team has explicitly invited review tags, that is different, but I would still pay attention to tone and context.

• If someone tags an author and seems not to realise why that might be uncomfortable, explain gently rather than assuming bad intent.

And if you are ever unsure, ask yourself who your post is really for. If the answer is ‘other readers’, then it probably does not need to reach the author directly.

Discussion

What do you think about tagging authors in book reviews? Has your view changed over time, especially as social media has changed? Do you think the book community needs clearer shared etiquette, or is this one of those things people simply learn through experience?

Sources:

Chuck Wendig Reddit Post

Wendig, Chuck. “Hi, Definitely Don’t Tag Authors in Your Negative Reviews of Their Books.” Reddit – r/Fantasy, May 2019. 

Chuck Wendig: "Hi, Definitely Don’t Tag Authors In Your Negative Reviews Of Their Books"
byu/KristaDBall inFantasy

NetGalley / Bookish Article

Galluchi, Kelly. “Who to Tag in Book Reviews on Social Media.” NetGalley, Apr 2025. 

NetGalley’s Guide to Who to Tag in Book Reviews

Steph (@the_abundant_word). “Author Tags on Book Reviews, Yah or Nah.” Instagram, March 2026.

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