Now with Book Reviews! Sort of…

A friend of mine, Nick Morgan, has started a book review blog.  It’s mostly just for fun.  But he’s invited me to do the speculative fiction reviews, and I’m really looking forward to it.  I’ve always wanted to give book reviewing a try.  Also guest-blogging will be a mutual friend of ours Marisa Greene.

I may or may not be cross-posting the reviews to the Chimney.  I haven’t decided yet whether that would dilute the focus of this blog to much.  If I don’t cross-post, I probably will link to them on Twitter and at the bottom of whatever post I happen to be writing for the Chimney that week.

 

Keep an eye on Notes from The Dark Net for those reviews.

 

How to Write a Book Review: What to Include, Part 3

In part 2, talked about what to put in the body of a review.  Now I’m going to talk about the odds and ends of reviews that get scattered about.  I prefer to put most of it at the end, but you can also put some of these things at the beginning of your review:

1. Comps/Recs: The first thing that I don’t see in a lot of reviews is comp titles.  Comparative titles are books of a similar genre with similar stories and themes.  Another name for comp titles might be rec(ommendation)s.  You might notice if you buy on Amazon their “buyers who bought this book also bought” lists.  Those are recs based on their similarity to the book you’re looking at.  There are two valuable things about comp titles/recs, and it plays into why I’m using two names here.  Recs are books you suggest to a reader because they are similar to the book the reader is currently considering/has read.  Comp titles are books the reader might possibly have read already that are similar to the book they are considering.  The idea is, if you liked a comp title, you’ll like this title, and if you like this title, you’ll enjoy a rec.

2. Other books by: This is a category you can put at the beginning or the end.  Your telling the reader other books by this author they may have read or heard of, and how they are similar or different.  The goal here is to help them decide if they might want to read this book based on those other books this author wrote.  If they hated those other books, they might dislike this one, but if they loved them, they might love this.

Somewhat related is putting the author’s name in the title of your review.  If you want to snag a reader that might not have liked an author’s previous book, you might leave it out of the title.  That way, they’ve already gotten to your review before they can dismiss this book out of hand.  Conversely, if you’re after readers who liked the author’s previous work, then you definitely want to include the name in the title, so they know your review is about the right book.

3. Topic of Interest: Some books, especially YA books, have a topic related to the story, such as mental illness, or bullying.  It might in some cases be valuable to include information such as informative websites, hotlines such as the National Suicide Hotline, etc. Or a book about GMOs might link to Monsanto or anti-GMO pages.  A book about space might link to NASA.  A book review involving the Society for Creative Anachronism might benefit from links to the SCA’s website.

4. Other Reviews/Interviews: If you’ve read other reviews, or particularly interesting interviews with the author, you might want to link to those, as well.

5. Ratings: If you include star ratings or number ratings in your reviews, you can put them at the end of the beginning depending on your style.  Ratings can be useful, because they can encourage a reader to read a book, and you can give a higher rating than might be expected of a book you had issues with but still enjoyed.  However, ratings can also be misleading.  Is a three-star review positive?  Neutral?  Has the reader enjoyed books you’ve reviewed with that rating previously?  That’s something to keep in mind when considering whether ratings are a valuable tool for your review or not.

There are certainly other extras a review can have, such as give-away copies, but the above seem to me to be the major ones.  But if anyone reading this has suggestions as to additions I should make, I’d love to hear them.

 

Now that I’ve addressed the basics of why and how to do a book review, I want to look at how to put this together to create an actual review.  So next time, I’m going to take these posts, and use them to write a review of Nova Ren Suma’s 17 & Gone.  And the post after that, I’m going to dissect that review, and explain, again based on these six posts, why I chose to include what I did, and why I didn’t include other things.

 

How to Write a Book Review: What to Include, Part 2

This is post number two in my discussion on what to include in a book review.  Last time, I talked about the metadata for a review.  This time, I’m going to talk about the body of the review:

Body of Review

Initial Thoughts

After-Reading Review

Conclusion

Final Thoughts

Most reviewers like to start out with some general thoughts.  These initial thoughts might include a quick comment on an author’s previous book, if there was one.  They might include feelings the reviewer had while reading the book.  They might include a quick comment on the main character.

The review itself generally, though not always starts in the second paragraph.  There are many, many possible formats for a review, including just several linked paragraphs, titled sections, a quick statement of opinion on the awesomeness of the book.  Many people liked to address the plot, the characters, any special subject matter, and occasionally themes.  Rarely do actual reviewers comment on the quality of the prose, except to say it was incredible.  With Amazon or GoodReads reviews, the reviewer might comment on anything.  Finally, especially with special-interest reviewers, the reviewer might comment on particularly bad handling of certain subject matter, such as race, gender, or cultural depiction.

