Forum Moderators: skibum
How do you do it?
If I had read as much as other men, I would have known no more than they. - Thomas Hobbes
It often takes me longer to write the review and collate related resources than it did to read the book.
After about the 40th or 50th review, authors and promoters started offering to send me books regularly. Most of these books are self-published ones, which can be quite dreadful, but some are undiscovered gems.
However, don't get into book reviewing just to make money or get free books, because that will never work. It pays pennies, authors will get mad with you and call you an idiot when you slate their book, and it takes a lot of time and effort before it starts to pay off at all. Do it because you love it, or not at all.
Do it because you love it, or not at all.
Sounds like sensible advice.
Do they serieously buy each book, read it and comment on it? I can hardly believe that...
Eh? Why not? That's what a book review is. What did you think a book review was? With respect to VVV - who I agree with most of the time - a patched together "review" based on cover blurb is just a waste of your own time and certainly a waste of your reader's time.
Do or do not. There is no try.
That's one review per week for two years. Over some holiday periods, I've read and reviewed four books in a week. I would think someone who made it a point of reading a lot and reviewing every book could easily do this in a year.
I have to say, where the moral dilemma comes in for me is when I really just don't like a book and have to decide whether or not to read it all the way through in order to review it. And I would say that about 1/4 of the reviews I write are strongly negative and those have gotten the most postive response in the comments.
Given that unless you have a huge number of visitors, I would say that a thoughtful honest review of a bad book is actually better in the long run for your site than almost anything. People appreciate it and may subscribe to your RSS feed, which is worth more than the $0.12 Amazon gives you.
Here's a comment to a bad review:
I knew something was missing but didn’t really know what it was…..your article has given me a new prespective…
>>buy each book
I have reviewed books that I have purchased, borrowed from libraries and stolen from friends.
Remember, books are a very long tail area, so you don't need to be reviewing the latest bestsellers. I put reviews on a site that has very little traffic. As such, my reviews of obscure books bring in more traffic than my reviews of well-known books because everyone has reviewed the last Harry Potter, but not many people have a review of that obscure but important foreign policy book from 1962 (yes, I'm dead serious about that).
I also have a somewhat higher traffic site where I post reviews, but again, I find that a good thoughtful review of a somewhat offbeat book that isn't reviewed on 12,000 other sites actually provides useful content that does make sales, but mostly brings in loyal visitors.
In dollars and cents, I think my best review earned $30 in the first week and then a few dollars here and there since then, so you would have trouble getting decent income off a few hundred reviews as the core of your site. I suspect that for the vast majority of people, as in my case, reviews are a labor of love not an income strategy.
We have a few paid reviewers and a bunch of volunteers who review for the books. Find after a while publishers just send most of their releases and don't even demand a review. Same with DVDs etc...but takes a while to get to that stage I guess.
You can also buy reviews from likes of Kirkus Reviews or...is it Publisher Weekly...I forget.
At one point we were running hundreds per month but not much money in it. More for profile of the site and helps gather some advertising campaigns sitewide that might not otherwise crop up.
Now we do a few per week and some interviews...plus a book club.
[edited by: FattyB at 1:03 am (utc) on Jan. 17, 2008]
I've pared my collection from a few thousand books down to under 200, about half of which rotate... a simplified life!
If it was a good book or a book that has sold well but that I think was bad, I do, however, try to write a review before I give it away.
I have to research the bloody (my blood and sweat) content, why not invest a little thought on the research sources, with sites it can garner backlinks, with books it can generate additional content (the reviews), a revenue stream, and publisher backlinks.
And for heaven's sake if you are trying to 'sell' a book treat it like any other affiliate product - build and test landing pages for conversion.
There can be reasonable money in books (varies considerably by niche) but like anything else the default options should be treated as a first step rather than a destination.
