REASONS FOR DOING BOOK REVIEWS

• To give attention to new books and possibly new authors.
  
• To help university and small, independent presses that can’t afford to publicize new books but still refuse to stop publishing new poetry and prose.
  
• To help would-be readers determine which books might interest them and which books are worth their time.
  
• To participate in an active forum for literary discourse.
  
• To establish a reputation for yourself as a writer/critic with something intelligent to say.
  
• To keep up-to-date on what’s being published.
  
• To keep your critical writing and thinking skills honed.
  
• To broaden your horizons with regard to aesthetics by giving yourself frequent opportunities to reflect on stylistic choices, motivations for them, and their successes or failures.
  
• To develop a rapport with magazine editors.
  
• To get non-creative publication credits.
  
• To become a name that book publishers recognize.
  
• To get free books.
  

• A book review serves two major functions: descriptive and evaluative. It gives the reading public a general idea of the book’s style and/or content and offers a critique of the book’s merits.
  
• If the book you are reviewing is not a first book, it is helpful to look at the other works by the author so you can understand the book in context and can comment on the author’s growth or development (or lack thereof) as a writer.
  
• It is important to have an understanding of the genre and where to place the work within the genre. A reviewer should be able to differentiate between what is new and what is derivative, evaluate the significance of the new, recognize innovation as well as errors/flaws/shortcomings, and assess the degree of competency of craft. A narrowness of background and/or aesthetic sensibility can result in a biased and inaccurate review, since it might prevent you from placing the work beside similar texts for comparison, from recognizing innovation, or cause you to mistake innovation for something that’s been done before.
  
• The first and most important thing you need to do as a reviewer is to give the work a close and thorough reading, reading through at least twice, in order to determine what the author’s intention was and how each part of the work was meant to contribute to that overall intention.
  
• Your role as reviewer is to guide readers through the overwhelming abundance of new titles. It is important to remember that readers want information as well as opinion. As you write, begin by providing enough of a description of the subject matter and style that readers can get a sense of the text and can determine whether or not the book would interest them. Your description should attempt to convey to the readers what the experience of reading the book was like. Other things you may want to include in your description are tone, target audience, and place within the scope of the genre. Also, your review should make clear to the readers the nature of the work being reviewed so that your critical conclusions can be understood in context.
  
• Once you've determined what the author is trying to do, evaluate how well the book succeeds in terms of the author’s intentions and the standards the author sets for him/herself. It is important to understand what the author is attempting to do and to avoid condemning him or her for something he or she is not trying to do.
  
• Assess whether or not the author’s intentions are worthwhile. It is important to assess the work on the basis of the author’s apparent intention, though it is fair to evaluate the merit or ambition of that intention within the scope/background of the genre. If you believe the intention of the author is an unworthy one, it is your right and responsibility to say so; however, if the author succeeds at what he or she sets out to do, it is also your responsibility acknowledge that.
  
• Evaluate how well the book succeeds in relation to similar books by other authors and the standards widely held with respect to the genre. The standards against which the work is being judged should be clear. These are standards acquired by familiarity with well-written books of a similar kind and of books in the genre in general.
  
• You should focus your review on the qualities and elements that give the work significance or literary merit, devoting considerable attention to the element(s) at which the book excels or differs radically from other books of its kind, and covering elements in order of importance in the space allotted without leaning too much toward breadth or depth.
  
• The excerpts presented and the elements evaluated in your review should be comprehensible on their own, but (more importantly) they should also contribute to a unified and comprehensive assessment of the work as a whole. It is crucial that you evaluate the book as a whole, not merely one or two aspects of it that happen to interest you.
  
• Your review should provide enough of an assessment so that readers can get a sense of whether or not it is worth their time to read the text.
  
• In short, the book reviewer’s checklist: provide a description of the style and content, assess success with respect to the author’s intentions, evaluate the author’s ability/the book’s craft compared to other authors/similar texts, and evaluate the merit of the author’s intentions within the scope of the genre.
  

• It is critical to be aware of the publication date of the book you’re reviewing. Every editor has a different policy regarding the timeliness of reviews. Some will only accept reviews of books published within the last six months, while others will consider reviews of books up to three years after their publication date. Know when the book was published and what the policy is of any magazine you submit to.
  
• Many magazine editors prefer (and sometimes insist) that you choose books for review from small, independent or university presses. The reason for doing so is that these presses don’t have the money that Penguin or Knopf has for publicity and distribution.
  
• Choose books that interest you or that you found particularly pleasing to read. If you are detached or indifferent to the work, it will show in the review and it will influence the readers’ decisions not only about whether or not they want to buy the book, but about your ability to review new books as well.
  
• Though in some cases books are assigned for review by editors, when deciding which books to review it is important to devote your time and attention to books you feel have literary merit, even if they have flaws or shortcomings. It is waste of your time, the readers’ time, and the editor’s space to publish reviews of books that lack any discernable merit.
  
• Try not to choose books merely because they were written by established authors, or because you believe reviewing such books will make your reviews more publishable. It is important to give attention to good books by unknown, emerging, and overlooked authors. As a reviewer, you are in a position to introduce readers to new voices.
  

• Make sure to include the appropriate bibliographic information at beginning of the review (author, title, location of publisher, publisher’s name, year of publication, number of pages, and price).
  