I differentiate between the conclusion and final thoughts, though they are often mixed together.  I define the conclusion as a summing up of the major points of the body of the review.  Was it a good story, well-written, clearly addressed themes.

The final thoughts generally include whether the reviewer would read this author again, are they glad they bought the book, and what they think the general audience of the book is.

Next time, I’ll discuss the miscellaneous post-review scraps.

 

How to Write a Book Review: What to Include, Part 1

Last time, I talked a bit about how knowing your platform can help you write a more informative book review.  That covers all three my questions to ask before writing a review.  So, now, I’m going to suggest what infomation should be provided in a review, and why each part of it is useful for writing reviews in general.  I’ll give the list, and then look at each piece of it below that.  I won’t add formatting right now.  I’ll save that for later.

Metadata

Title:

Author:

Genre:

Page Count:

Publisher/Publication Date:

Source:

Cover Photo

Summary

Body of Review

Initial Thoughts

After-Reading Review

Conclusion

Final Thoughts

Post-Review

Comp Titles/If You Liked this Recs

Didn’t Like This Recs

Author Bio

Authors Other Works

The order of these can bet switched up if you want, but this is generally the most common and most useful order.

The metadata kind of goes together, so let’s look at it all at once.

Almost always, for obvious reasons, the title of the book goes in the title of your post.  Often, and I personally advocate this, the author’s name goes there, too.  For example Review: The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan.  Obviously, most pre-built blog software won’t let you use formatting in the title, but if you have your own website, or a pro-version that lets you create your own template, you can do something like the above.

Genre is useful, especially as a tag, for helping people find books they know they’re interested in.  Of course, if you have a genre review blog, you might be able to leave it out.  Unless you like naming sub-genres, or of you think the genre of the book is arguable.

As far as page count, it can be good to include, although it’s specific to certain editions.  But some people like short books, and others like long books, so it can’t really hurt.

Publisher and publication date are less relevant.  Date can tell you how old the book is, which can say something about writing style or subject, although only if the reader already knows the genre fairly well.  Publisher is more just a detail.  It might encourage a reader to look at similar books in a genre, but that’s about it.

The source is where you got the book from: publisher, author, agency, contest, store, library.  Books received as part of publisher/agency/author promotion require a disclosure.  Store, contest, library are just useful information.

Covers are also not necessarily relevant to a review.  However, especially in a store or library, knowing what the cover looks like makes it easier for the reader to find.  It can also suggest if they are the target audience for a book, as most covers are targeted at specific demographics.  Especially in YA/NA and many commercial genres.

The last part I’ll go over for today is the summary. You can write your own summary, use a Goodreads or Amazon summary, use the back-cover or cover-flap copy, or use what the provider of the copy suggests, if they suggest anything.  Summaries should not contain major spoilers, ie, major twists in the second half of the book, obvious answers to mysteries not noted on the cover copy, and they should obviously avoid specifics of the conclusion of the story.  A summary/blurb’s purpose is to entice a reader, or give them an idea of what the book is about, not to spoil it for them.

Many reviewers like to put their metadata in a little box or visually separate part of the review.  It makes it easier to locate on the page, and highlights it for the reader.  It might also be useful to include links to author/publisher/store websites to help readers learn more about the book or purchase it straight from your review.

That’s all for today.  Probably by tomorrow, I’ll publish the second half, going over what to actually write in the body of a review.

 

How to Write a Book Review: Know Your Platform

Last time, I talked about knowing your audience and how that could help you write more successful book reviews.  This time, I’m going to take a look at platform.  Platform is on what basis you are reviewing a book.  It applies to Amazon or Goodreads reviews just as much as to book review blogs.

There are several common platforms for book reviews:

1. I read the book, and I want to share what I thought about it.

2. I am an author and I was asked to blurb/review this book.

3. I review books as a job/hobby (and may receive review copies from publishers).

4. I love this genre of book, so I’m reviewing books in that genre to introduce others to it or encourage them to read more.

5. I review books because of a certain element they have that I want to be more well-known, more popular, such as: environmentalism, racism, PoC characters, cultural appropriation, etc.

There are more, but those are some of the most common.  They can all work for individual reviews as well as series of reviews.  It can be important, especially in review series, to establish your platform explicitly.  This can help readers to decide whether your review will be helpful to them.  You can do this as part of your blogs “about” page, but you can still do it on a review site with a disclaimer or similar at the beginning of the review.

If you plan to depart from your platform for a certain review, it’s also good to explain that at the beginning of the review, as well.

