The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing
by Mayra Calvani & Anne K. Edwards
Published June, 2008 by Kingsport, Tennesseee: Twilight Times Books
http://twilighttimesbooks.com
Contains an interesting Foreword by James A. Cox
The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing
Does a book about book reviewing invite novice or negative reviews to itself? If, like I was, you have provided some reviews on sites like Amazon or your own blog and were thinking about doing more, this will be an interesting and quick read for you. However, its hardly the reference text for Book Reviewing 101 and you may prefer to check it out of the library before you buy it. There is a handy directory in the back with resources.
The authors quickly present a format for a book review and offer sample book reviews which are both positive and negative. The yoffer suggestiong for dealing with different situations which may come up as a book reviewer. For example, they come down on the side that its okay to sell a book after reviewing it. The text at times begins to sound like a broken record as they hammer a few points such as every book can not be the best (or worst) ever read and don’t offer to review a book, accept the book and then not review it. This is of course good advice.
However, I don’t suggest necessarily treating their advice on technology as the last word. In discussing hostiong providers on pg 110 they don’t caution the reader that some services offering “free” domains with hosting don’t actually register these domain names in your name, making them not your domain name (if you want to move to a different hosting provider you’d have to buy them from them at a rate that would not be the cheapest on the market). They also incorrectly provide the wrong name/website URL of a very popular domain registration and website hosting site (they call godaddy “bigdaddy”) see pg 109. Luckily for the authors the incorrect website listed wasn’t a site for “mature” audiences. In a book about reviewing books and attending to such errors in other books, its amusing to me that a fact that could be so easily checked with a web browser went unchecked. Super Bowl commercials apparently weren’t enough to get their website listed correctly in the book.
The authors also touch on an important subject which people thinking about doing online reviews may already have in mind- affiliate programs (and advertising in general). Amazon’s associate program is mentioned specifically, and the authors do give it to the reader straight that they should not be expecting to make a fortune (or even a living) doing book reviews online (or almost anywhere else). Elsewhere the authors suggest a criticism of online reviews is that they are seen as overly positive, and that in response some say, why waste time reviewing bad books when there are so many good ones? The logical extension that isn’t quite made in the book is that if review sites are trying to sell books through an affiliate program, they’re going to try and post reviews of books that people will buy through their website and collect referral fees. Whether it impacts the review and/or the books selected to be reviewed probably depends on the reviewer/reviewing site.
A book about book reviews may attract reviews from novices (like myself). However, given that this book is probably most appropriate for a novice book reviewer and probably wouldn’t hold out that much new information for someone who has been doing it for a while, perhaps I’m the perfect person to review it. I also wouldn’t look to this book to provide you with a road map of how best to do book reviews online. With that being said, if you’re new to book reviewing it is worth the read, but I’d call it one you can wait for through interlibrary loan. Though as a new author, I do cringe and feel a little bad about making that recommendation in terms of reading through it before buying it.
Todd Finnerty, Psy.D. (@DrFinnerty on twitter)
Editor, PsychBookReviews.com
Author, Depressive Personality Disorder: Understanding Current Trends in Research and Practice
OK, so usually they will be Psychology, Psychiatry, Counseling, Mental Health or at least social science book reviews, but I’ll detour occassionally. Check the categories in the column (as they get added).
The Slippery Art of Book Reviewing
Cialdini has more publications to his name and if and when I check those out I may outline more of the ideas here for you, but for now I may simply choose to have these “Weapons of Influence” to myself- and since the book was a National Bestseller I suppose all those other people trying to manipulate us and sell us things 
