How to Write a Book Review by Eileen O'Finlan

 

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Book reviews are very important for authors, especially those of us who are not household names. Not only do they help potential readers decide if a book might be to their taste, they also have an effect on the algorithms. The more reviews, the more a site promotes it.

One of the most common reasons readers don't leave reviews is because they have the mistaken idea that they are expected to write it as though they are a professional literary critic. Nothing could be further from the truth.

To write a book review, the reader only needs to keep three questions in mind:

1. Did you like the book?

2. What was your favorite part? (no spoilers!)

3. Would you recommend this book to others and why?

Putting the answers to these questions into a coherent paragraph is all an amateur reviewer needs to do. Failing that, at least leave a star rating. Even a review that consists only of "I really liked this book" is better than no review at all.

Another reason some might not leave reviews is because they are intimidated by the technology and don't know how to do it. It's actually very easy. Here is a Youtube video explaining step-by-step how to leave a review on Amazon. The steps for leaving reviews on other sites are similar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyXrmVZv21w

Happy reading and reviewing!

That's Egregious! by Jamie Hill

In preparing my blog post about reviews, I was looking for a word that meant something was both good and bad at the same time. (I still haven't put my finger on the word, so if you know what I'm trying to say, hit me up in the comments!) I stumbled upon egregious, which is such a fun word I had to look it up. 

Egregious 

adjective

1. extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant:

an egregious mistake; an egregious liar.

Synonyms: gross, outrageous, notorious, shocking. 

 

Egregious is also good for 11 points in Scrabble and 14 points in Words With Friends, bahaha

 

It's not really what I was after, though. Some reviews are certainly egregious. Some are just plain stinkers. Some are so wonderful they can leave an author floating on air for days.

 

When I first started writing, reviews were much harder to come by. There were a handful of review sites and they generally had a lengthy waiting list of books to be reviewed. At that time, the e-publishing world was just breaking loose and suddenly there were more books than any site could handle. 

Individuals with a love of reading and the ability to use Blogger discovered they could become reviewers, too, and many of my best reviews have come from these smaller sites and/or individuals. Many of them had a code, if a book was a stinker they'd just let it go and not post a really bad review. I appreciate them for doing that, because the bottom line is reviews are subjective. Purely subjective.

Some of the most popular books have gotten plenty of negative reviews, yet they've gone on to become movies, video games, action figures, etc., and earn the author millions. *sigh*

The past few years has shown a rise in the reader reviews at sites like Amazon. It's nice to allow readers to give their opinions, and I don't think there's an author out there who would criticize a genuinely thoughtful review. It might sting, but it might also bring up something for the author to keep in mind when writing the next book.

Family Secrets came out in 2006 the first time, and both of the main characters smoked. It wasn't as big of a deal ten years ago, but man, oh man, are people on me about that now. Many of the reader reviews mentioned how much they hated that Jack and Crystal both smoked. They were serious about it! (I got a little flack about the sex in the book. Okay, most of that was from my mom, but some from readers too. Yet the smoking seemed to be a much bigger concern.) In book two, my hero Brady started out as a smoker and quit by the end. And book three had no main characters who smoked. Zero. My mama didn't raise no dummy. (But I'm still a bit smuttier than she'd like.)

 

The negative side of Amazon reviews is that a 'reader' doesn't have to have read the book to post. I got one review on a book that's no longer available giving it one star because it was so short, the reader didn't even read it. *Blink* Excuse me?

 

Here's a couple of reviews for my novella On The Edge. It has several four and five star reviews like this one:  

 

"Surprisingly full story-line for such a short novella. I enjoyed this sweet romance with a good dose of suspense thrown in." 

Then there's a one star review that says:

"Hated it. Don't buy it. Worse published book ever. Don't buy this trash. Also very short......BAD. Big disappointment
I read a lot of books and this was the worst."

 

Her grammar aside, I believe there's a compliment in there somewhere. Amazon has over a million books published at this very moment. If mine is indeed the 'WORSE PUBLISHED BOOK EVER', I want a plaque somewhere with my name on it.

Seriously, what good does a review like that do? Does it tell you why she didn't like the book (which she probably got free on one of the book's promo days)? Does it say anything about the plot or the characters? Or does it, perhaps, say more about the reviewer, who chooses to hide behind the name 'Amazon Customer'. Original, gal. Creative.

 

My publisher has started a campaign that whenever she sees a nonsense review like the one above, she marks it as 'unhelpful'. This makes it drop lower in the list of reviews and lowers the reviewers 'helpful' percentage. It's not much, but it's something we can do to say that while opinions are subjective--stupid, unhelpful reviews don't have to be tolerated. An author needs to overlook them and move on. Or blog about them for a little comic relief. 

 

I'm still waiting for my plaque, by the way.

 

Find Family Secrets, On The Edge, my newest novel, Time To Kill, along with my other titles at Books We Love: http://bookswelove.net/authors/jamie-hill/#

Visit my website: http://www.jamiehill.biz/

Follow me on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jamie-Hill/135137799867321

 

 

Reputations and Bad Apples

I came across a very interesting article on Forbes.com  and decided to share some of the more pertinent info included.  I urge you to go and read the remaining text as you may be surprised to which levels some authors will go to promote themselves.

Indeed, many authors will recognize the phenomenon of the malicious one-star review designed to sabotage their books.  Although Amazon prohibits "spiteful remarks" it is difficult to get such reviews removed.  There's absolutely no doubt that some of these reviews are coming from other authors who see self-publishing as a zero sum game in which if they lose out if another author does well.  Other may come from an author's fans to see anyone else's success as a threat to their idol, or from griefers and trolls who just get off on attacking strangers in public.

According to Mark Corker from Smashwords:  It's a flaw in the system that negativity can become so amplified.  You can have a string of four and five star reviews, and then you get a string of one star reviews and it will torpedo your sales because people will see those most recent reviews and it's a warning sign to the potential readers...  If there's a reviewer that only leaves on star reviews, or they've left nothing but a single negative review, they're a carpet bomber.

Explanation:  Carpet-bombers do not leave negative reviews in order to help readers avoid a bad book, they do it to undermine the reader's confidence in positive reviews, damage the book's ranking in Amazon and thus that author's sales.  They are like fake positive reviews, designed to game the system, 

Author Robert Kroese says:  The effect of a bad review goes far beyond the impact that it has on the author's ego, however.  The prominence of a book on Amazon.com is determined primarily by two factors:  how well the book has sold and how positive its reviews are.  More highly rated books are displayed more prominently, which leads to more sales.  Increased sales lead to even more prominent displays which leads to still more sales.  Through the miracle of the positive snowball effect, a few hundred rave reviews can transfer an otherwise unremarkable book into a worldwide bestseller.

Ginger's Comments:  As someone who has a whole lot less than a few hundred reviews, I'm deeply concerned that these hit and run reviewers are damaging my credibility as an author.  I'm very thankful that we are willing to read and review each other's work to help overcome the stigma. Although there were rumors that author reviews were being removed, I haven't seen any of mine disappear.  We can only hope that despite being authors, we are also serious readers with opinions that matter.