Now, what does knowing your platform do for you?  It depends on what you want out of your blog.

1. It can help keep you consistent so that readers will keep coming beck if they find something they like.

2. It can encourage readers to keep an eye out for your reviews because you’ve established a platform that can appeal to them.

3. It can keep away readers who you are not targeting, and avoid problems of a reader wandering in from the wrong place.

Establishing expectations in your readers and then living up to them is the best way to keep readers happy. And it’s much easier to do when you have a coherent platform ahead of time.

4. Finally, having a platform allows your readers to recommend your reviews or review blog to other people they know who may find it interesting–even if they themselves don’t care for the genre, or subject, or theme.

All of those things are reasons why you should know your platform when you write a review.

Lastly, here are a few things you can mention when writing a review to tell a reader where you’re coming from:

1. Are you an author?

2. Are you an author who writes in the genre you review?

3. Did you receive a copy of the story/book from the publisher?

4. Do you read frequently in this genre, and do you have favorite sub-genres that might bias your opinion of a book?

These can be placed in your bio/about, or in some cases, directly in your review.

I’m sure I’ve missed some details here, so if anyone has any suggestions about how else to capitalize on having a pre-set platform, or disagrees that it is always helpful, I’d love to hear it.

Next time, I’ll give an example of a book review skeleton, and explain why I think each part is important.

 

How to Write a Book Review: Know Your Audience

Last time, I talked about knowing why you want to write book reviews.  This time, I’m going to talk about who you’re writing them for.

All sorts of people read books, and they have all sorts of personal tastes.  Some review styles will work for some people, but none will work for all people.  That said, there are a few general categories of reader you can think about when imagining your target audience:

1. General readers— These are your everyday people who often read best-sellers and critically acclaimed novels, and books in Oprah’s Book Club.  They often won’t know genre tropes and conventions, or specific sub-genres.  Common genre story-lines might not appeal to them.  Or they might find them fascinating and novel.  Each reader will be different.

2. Genre readers— Convincing a reader to read a book in their favorite genre is different than convincing a general reader.  On the one hand, they probably know most of the tropes, conventions, and names for those tropes and conventions.  On the other hand, they’ve been reading in this genre for a long time.  You have to convince them that this book is worth their time: unique, fresh twist; good writing.

3. Non-genre readers— One of the hardest audiences to write for might be those who don’t see the value in whatever type of book you’re reviewing.  They would never read such trash.  It’s all written by hacks, and full of cliches, or its only purposes is for pathetic people to escape their boring, everyday lives.  Or, they may just not enjoy the kinds of stories they think your chosen genre(s) is full of.  Even if they have no conscious prejudice, you still have to find an angle of attack that highlights what they value in a story.  And that’s going to be different for every pair of “opposing” genres you encounter.

4. Librarians, especially if you write CB/MG/YA/NA— Libraries, public and school, order a huge number of books.  They use online reviews to decide which books will bring the most benefit with their limited budget.  There are many professional pipelines for reviews and books being targeted at librarians.  But they do read many independent reviewers, as well.  Especially for school librarians, it can be difficult to figure out what they’re looking for in a book.  Of course they will buy books they themselves enjoy, but they are also looking for books they can recommend to their patrons.  The best of them will know what groups that they serve are under-represented in terms of the books available to them in the library.  They’ll be looking at reading level, profanity, sexual or violent scenes, etc.

5. Writers— As the online community of writers grows, they are becoming something of a target audience in their own right.  In some ways they are like genre writers in that they’ll have a more than passing knowledge of genre conventions.  But many of them also spend a lot of time learning markets, reading for research on top of for fun, and they often have limited time for reading.  So it can be much harder to really sell a book to a writer than to a normal reader.

6. Young readers— Younger readers are increasingly online, and looking at book reviews to find what they want to read.  Especially fans of “children’s book” categories such as Young Adult and Middle Grade.  Depending on what categories and genres you review, you’re going to have different audiences, especially in terms of gender.  And it’s important to know what’s trending in terms of story-line and genre, because trends are big in categories like YA, and a lot of people will go online to find something similar to whatever it is they just enjoyed.

Knowing your audience is going to let you know what formats might be appropriate for your review, what to emphasize, what to focus critique on.

Next time, I’m going to look at why readers are going to trust your reviews.  Basically, what is your platform as a reviewer.  It’s important for a book reviewer to have a platform, although, considering anyone can review something on Amazon, it might not be important in the way you’d think.

