Tip Sheet for Online Reviewers

(Version 2.2, Updated 01/12/05)

By Jay Wiseman

The World Wide Web currently offers the average reader a fascinating opportunity, one previously only available to professional journalists: the chance to post a review of a book that will be read by large numbers of people who are considering buying the book. This allows the average reader a substantial opportunity to influence the purchasing decisions of a very significant number of people.

Online reviews can be especially valuable regarding specialized activities. Unfortunately, all-too-many online reviews about specialized activities are written by a reviewer who either lacks adequate familiarity with the activity or has some sort of bias (unfortunately, usually a negative bias) regarding the author. If you are an informed person regarding the activity in question and feel that you could write a reasonably objective, good-faith review, your input could be exceptionally valuable -- particularly to newcomers who are just making their first tentative explorations into the activity. Your review could be a real service to them.

Currently, there are at least two major online book vendors that offer the opportunity for the average person to write online reviews. In both cases, the reviewer must provide the vendor with their name and a valid email address, but this does not result in the reviewer receiving spam.

Anyhow, the current major vendors are:

Amazon.com (www.amazon.com)

Barnes and Noble (www.bn.com)

Both sites have reviewer guidelines that are wise to read over before posting your review. (Be advised that these guidelines change periodically.) Among other things, reviews that grossly violate these guidelines will probably never appear. It's also a good idea to read over the reviews posted of a number of different books before posting your own review.

Both places provide templates that are fairly easy to fill out. However, these templates don't currently offer a spell-checker, so you might want to create the body of your review in a word processor and then do a copy-and-paste into the main text section. Keep in mind that a very large number of people may see what you have written, so take your time on your review and polish it. Reviews that contain things like spelling errors lose a lot of credibility. (One hint: If you write reviews of the same book at more than one site, please don't do a copy-and-paste of the same text at more than one location. Such duplications are easy to spot, and you'll lose credibility when they're spotted.)

In addition to the websites listed above, it can also be useful to post your reviews to newsgroups, social networking sites, and mailing lists if the subject is highly relevant and such postings are otherwise consistent with their policies. Additionally, if you belong to a club of fellow enthusiasts regarding the subject of the book, and the club has a newsletter, there's a pretty good chance that the editor of the newsletter would also like to see your review. Finally, given that new forums for online reviews appear from time to time, you might want to do the occasional search on a phrase like "online book reviews [insert activity here]" to see what you find. Again, it's wise to change the wording of a given review somewhat when posting it in various locations.

Please put some specifics in your review. People care about whether you liked or disliked a book, but they care more about why. How did the book benefit you? What did it lack? Is any information in the book inaccurate? How well does the author use language? Is the book logically laid out? (Note: when writing about a fiction book, please don't put "spoilers" in your review. Don't, for example, reveal the ending.)

Given that many readers are comparison shopping, it's fine to compare the book that you are reviewing to similar ones. (Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble actually encourage this.) Amazon also allows you to vote on reviews put up by other people. Doing this can be very useful as well.

Personal note: as of this writing (01/05) Amazon.com has the ability to have "recommended instead of" and a "recommended in addition to" types of recommendations made. While I'm quite comfortable having people recommend my books "in addition to" other books, I ask that they please not recommend my books "instead of" other books.

You can also usually choose how much of yourself to reveal. You can usually remain very anonymous, or you can provide enough information about yourself -- including, if you wish, an email address at which you can be contacted -- that some reviews seem more like subtle personal ads. (Be sure to read the reviewer's guidelines carefully if privacy is of special concern to you.) Keep in mind that all information you supply will be posted for very large numbers of people, with very different attitudes and points of view, to see. Thus, you might want to think twice before posting something about yourself that you wouldn't want to appear on the front page of your local newspaper. In general, I recommend you take the low-profile approach over the high-profile approach. Remember that you won't be able to control who sees the information you provide about yourself, and that it may be up there for years.

Please think twice before you write a strongly negative review of a book. It is possible to dash off a review of a book fairly quickly, and that can be a bad thing. Remember that each book is, so to speak, "somebody's baby." Somebody put a lot of time, thought, work, hope, and money into that book, and it deserves thoughtful consideration. (I've noticed that people who have themselves written books tend to be noticeably slower to write a truly scathing review of somebody else's book.) On the other hand, some books richly deserve such a scathing review, so if you have given yourself some time -- as in at least a few days -- to think about it and you're still convinced that a book really does deserve a good flaming, go ahead and fire. Just do your reader a favor and be specific about why you think so. Generalizations don't help much.

It can be helpful to imagine that your review was being used as evidence in a court case. Consider how a jury would regard your review. Would twelve average people think that your review was a fair, balanced, considered piece of writing, or would they conclude that it was biased, reckless, and maybe even malicious?

Also, it's usually not all that great an idea to directly express either agreement or disagreement with points made by other reviewers. While you might want to cover the same points, please keep in mind that this is basically a solo performance, not a debate.

Allow some time to go by before you expect your review to appear. I've seen reviews take more than two weeks to be posted. (Also, for some reason, some reviews get lost entirely; this is another reason to have a back-up copy.)

I suggest that you not write too many book reviews within a relatively short time. A sudden flurry of reviews, either positive or negative, can detract from their credibility. At the very most, posting one review a week is a very brisk pace and helps preserve both your enthusiasm and your trustworthiness.

One of the benefits of writing an online review is that you can reward an author in ways other than by buying their book. For example, let's say that someone loans you a book and that you really enjoy it. Obviously, the author will not derive any direct economic benefit from your reading a borrowed copy of their book, but if you write a favorable online review they will probably benefit much more long-term economic benefit from your review than if you had simply purchased it.

Another benefit of writing online reviews, especially for Amazon.com, is that you can create a name and a ranking for yourself and this name and ranking may open some doors for you. For example, depending on factors such as how many reviews you write and how many helpful votes your reviews receive, you may earn a place among Amazon's "Top 1000," "Top 500," or even "Top 100" reviewers. This credential can help you get free books. Given that reviews are a very cost-effective form of publicity, many publishers will be happy to send you a book without charge if you contact them and say something along the lines of: "Hi. I'm an Amazon.com Top 1000 Reviewer and I'd be interested in doing a review of your book for their site. Would it be possible for you to send me a reviewer's copy?" If they send you the book, be sure that you do indeed write the review within a reasonable time (say, thirty days) and that you let them know when the review has appeared.

Writing good-quality online reviews can be rewarding for the bookseller, the book's author, the book's publisher, the writer of the review, and, most importantly, the reader of the review. Everybody benefits!

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