The Book Review: A Public Service
The Book Review: A Public Service That Gives Back.
You yawn and roll over in your bed. You think: If it’s not required, why should I bother writing a book review? Isn’t that like homework?
No. It’s Art.
Are you an English major?
Are you a creative writing student?
Are you an up-and-coming author?
Are you a book lover that values good book reviews?
Are you a graduate student? *
If you answered yes to any one of these questions, then writing a book review can help you build your portfolio, your brand, your voice, your reputation, and your network.
*www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/savvy/footnotes/mar05/fn14.html
What are some of the benefits of reading a good book?
Other than the most obvious ones: to learn things, to increase empathy, to build a wider vocabulary, and to reduce stress. Here are a few others to consider:
AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. Whether the book is fiction or nonfiction, a collection of poetry or a graphic novel, it holds a certain promise of adventure for you and your opinions.
DISCOVERY. Not only are you learning more about yourself and others through the book’s characters, but also you’re thinking about what makes a story good or bad.
EXPOSURE TO NEW AUTHORS. Love them or hate them, no two are alike.
YOU’RE INSPIRED TO SHARE YOUR ENTHUSIAM. You can share your book reviews several ways: literary journals, Library Thing, Good Reads, Amazon, and your own book blogging website, among others.
What are the benefits of writing a book review?
YOU’RE BUILDING A PORTFOLIO. Let’s face it, it’s easier to write a review about a book than to write a book. While you’re studying, learning, and crafting your book or poem or memoir, why not start your portfolio with a few book review publications?
YOU’RE DEVELOPING A PUBLIC PROFILE. Your book reviews may be shared across various social media platforms. You’re no longer an invisible voice struggling to be heard. Your brand and your voice become recognizable and inseparable.
YOU’RE DEVLOPING A REPUTATION. Your well-crafted and carefully considered book reviews are lauded by readers, authors, and publishers. Your network is expanding as readers and authors come to recognize your name and opinions.
YOU’RE PROVIDING A PUBLIC SERVICE THAT REWARDS YOU. In addition to the previous three benefits, you can get paid to write book reviews (Reedsy lists 17 sites that pay for book reviews, here: https://reedsy.com/discovery/blog/get-paid-to-read), you can offer eager readers a mechanism for sorting out the wheat from the chaff, or at the very least, letting readers know what to expect before they dive. If you love to read, you know how much time is wasted looking for the next best thing. Book reviews quiet the noise from all the competing voices.
Here’s how you do it:
First, familiarize yourself with the publisher’s submission guidelines for a book review. Reviews can vary from 300 words to 2,500 words and be anything from whimsical to academic to scientific in tone. Here are ours at THR: www.theheadlightreview.com/submission
Choose a book. For the most part, the book must be less than two years old, and sometimes less than one. Publishers may provide ARC copies to readers for an honest review. Query them. THR has a selection of titles available for book reviewers to review, here: https://www.theheadlightreview.com/received
Always begin your review with a bibliography entry:
In Our Midst. By Nancy Jensen. Detroit, Michigan: Dzanc Books, 2020. Hardcover 352 pp. $26.95. *
*Include your relationship to the author, if any, and any awards or nominations.
2. Read the book through for pleasure before beginning your evaluation.
Introduce the author:
What should the reader know about them?
How many books have they written?
Why did the author write this particular book?
Does the book have a story? For example:
Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain took many years to write due to the author’s extensive research (historical fiction). However, it is based on a real character, his uncle Inman, and was his first novel.
An example of a potential opening paragraph:
Nancy Jensen is the author of three books. Her latest In Our Midst is a significant departure from her first, Windows: Stories and Essays, published in 2009, and her breakout novel, Sisters: A Novel, published in 2011. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, to include The Louisville Review, Other Voices, and Northwest Review. She holds an MFA from Vermont College and currently teaches at Eastern Kentucky University. In an interview posted on her publisher’s website, Dzanc Books, Ms. Jensen describes her reason for writing In Our Midst: she was moved to shed light on a suppressed event in history and to illustrate the destructive nature of bias turned to groupthink.
Laura Metzger, Book Review Editor