 

How to Write a Book Review: Know Your Purpose

All pieces of writing have a purpose.  A purpose the author chooses.  But certain genres have a built-in purpose.  For book reviews, the #1 purpose that comes with the territory is helping readers to find books they would enjoy reading.  And that’s because…

Every time someone reads something, they also have a purpose.  And it might differ significantly from the authors.  99.99% of people who read book reviews are doing so because they want to find a book they would enjoy reading.  The reader’s purpose is always going to supersede the writer’s purpose, because once you submit something to the public view, you give up some measure of control over that product.  You can’t make a reader do what you want.  And trying will probably end badly.

So, that’s your #1 purpose.

But of course everyone has their own particular purpose for writing, and there can be a broad array of author purposes:

1. To help readers find books they want to read.  (See above.)  Many readers read a few best-sellers or critically-acclaimed titles a year.  But others read a lot of books, all year long.  And the truth is, especially if you have narrow tastes, it can be hard to find enough books to read.  And if a reader maybe wants to expand their reading pool, it can be hard to figure out which way to go to find books you’ll enjoy.  And that’s where book reviews can come in.  For example, a reader who got back into reading with E.L. James and 50 Shades of Grey might most enjoy various category romances, or they might most enjoy Paranormal Romance, the inspiration for 50 Shades.  And they’re likely to turn to book reviews/reviewers to figure that out.

2. To share their enjoyment of particular books.  A perfectly legitimate reason to review books.  Spreading the love is always a boon to literature.

3. To expose readers to books they feel don’t get enough attention.  For example, books with QUILTBAG protagonists, PoC characters, etc.

4. To encourage readers to read in a certain genre.  For example, there are book reviewers dealing in Urban Fantasy, Steampunk etc.  New genres, or genres on the fringes have great work within them, but it’s common for them to not get a lot of attention because word of mouth hasn’t spread, or whatever.  Or, perhaps there’s a glut of books and it’s hard to decide what’s worth reading.  That can be true for both current readers and prospective ones.

5. To call out problematic things in the story. Including but not limited to racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, cultural appropriation, etc.

All of the above (and some I missed?) are valid reasons to start a review blog/site/column.  And knowing which reason or combination of reasons is why you review books can help you to be more effective in reaching that goal.

But remembering why readers are reading your reviews can help make you more effective, too.  You can benefit from considering your target audience and your likely audience when you write reviews.  Which is what I’ll be discussing next week.

So, what are you trying to achieve by writing a book review?  (Whether it’s just one or a whole review blog?)

 

How To Write A Book Review: The Spec Fic Way

Really it’s just my way, but the title makes it seem more legitimate.

Although I have not generally written reviews on this blog, as a reader constantly searching for new books to read, I have often contemplated what the perfect review structure for me would be.  And so I have decided to apply some logical processes and the scientific method to create a review format that I think meets all the functional requirements of reviews and also gives me something to do on here because I am out of blogging ideas.  So it begins:

When coming up with a review format, there are a few questions we need to consider:

1. What is the purpose of a book review?

2. Who is going to be reading these book reviews?

3. Why should they care what I have to say?

These are the three general questions that can be applied to all non-fiction, of which book reviews are a subgenre.  The first is a question of purpose, the second of people, and the third of platform.  (Actually, the second is of target audience, but having three “p” words sounds better and is apparently a marketing strategy.)

So, some answers:

1. The purpose of every book review is to help readers find books they will enjoy.  This is the prime directive.  There are a few other options:  To encourage people to read books you want them to read.  To shed some light on little known books.  To spread the word about books that are relevant to a certain political/social justice goal.  To sell an author’s books.  That last answer is not the kind of purpose I will be talking about.  People write reviews to achieve that goal, but that doesn’t make it a legitimate goal of a book review.

2. The people you are trying to reach are going to vary depending on what books you review.  If you’re reviewing books in a certain genre, then your main audience is going to be people who read in that genre.  They could also be general readers, readers that are part of a community that you belong to, or readers with a tendency to avoid reading the kind of book you are reviewing.  Your approach is going to differ depending on which kind of audience you are reaching out to.

3. Your platform is what gives you the authority to review books.  By authority, I don’t mean the right.  Everybody has the right to write book reviews.  I mean it’s what lends weight to your opinions.  Everyone has an opinion, and not all of them are equal.  (In order to avoid the whole philosophical debate, I’ll go into more detail on that in the second part of this discussion.)  Your platform is there to help readers decide whether they think your reviews will be helpful in finding them books they’d like to read.

That’s the overview.  Over the next few days, I’m going to expand on these ideas in individual posts.   The first is scheduled for this Wednesday, and will tackle Question #1 in more detail.  I’ll expand on the various purposes for writing a review, the reasoning behind those purposes, and whether they are good or bad or in the middle.