To Review or Not To Review
Happy holidays. What is on your wish list?
Mine is Books. Lots and lots of books.
The question is what do you do after you read them? Most writers and editors, if you are also in the business, will say put them on your shelf and move on. But writers NEED reviews; Amazon algorithms to sell their products are run on reviews. Other distributors use similar means of deciding what to advertise. If you don’t write a review for the book you love, you doing a disservice to the author and other readers.
And if you provide a good review on the good books, is it honest to avoid creating reviews on the bad books? What is the author “returns the favor” by giving you a bad review too? In the small business of publishing, the author can easily find out who you are.
Faith Hunter (and lots of commentators) on Magical Words provides the “Dos and Don’ts of Reviewing”. You should definitely read the comment section. Again the link is here: http://www.magicalwords.net/faith-hunter/dos-and-donts-of-reviewing/
As for me, a couple years ago I started requiring myself to review every book I completed. I used the technique to learn what I liked about books, try to pinpoint the problems with books, and figure out where the errors started from (writing, editing, etc). I hoped it would make me a better writer. You can find my reviews on Amazon and Goodreads and I copied some of the best to the blog in 2016 and think I will continue the practice in 2017.
WRITING EXERCISE: Go back to one of your old stories, at least five years old if possible, and write a review about it based on you reading it today.
READING EXERCISE: Write a review for the most recent book you finished reading.