What are the Gem Levels for and how do they affect me?
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 15, 2025
The gem levels used by our ARC program are a way to give our most active reviewers the best chance at reserving a copy of the books they want most, but unless your gem is Cracked, there will always be copies of each book available to all gem levels. And in cases where the author allows us to give out unlimited copies, then there are no gem level restrictions at all. How are gem levels calculated? The Hidden Gems ARC program is a program specifically for readers that love to read books and write reviews. Your gem level is designed to reflect how closely you match those criteria, and is calculated on a variety of different factors. For a number of reasons we do not provide the exact formula we use to make this calculation, but the main factor that goes into it is how reliably you are filling out… Read More >
Settings
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 15, 2025
From your Settings menu you can do things like change your genres of interest, set your username, change the email address we use to contact you, change your password, determine how ePub files are delivered, modify email preferences and more. Genre Interests The ARC books that are available for reservation on the New ARCs view are determined by the genres you indicated you were interested in reading when you first signed up. If you wish to change those selections, you can do that at any time from the Settings page. Just add a checkmark for any of the genres you wish to see offers for, and remove them from any that you don’t. Just don’t forget to hit the Update button to save your changes! The next time you visit the New ARCs page you will see the available books that match those genres (and your review profiles). Important Note:… Read More >
Your Stats
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 15, 2025
If you select Your Stats from the menu, you’ll be shown a page with information about your membership (gem) level and some basic statistics about the books you’ve been sent. At the top you’ll see your current Gem level, along with a brief description of what that level means and some of the benefits you get from it (number of HGB points, etc). Below that, you’ll see some basic stats about the books we’ve sent you (as well as a circle graph to visualize these numbers) like total books sent and how many of those you have reviewed vs left a reason for not reviewing. If you would like to get a complete list of all the books we’ve sent, you can click the Email Me List of All Books button. This will send you an email with a CSV of all of the titles. This does not send the book… Read More >
Manage Profile Links
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 15, 2025
As we’ve explained in detail elsewhere, the main reason we need your review site profile information is to be able to tailor which books to show you based on where you can review. That means you need to fill out your profile information for the sites you can review, otherwise you won’t see any books! The Manage Profile Links menu item is where you do that. From this page you can also request to change existing profiles or even temporarily pause getting offers for a specific review site. Hidden Gems currently supports all seven of these review sites: Amazon Goodreads Kobo Barnes & Noble Bookbub Apple Books Google Play Books Each individual author determines which of these sites they want reviews on for their books. That means that if, for example, you can only review on Amazon and Goodreads, you would not be able to see offers or reserve books… Read More >
Completed Books section
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 14, 2025
Any books that you have already completed the reader form for will show up in the Completed Books section. This allows you to keep track of all the books you’ve already read, view/add your reviews/reasons for not reviewing, and add/edit your optional author comments. Note that as this list can eventually become quite long, we only display 10 books per page but you can move to the next page via the arrows at the bottom of the list. Quick Tip: You can request a complete list of books we’ve sent you in csv format, via the Your Stats tab. Filtering, Sorting and Search For those with many books in this list, you will find the ability to filter/sort your list or search for specific books useful. To shorten the list, you can use the Filter by field at the top. By default it is showing All books, but you can… Read More >
Books You’re Reading section
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 13, 2025
Any books that you were sent and haven’t yet filled out your reviews or reason for not reviewing for will show up in the Books You’re Reading section. This allows you to keep track of all the books you were sent that you’re still working on, as well review the key info, download the book files, etc. By default, all books that you haven’t completed the reader form for will show up in this list, with 10 books showing per page. You can move to the next page via the arrows at the bottom of the list if you have more than 10. Quick Tip: The Reader Form simply refers to each book found in this section. So when we say to fill out the reader form for a book, it just means to add your review, reason for not reviewing, etc, for that book. Filtering, Sorting and Search For… Read More >
New ARCs section
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 10, 2025
The New ARCs section of the app is where you can view all of the ARC books currently available for reservation within your genres of interest and that are looking for reviews on at least one of the sites you can review on (based on what you filled out via the Manage Profile Links menu option). From this section you can view quick info on each of the available books, including cover, title, author name and genre. If you received an email from us about available ARCs that are not showing up on this page, it could be that your Settings are set to send you the Compact version of our daily new ARC email. That version mentions all books regardless of genre settings, but only shows limited info like covers, titles and genres. If you saw something that interested you that isn’t listed, you can either go to your Settings… Read More >
How do I use the Hidden Gems App?
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 10, 2025
After logging into the Hidden Gems App, you’ll see a Dashboard that gives you access to everything you need to read and review an endless supply of free books. Learning to navigate the app is easy, and doing so is your key to reserving new books, keeping track of the books you’ve been sent, downloading book files, filling out reader forms (your reviews, etc), managing your account, and much more. We highly recommend ensuring notifications is turned on and that you check in regularly to make sure you never miss a great read or forget about the ones we’ve sent! The following is what the app looks like, and a brief description of the different elements, along with links to more info about each. In order to keep things organized, the app is divided into sections and screens, with the most important sections along the bottom (New ARCs, Books… Read More >
Why do you want my review site profile information?
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 10, 2025
There are two main reasons why we need the profile info for all the sites a reader can leave reviews on. First, as authors send out free copies of their books in the hopes of getting reviews (because reviews help sell books), and each author desires their reviews only on specific sites, we need to know where readers can review to be able to send the right offers to the right people. This allows us to not clutter your inbox or dashboard with books that you can’t review even if you wanted to, and only show you ones that are relevant. The second reason is that, for each book we send you, you’re required to fill out a reader form with either your review link or your reason for not reviewing. To make the process of adding your review links as easy as possible, we do it for you after you… Read More >
Help! I’m having login issues!
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 9, 2025
The Hidden Gems app allows users to sign in via a few different ways: Username and password Google Biometrics. Sign in with Username and Password To sign in by entering your username and password, just tap the login button from the sign in page, then enter your email address and password. Then tap LOGIN. If you’ve forgotten your password, tap the “Forgot Password?” link that is found below the login fields and button. Then enter the email address associated with your account and tap the SUBMIT button. This will send you an email with steps to reset your password. If you don’t see the email, check your spam/promo/junk folders. If you still don’t find it, ensure the email address you entered matches the one you signed up with originally. Note that you can also change either your email or password from the Settings link in the menu. Sign in with… Read More >
