Oct. 8, 2012
I recommend that everyone should have a blog or website that provides proof that he is a superior performer in his profession. Because hardly anybody is willing to write, and because those who do write usually do not focus on building their reputations in their chosen professions, a person who does have a professional blog or website stands out from the crowd. This is the main reason for having such a site.
I started my writing career with book reviews in a local newspaper. I got a free copy of the book, and I was paid $5 per review. In today's money, that was about $35. It was not worth my time, but it did give me an opportunity to develop the skill of writing book reviews. I had done this in high school, although the documents in high school were called book reports. Nevertheless, they were book reviews.
The advantage of writing book reviews is that you can keep up with the latest developments in your field. Or, if you are interested in the history of the field, you can concentrate on writing book reviews on books that focus on the history of the field, or perhaps specific large firms in the field. One advantage of writing this kind of review is that you can concentrate on a specific company, and if this is a company that you might want to work for, your review can be generally positive, but detailed. At some point, this review can serve as a kind of business card for getting a job at that company.
A book review should have certain features that are almost universal in the world of reviewing. I'm going to go through them here. When you see what I recommend, you will understand that this is basically a cookie-cutter approach to writing book reviews. There is nothing very fancy about this approach, but it reveals competence. You will not skip over anything that is important.
I recommend that you read at least a dozen books in a specific area. This area should be in some way related to your profession. The idea here is to get an overall sense of the particular problem, and how book writers have dealt with this problem. The goal here is to find out what is commonly known, but also to pick up insights into unique aspects of the field, which will enable you to understand what is going on a lot better. The first dozen books should be to educate you regarding the basics of the field.
Once you have read a dozen books carefully, by which I mean at about 25 pages an hour, and you have made notations in the books, then you are in a position to go back and re-read each of the books, but this time with the goal of writing a book review.
I recommend that you use a product like Scrivener to do your research and help you write the book. Scrivener will be the best $40 you spend this year if you decide to write.
Going through the first three books will be slogging. You will be learning a great deal about the basics, and you'll probably miss the subtleties. You will not spot what is unique to this or that book. If you do this exercise, and you pay close attention to the arguments in each of the books, you will come away with a sense of what is common in each, and what is unique to each. This is crucial for writing any book review.
Once you have three or four books under your belt, you will be in a position to read faster. The next eight or nine books will not be so difficult to read as the first three. You will find that a lot of the material is familiar, which means that this material is not unique to the particular book. You can read faster in these common areas. You will slow down in those areas where the book begins to discuss specifics that you have not read about previously. This is where the author is making his primary points. You have to pay close attention to these points.
I believe every book review should have the following sections. Use them in a cookie-cutter fashion. Use the same sequence in each of the book reviews. The reader should recognize the pattern, and this will make it easier for the reader to follow your analyses in each of the book reviews.
Before you start any review, be sure to go to Amazon to see examples of short reviews of the book. Look at the five-star reviews, and look at the one-star reviews. You will find in most cases that five-star reviews are better and more detailed. The people who write one-star reviews tend to be antagonistic, and, as far as I can see, not as sharp as the people who write the detailed five-star reviews. The one-star review people are knee-jerk gripers, and the five-star review people are true believers who want to give you reasons to believe. That means the reviews are more detailed.
THE COOKIE CUTTER
First, describe what the author's main purpose was, or main theme is, when writing his book. If you do not understand this, you are not in a position to write the book review. The author probably says somewhere early in the Preface why he wrote the book. The reader has to know what the motivation of the author was. This will help him to understand what the particular slant of the author is.
Second, review the main themes of the book. Do not go through this on a chapter by chapter basis, but there should be main themes in the book. If there aren't, then either the author did a bad job, or you are not a perceptive reader.
Third, point out those features of the book that are common. Describe the book in the context of other books in the field. The reader should see that there is continuity in the field, and that this particular book holds to specific aspects that are common in the field. If the book you are reviewing were completely new, nobody would buy it or read it. There has to be continuity in order to target a particular market. The reader should know how this author is conventional.
