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How to review a book professionally - Literature - Nairaland

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How to review a book professionally by Crunchyg2: 8:21pm On Oct 08, 2021
You are welcome. Check them out below.
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Re: How to review a book professionally by Crunchyg2: 8:21pm On Oct 08, 2021
GUIDELINES ON HOW TO EXCEPTIONALLY REVIEW A BOOK
Note: You must read these guidelines thoroughly before proceeding to review your book
Reviews must, therefore, comply with all of the guidelines below. They are not merely suggestions. Please follow all instructions well
Points to use in Summarizing your review
1. Careful reading

2. Brief summary

3. Book title (Must be in italics) you can check the samples you read to confirm

4. Author's name (The full names with the title. Eg Dr. Chief etc. If they have it in their name but if not, just write their name like that)

5. Positive aspects

6. Negative aspects

7. Rating

8. Justification of rating

9. Recommendation

10. Errors

In summarising your book (review) you must make sure that the summary must have at least five paragraphs like the way it is in the samples sent to you.Tip: A review could consist of five paragraphs, as follows: paragraph 1, summary; paragraph 2, positive aspects; paragraph 3, negative aspects; paragraph 4, rating; and paragraph 5, recommended audience. You can go back to the sample and check you will see that the writers followed this steps to derive their summary. You may opt to add more paragraphs, but do not add lengthy discussions of matters unconnected with the book.
The review should be in flowing text. Do not use headings as you can see from the review samples. The minimum length is 400 words, or 300 words for children's books.
The maximum length is 800 words.

Read the whole book carefully. Do not skim read or use any speed reading technique of any kind.

EXPLAINING FURTHER THE POINTS AND HOW TO INFUSE THEM DURING WRITING YOUR SUMMARY.(If you check the samples you will see how the writes infused these points smoothly in different paragraphs of their summary . Your paragraph must be a space gap before you start writing again
Positive and negative points
What was good about the book? Mention at least one positive point. (If it was so bad that you can find nothing good to say about it, you must state this explicitly).
What was not good about the book? Mention at least one negative point. (If it was so good that you cannot find any negative point, you must state this explicitly).

Support your commentary with specific examples from the book.

Title and author
The title must appear at least once in the body of the review, in italics every time.
The author's name must appear at least once in the body of the review. It must be in plain text (not italics) and spelled correctly. The complete name as it appears on the book cover should be mentioned at least once; titles (e.g., Dr, Major, and Mr.), name suffixes (e.g., Jr., Sr., and III) and credentials (e.g., PhD, MBA, and MD) need not be included. The author's name should be correctly spelled every time that it is mentioned. Either the author's surname or given name may be used within the review (as long as the complete name is mentioned at least once), but only one should be used throughout the review to avoid confusion. Nicknames should not be used to maintain professionalism.

Notes:
Do not use a separate heading for the title.
In principle, the whole review should be in plain text apart from the title and rating. Italics should additionally be used in line with common practice, for example for foreign words, and for other book and series titles. However, if a review contains whole sentences or paragraphs in bold or italics, it will be marked as not adhering to the guidelines.

Rating (1, 2, 3 or 4 out of 4 stars)
Include your rating in the body of the review, using the format "x out of 4", such as with the statement, "I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars" (with the rating in bold print). You can write the rating in words such as "two out of four" or figures, such as "2 out of 4". You can include the word "stars" after the rating or not. When the word "stars" is included, it should be in bold.

Notes:
The following rating formats are not acceptable: "3/4", "three stars out of four", "three stars of four stars", "3 stars", and "three stars". To avoid confusion, the final rating should be mentioned only once in the review.
Do not use a separate heading, or fragment, for the rating.

If a book does not seem to have been professionally edited, and if you find more than ten errors, do not give it a perfect four out of four rating. It is not acceptable to claim a book was professionally edited and give it four out of four just because an editor is mentioned in any part of the book. It does not matter whether the book really was professionally edited or not; what matters is whether it seems like it to you from reading it.

Briefly explain why you gave the rating you did. For instance, if you gave three stars, briefly explain why you didn't give four or two. Make sure the rating is justified. As an extreme example, if there is only one error, that cannot be used as the only basis for deducting one star.

Recommendation
Explain to what kind of people, readers, or audiences you think the book would most appeal. If there are any specific audiences that you would recommend do not read the book, mention and explain that as well. Avoid overly general recommendations like "this book is for everyone".

Notes:
Do not write "this book is unsuitable for children" in cases where it is unlikely that the book could be taken for a children's book.
You are not required to mention sexual and religious content or profanity unless they are significant to some other aspect of the review.

Errors
You are not required to mention the errors in the book in your review. You might mention them if they are relevant to the rating, for example. You may list examples if this supports a particular point you are making, but this is not required.

However, if you do not notice a single typo, spelling or grammar error while reading the book, then please explicitly state in the review that the book was exceptionally well edited. You do not need to use the exact words "exceptionally well edited"; you can use your own words. (You can always refer to your review samples for clarity).

Remember you are required to have a writing pad and a pen with you when reading the book to write down any profanity, erotic or religious content, mistakes, misspellings, grammatical errors. seen in the book and the exact page where they can be found. E.g "John told James Bleep you - page 13", hope you do understand because you will send them differently so that the pages where all these mistakes were discovered can easily be traced and corrected. You do not need to list these mistakes in the text of your review. You may mention these aspects if they are relevant to a required component of the review, normally the recommendation. For example, it's relevant to say that a book is suitable for a mature audience because it contains explicit sex scenes. Any error in a reported speech shouldn't be considered as an error. So these are the main areas you need to write down in your writing pad and their pages. 1. Any Profanity / Vulgar .2. Any grammatical error. 3. Any misspelling. 4. Any typo/error . 5. Religious content. Any sexual explicit content. Write the sentence down and the page it was found and keep aside because that will be submitted too for corrections to be made.

Once the review is completed. The review must meet all the guidelines stated above, using the review samples as template. including but not limited to being at least 5 paragraphs and being properly spellchecked, and proofread. Then you get your reward.
Note: That if you submit a review that followed all the guidelines and is well written, more books will continue to be given to you to review and reward will go up.

Deadlines: it takes minimum of 4 days and maximum of 7 days to read, review and send your review. Anything after 7 days from the day the book was sent to you, will reduce your rating and might be rejected.
Make sure you do everything you need to do accordingly to review more books and more rewards.

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