Reading book reviews has become a standard part of the book-buying process thanks to mega-reviewing sites like Amazon.com and Epinions. With those sites, however, the reviews are written by strangers and may have little to do with the likes and dislikes of the person reading them.
Book Reviews With a Social Networking Twist
An alternative to this method is to read the reviews on Goodreads.com. With Goodreads, social networking and book listings are combined to give you access to reviews from people you already know. When you connect with your friends through the site, you can see exactly what they thought of that book you've had your eye on. If you feel that your taste is similar to a friend's, you may get a better idea whether you'd like the book when reading her review than when reading one from someone you know nothing about.
This was precisely the idea behind the founding of the site. Founder Otis Chandler stumbled upon the concept when he looked through a friend's bookshelf and realized how impersonal book reviews written by strangers really were. Since its founding in 2006, Goodreads has amassed almost seven million members and has an inventory of about 230 million books on its members' pages.
When logging into the site, members see their friends' most recent book reviews. When looking at a book listing, reviews written by the member's friends are listed first.
Writing Book Reviews for Goodreads
With a Goodreads account, you can create your own virtual bookshelf. Members can choose from anything that Amazon has to offer, or they can add books to the existing inventory. Members are given three basic virtual bookshelves to sort their books on, and they can create others to classify the books as they like. These shelves can be genre specific or they can use other descriptive terms. One of the most popular shelves is Overrated Drivel.
Members can then rate the books they've read with anywhere from one to five stars. The reviews have no required length and can be as personal or impartial as you like. And unlike with Amazon, Goodreads members can edit their reviews and change their star ratings at any time.
In addition to writing book reviews, members of the site can post their own works and allow their friends to read and review them. Member pages can be further personalized by adding favorite quotes and announcing personal events. For book lovers, the site has as much personalization as the latest social networking site while allowing readers to talk at length about their ink-and-paper loves.
Lizz Shepherd - I am a freelance writer specializing, for now, in Web writing. The Web is an enormous place and I have been carving out my own little ...
