Most of my family and friends and even some of my reading fans have trouble writing a helpful and honest book review. It can be quite daunting to try and figure out what to say. Just what would be helpful to a fellow reader? You also want to give good information to the writer to let them know what is working in their story and what might not be. The more informative the review the more prevalence that book will receive in the rankings. Yes, the dreaded formula that each book selling website uses to determine which books get prominent display during searches. The more responses from readers will eventually translate into sales for that writer.
Book Review Workbook: Practice Makes Perfect – Become a Professional Book Reviewer
I decided last week to create a workbook for those who love to read and want to support their favorite writers. The workbook has a generic kind of format with the basic information about the book at the top of the page. Then there are several sections with blank lines to fill out.
- Plot – Describe the main theme
- Format and Professionalism – Was the book formatted properly, grammatically correct, etc.
- Favorite and Least Favorite Parts of the Story/Characters
- Conclusion – How many starts and why or why not recommend it to your friends and family.
We have all probably filled out similar forms for school. These questions, I thought, might help the readers to get to the nitty-gritty of the review and start to write them up consistently. There are 10 reviews per section. There is a break with an encourage note page and then the next 10 reviews. All told there are 50 review forms inside the workbook. This should be adequate practice to give the reviewer confidence that his/her reviews will be well thought out.
The aspiring professional book reviewer can use these forms to type up book appraisal on Amazon, Goodreads and other book review places they frequent. With this much practice each reviewer can also use the format as a kind of script to do video book reviews on social media. Who knows we might even get a whole new batch of book advocates famous on TikTok, YouTube and whichever other favorite social media programs they invent over the next several years?
It really doesn’t matter if we are traditionally, or indie published. The more books we are able to sell, the more people who read our stories and talk about them, the more we will want to write in the future. So, please support your favorite authors and write up those reviews!
My name is Jolene MacFadden. I am a published author, blogger, website designer, social media coordinator, virtual assistant, and handcraft jewelry artist. I was a full-time RVer and volunteer workamper in the State of Florida. I am working on a biographical history of the Blanche Hotel and its employees in Lake City, Florida. This official historical building was originally built in 1902, reputed to be haunted, Al Capone stayed here on his way to Miami, and was recently completely renovated into a nice multiuse commercial building. It includes a very modern co-working space of which I pay monthly to use while writing that book. In addition, I am working on a historical fiction series that was spawned from all the research I am collected on the hotel. I hope you will visit my business website and my readers website. Both of which have links to my social media pages and other websites I created and write for. I want to thank, the Authors’ Lounge, and their representative, Jennifer Jackson, for inviting me to write about my latest published book. It is not just for readers you know.
I regularly review books for Bookloons and enjoy doing so. I will not trash a book because I fully realize any book is the author’s guts on paper. If a book is really bad, I’ll email the author, decline to review, and say why.