• Each magazine or newspaper has its own guidelines for length, style and format of reviews. Reviews can generally be classified into three categories: the “books in brief” short review, the standard single-book review, or the extended essay-review which almost always covers multiple books that the reviewer has linked in some way, be it style, form, content or contribution to literature or culture. Depending on the type of publication, the length and purpose of a short, standard or essay-review varies, with some reviews as short as 200 words and others running as long as 3,000 words.
  
• Make sure to include page numbers for quotations. (These will not appear in the published version, but editors need them in order to check the accuracy of your quotes.) Also, some editors ask that you send photocopies of the quoted pages, particularly for unsolicited reviews, in the event that the editors are unable to locate a copy of the book. Whatever you do, make a concerted effort to avoid the need for footnotes—most editors abhor them.
  

• If you are considering writing a review for a magazine, begin by familiarizing yourself with the type of reviews it publishes. Read the reviews from several issues to get a sense of what the editors want from their reviewers. Though your primary obligation is to the text you are reviewing, your review must match the magazine’s needs or it won’t be published.
  
• When querying a magazine or editor about possible reviews, it is helpful to submit 2 or 3 reviews that demonstrate your ability to intelligently and fairly evaluate new work. You should also mention whatever qualifications you have for reviewing in that genre.
  
• It is important to read thoroughly (several times) and with purpose, attentive to both merits and faults. Look for evidence and examples as you read: examples of innovation, style, sense of sound, technique, characteristic movements or gestures, or passages that cut to the heart of the underlying or overarching theme, focus or
  subject matter.
  
• It is often helpful to provide some information about the author in the review, particularly as the background information speaks to or influences the subject matter, style, or intention of the text. However, avoid biography for the sake of biography. Include only the details that will help readers better understand and evaluate the work in question.
  
• Remember, like any other type of writing, the first line of your review needs to grab the readers’ attention.
  
• Editors look for reviews that are well-written and in such a style that they are enjoyable to read and may be considered literature themselves.
  
• Always be fair and objective in your reviews.
  
• Editors want to see an honest interest in the books being reviewed, an acquaintance with the previous works of the author, and knowledge of books in general for the purpose of comparison and the ability to arrive at a fair assessment of the book’s worth regardless of your personal prejudices or preferences.
  
• Cover the intentions and successes of the book you’re reviewing before turning to its flaws or shortcomings.
  
• Always double-check your quotations/excerpts for accuracy.
  
• Study and learn from smart reviews, such as those by Marjorie Perloff or Joel Brouwer.
  
• Things to think about as you read/review poetry books: ways to classify the work (lyric/narrative, autobiographical/historical, etc.), recurring subjects/themes, range/variation of tone/content/style, role as poet
  (observer/interpreter/participant/creator, etc.), recurring images, movement/progression between poems/sections, use/successfulness of short/long poems, how (and how successfully) the elements of craft are used (form, voice/persona, sound/language, image, tone, diction, syntax, metaphor, line breaks/enjambment, line lengths, catalogs, repetition, alliteration, rhyme, etc.), lyricism/prosines, closure/openness, complexity/accessibility, literal/metaphorical levels, allusions/cultural references, world view, history (how the book compares to other books by the same author), context (how the book compares to other books by different authors), poetic school/influences (if any or if relevant), if poems are didactic/editorial/abstract/surreal/image-centered, effectiveness (why poems succeed or fail), amount of risk taking, and/or significance/contribution to the genre.
  
• You can look for new poetry books to review at Poetry Daily or Verse Daily.
  
• Places to publish book reviews: Publisher’s Weekly, Small Press Review, American Book Review, newspapers and magazines (see other page).
  

• Never miss a deadline.
  
• Avoid overused adjectives such as “poignant” or “gripping.”
  
• Avoid over-praising mediocre books. Many books demonstrate competency and skill on the part of the authors, but lauding them for this will cause both editors and readers to question or discredit your assessments.
  
• Avoid too many or too lengthy quotations/excerpts. Quotes should only be used as evidence to support your assessment of the author’s craft or to illustrate points you’ ve made about the text. Over-quoting gives the impression that you’ve resorted to quotations due to a lack of anything substantial or original to say.
  
• It is important to know how long an editor wants a review to be. Do not exceed the specified word count or length requirement.
  
• Avoid writing formulaic reviews, such as assessing the same elements of craft in each review. Every review you write should be tailored to the text you’re reviewing. You need to determine what the text under consideration is attempting to do, define the methods it is using, and assess how well it has succeeded. Formulaic reviews often have a five-paragraph-essay feel to them that doesn't offer much promise of the book’s worth (or your ability as a reviewer) to the casual or critical reader.
  
• Your obligation when writing a review is to the text you’re reviewing, not the author, the publisher, or yourself. Do not use reviews as a platform to demonstrate your wit, cleverness or how many books you've read, or to further your own dogma with respect to the genre.
  
• It is best to ignore what is printed on the book jacket so you are not influenced by it and so you don’t fall into the trap of agreeing with or dissenting from it. A review should be your opinion and should be based on your own conclusions. It should not be your evaluation of other people’s opinions of the work or of the way the book has been marketed.
  
• Avoid the first person. Even though the review is your assessment, avoiding the first person helps to further the idea that your evaluation is as objective as it can be, that it is based on evidence, and that the work has been judged based on the standards it set for itself as well as the standards widely held with respect to the genre.
  
• Avoid writing reviews of books that were written by authors you have any type of relationship with, whether good or bad.
  
• Avoid ascribing to an author’s work influences that were not present.