Fourth, describe what theses in the book are unique. What makes this book different? This is central to understanding what makes the book either a very good contribution or a very poor contribution. This is where the book author seeks to make his reputation. This is where he wants to stand out from other authors in the field. This is central to the review. I don't think it should go at the beginning of the review, but it has got to be the central focus of your review.
Fifth, it would be nice if you could assess whether or not he was successful in proving his case. The problem here is that you may not have enough knowledge to make this assessment. If you're not confident in this area, don't make final judgments about the performance of the author or the persuasive power of the book. You may have to read another dozen volumes to be confident about your ability to assess the author's competence in making his case. Don't be premature. At some point in your career, you will be in a position to make such an assessment, but don't jump the gun. Don't rush in where angels fear to tread.
Sixth, it is a good idea to compare this book with whatever is the major book in the field. Maybe there will be two or three books that are considered the pillars of the field, and if this is the case, then you should assess the overall performance of the author in terms of these premier books. You should compare the author's performance with performances that are widely regarded as top-flight performances. Read the premier books first. Find out which ones are dominant.
Seventh, it is unwise to write hatchet jobs early in your career. That may be suitable after you have written your blog for five years or more. When you have read 100 books on a narrow topic, you are in a position to make negative assessments. In general, however, I think it is wise to avoid books that are so bad that you have to write a hatchet job. If the book is a bestseller, and if it is egregiously incompetent, then it's okay to write a hatchet job. You will be perceived as someone who is issuing a warning to others in the field, in order to help them for making a serious mistake. But if the book has not sold well, and if the author is unknown, then it is unlikely that many of your readers will have made the mistake of buying the book, reading the book, and accepting its conclusions.
Eighth, make an assessment of the importance of the book in the overall universe of books on this topic. Either recommend that the reader read the book, or else recommend that he skip it. You want to save the reader time. You can point out the advantages of reading the book, but focus this on a particular goal in reading the book. In other words, if you say the book is worth reading, be sure that the reader knows exactly why the book is worth reading. What will the benefits be to the reader if he reads the book? The goal here is to save the reader time and money. Don't recommend the book to readers if you don't provide reasons for recommending the book.
I think a book review of 1,000 words is about right. That would be four double-spaced typewritten pages. I don't think most books are worth any more than this. You don't want to bog down the reader in a lot of useless details.
Your goal is to become known as a book reviewer who saves the reader time in reading your reviews. You also want to be known as somebody with good judgment, so that when you say a book is worth reading, the reader is likely to buy the book, read it, and then agree with you after he has read it.
In all of this, your goal is to serve the readers. If you do this well, you will build a good reputation in your field.
Once you have a website or a blog that has 25 reviews, you will have a valuable asset. I suggest that you don't publish anything on the blog for the first year. Keep reading the books, keep writing the reviews, and keep going back and rewriting the reviews as you read more books. I would not publish any reviews until I had at least a dozen books under my belt. Then I would write them, maybe one a week, and post them all at once. From that point on, the goal is to post at least one review every other week.
This is a lot of work. But, remember, this process of reading, reviewing, and posting does help you in your field. This is information that will make you a better performer. It is not just that you are getting a reputation as a book reviewer. You are actually becoming an expert.
At some point, you will probably get invitations to give talks at conferences. This is a reason why, if you are a successful book reviewer, you had better be a good public speaker. I also recommend that you join Toastmasters International to get the skill of public speaking.
I think it is wise that you read Mortimer Adler's book, How to Read a Book, before you start reading books analytically. You will not be able to do all of what Adler recommends, but you will get a very good idea of what a serious book review is all about. You will do a lot of work in order to write a good book review, Adler-style. As he says, limit this exercise to the classics.
All this will be difficult in the first year, but it will get much easier after two years.
Once you have 25 reviews online, you can write to book companies and ask for free review copies. Send a link to your site.
Send a link to your site to the trade publication that has the best reputation. Offer to let it publish any review. All you ask is that it provide a link to your site. If the book review editor accepts it, send him a link to each new review. If you get turned down, go to the next publication.
You want name recognition. This takes repeat reviews in one outlet. It is better to have name recognition at a minor publication than to scatter your reviews across a lot of them. Give one publication exclusive rights to your reviews.
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