Book Reviews made easy
In response to hearing from friends and fans that they’d love to post reviews, but just don’t know what to say, author Traci Sanders came up with the idea of creating a “cheet sheat” to help demystify and simplify the process.
Traci gave writers permission to copy, share, and even include her cheat sheet in their books. I’ve taken the liberty to expand on her original idea and format here. But I agree wholeheartedly with her fundamental premise: Authors need your feedback, in the form of reviews.
The “cheat sheet” is below. I’ve also created a downloadable PDF format of the file here if you’d like to save it to re-use later.
And, in case you’re wondering, here’s where you’d review Lying in Judgment.
Book Review Cheat Sheet
(Adapted from the original created by author Traci Sanders)
Reviews are a crucial aspect of the writing process. Authors, editors, and publishers read them to learn what readers look for in a story so they can continue to develop stories readers will enjoy. We need your honest thoughts about our stories.
Authors realize that most people who review books are not writers and may not know what to write, so we have come up with a way to simplify the review-writing process for you.
Feel free to use these questions as a prompt, or let them inspire questions of your own. Answer one, a few, or all as you see fit, with a phrase, a sentence, or a paragraph. Be honest, but constructive. (If you think writing a review is hard, imagine how much effort and passion goes into writing a book!)
But long or short, positive or negative, please, leave a review of the book you’ve just read.
Reviews keep authors writing!
What made me first decide to read this book was…
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As I started reading, the first thing that drew me into this book was…
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What I liked/disliked about the main character was…
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What I liked/disliked about the main plot was…
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What I liked/disliked about the author’s writing style was…
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My favorite part of the story was…
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I wish the author had spent more / less time on…
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Compared to other books in this genre, this book was…
- Among the best
- Better than most
- About average
- Not as good as most
- Among the worst
I would / would not recommend this book to a friend because…
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