How to Write a Book Review

How to Write a Book

Book Writing for Beginners - A Time-Proven Method

The Difficult Art and Business of Writing a Book

Easy Book Writing Over a Weekend

By Dave Baldwin

What's the point of writing a book review, other than to do a favor for your friend who just self-published on Lulu? Don't get me wrong; the author will appreciate the effort. However, any brownie points you score with the author are secondary. If you think I'm about to tell you that book reviews make good content for search engine optimization purposes... you're right. They do. But that's not the primary benefit I'm talking about, either. Am I about to suggest that writing anything, even a book review, is a great practice to hone your skills as a writer? Well, actually, yes! But that's not the point I wrote this article to make.

Here's what I'm driving at. If you read a book about marketing your business, a book review will help you to actually market your business. Read a book about organizing your home? Write a book review, and watch the piles of clutter start to shrink around you. Don't ask me to prove it. If you want proof, do it and see what happens.

For years, I have read books and thought up great ideas, only to put the books back onto the shelf without taking any action. I know I'm not the only one. I don't have a complete solution to this problem, but I do have a tool to offer you that may inch you a single step forward: the book review. Have you ever read a positive attitude or self-help book, for example, and pledged to adopt the habits they prescribed? Ever read a novel whose protagonist inspired you to write the Great American Novel? If you're like most readers, the urge probably didn't last any longer than a TV commercial.

Let's Face It: human nature isn't likely to change any time soon. With an ever-expanding menu of shiny objects to distract us and a 24-hour day that stubbornly refuses to grow any longer, the average human attention span continues to dwindle into the microsecond-scale. Is it any wonder that literary inspiration has such a short shelf life? A book review isn't going to change that, of course, but the process of re-creating your experience through a review will refresh your memory of the book, and it will give others a window into the world that the book's author has created. You just might inspire someone to read the book who wouldn't have read it otherwise.

Basic steps:

1. Before starting the book review, think about the audience. Which readers are likely to find your review? This depends upon the location where you choose to post it. What do you suppose is important to this audience? (I recommend doing this before writing anything of any kind.)
2. Write about your own experience of the book. What changed in your way of thinking? What inspired you? Don't just summarize the book; personalize it.
3. Describe your experience using sensory words. For example, you could talk about how you read the book while you were sitting outside in the fall and could smell the burning leaves. Sensory experiences are the most memorable.
4. Tell readers why they should read the book. How will their lives change from reading it? What made the book truly stand out for you?

You can write your book reviews right here, on EzineArticles. You can also post them to a number of other sites, such as Squidoo or HubPages. If you decide to write reviews regularly, you can start a blog for that purpose. If you start a blog, you can invite others to write guest posts so that you don't have to write all of the reviews yourself.

Give it a try. Write a list of the most influential books you've ever read, and post a review about one them this week.

For further reading, check out a couple of my recent book reviews.
Good to Great book review
The War of Art book review

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