How to write a excellent book review

How to write a excellent book review by Pastor George McVey

For those of us authors who are self published or small press published. Two things are our best marketing tools. The first is word of mouth. If you like a book recommend it to people. Don’t give them your copy but tell them how to get their own. However this blog post is about the second and still best marketing tool for us authors and that is the written review. 

I didn’t worry about my reviews until lately. See there’s this new app out called Fakespot. Fakespot claims that it can take any product and run all it’s reviews through an algorithm and tell you how many of the reviews are fake or bought and paid for or posted by friends and family of the author in my case. I tested this on several authors that I know and trust including myself and we all had at least 40% of our reviews flagged as fake. 

I was concerned because I know every review I got were legitimate reviews from people who actually read my book and reviewed it because they wanted to. Being told that over 40% of those appeared to this algorithm as fake worried me. So I check to see what they were actually using as indicators of a fake review and here is what a found: any review that was poorly written was considered fake. Which made me realize that most people don’t know what makes up a good review. 

Let me say this by good review I don’t mean favorable. I have some negative as well as some positive reviews. Good reviews in terms of this blog post are well written reviews that articulate their opinion of the book clearly and concisely. So lets look at some do’s and don’ts for leaving a review. 



1. Do be honest. If the book was good then say that if it was bad then say that. People are more articulate when they believe what they are saying. Every author I know would rather have your honest review than for you to just say “It was great.” We don’t need you to pump us up if we don’t deserve it. We want to write the best stories or information books we can. If you tell us it was perfect then tell everyone else how you hated it that does not help us.

2. Don’t leave a 5 word or less review. This is one of the things  Fakespot considers bogus. For instance a review that says “It was great.” Without saying why is not a review and will be considered by this App as less than honest. Let me tell you what I think is happening. Amazon has a link at the end of every Kindle book to leave a review right from your E-Reader. However most don’t like typing on those tiny keyboards. Because of that people leave a single word or a few words review. The purpose of leaving a review is to help other readers decide if they want to read the book. We have all been taught that an informed customer is a smart customer so we do our research before we make a purchase. We only have so much time to read in this hectic world of ours so we use reviews to help us decide if the book is worth our time. “It was good.” Or “Awesome” or “Loved it” don’t help anyone else decide if the book is for them. Tell why you loved it. What made it a good book. Describe the awesomeness. The same is true if you really feel you must leave a terrible review. Tell us what made it terrible, how did it suck. You get the picture use your words.

3 Do share your review once you’ve written it. Post a link to it on your Facebook. Pin it, tweet it. Heck even blog about it if you want. Those reviews don’t help us sell more books unless people see them. 

4. Don’t review things that weren’t about the book. I can’t tell you the number of authors who have poor reviews that talk about a problem they had with the place they got the book. We as authors have no control over which device the book was downloaded from, We don’t control the font size of the book the reader does. (Theres a place on you E-reader where you adjust that.) We didn’t charge you twice the bookseller did. Don’t post a one or two star review because of something the bookseller did. Reviews are about the story and cover themselves. Not about the process of getting the book. 

5. Do check your spelling and grammar. Nothing makes a review look like a plant than someone who use bad grammar and spelling. Books are made up of words and grammar if yours seems poor then people who read your review will think. They can’t even spell or follow basic grammar they must not have read this book. I’m not saying you have to be perfect but if you can’t tell the difference between think and thank people will wonder if you can even read. Seriously it happens. 

6.Don’t tell the plot of the book. No-one and I mean NO-ONE likes spoilers. A good review talks about why you like the book it doesn’t give a the plot and details of the book. Nothing is worse for an author than a review that tells everything that happens in the book. If you do that in a review what reason does the potential reader have to read the book you already described the whole thing to them. Can you imagine you are looking for a good mystery book and you think the cover and book blurb make the mystery sound interesting but you want to see what those that have read it have to say. You go to the reviews and the first one you read gives the book five stars then tells you who did it why they did it and how they did it. No mystery left for you. This is not a quality review its a spoiler without a warning.

7. Do make sure you are reviewing the right book. I’ve had this problem myself. I received a 1 star review and the guy was saying why he didn’t like my book. Yet nothing he talked about was in my book. I’ve talked with other authors that have had similar experiences. If you are going to review a book make sure it’s the right book. Read the book blurb. Look at the cover. If your using your computer to write it get our your E-reader and look up the name and author of a book. Some people don’t know this but more than one book can have the same title. I have a book out called Redeeming Love so does another dozen authors including Francine Rivers. Can you imagine if a review of her book which is a historical romance but not a western was posted to my book which is a Western with some romance in it. Or if a review of my Redeeming Love was posted to her book reviews. The reader would not get the book they thought they were getting. 

8 Do contact the Author if you find a ton of spelling, grammar, and formatting mistakes. We know they shouldn’t happen but they do. Personal example I paid over 300.00 for editing on my book Redeeming Grace. It was money well spent and I made all the changes that showed up. However, when I went to upload the content to amazon I used the wrong file the unedited file. I messed up. But a reader contacted me and said this is so much a lower quality than your books are normally what happened?  I went to amazon and very quickly noticed yep I uploaded the wrong file. I re-uploaded the right file and informed Amazon who in turn informed everyone who bought the book so they could re-download the book and get the correct version. However I’ve had friends who’ve gotten poor reviews on bad grammar spelling and formatting. This keeps readers from reading the book, even after it’s been corrected. So give the author the benefit of the doubt and contact them first to see if they will fix it. Give them some specific examples if you can of what you’re referring too. Again, most Indie authors want to put out the best product they can. Most will correct the problems and respond to the reader with a thank you. If you don’t get that after say a month then check to see if a new version is up. Your kindle or e-reader should let you know when that happens. If it still hasn’t been corrected don’t leave a review contact Amazon. They will put a hold on the book till the author fixes it. 

As you can see it isn’t hard to leave a great well written review if you just follow these eight simple things. In the end the author will love you for it. Other readers will love you for it and maybe just maybe Fakespot won’t think your review is a fake review.

George McVey always wanted to be a Superhero, sadly no radioactive storms or animals have been a part of his life. Instead he figured he could help people by becoming a pastor and sharing his faith journey with others.

With twenty years of ministry experience Pastor George has taught and preached on a lot of subjects. Often he would hear people request copies of his notes, or even on occasion suggest he put his rambling sermon series into book form. He never took them seriously.

One day while spinning a tall tale for his family, some suggested once again that with all his experiences in ministry, and his imagination he should be writing books. This time it was like lightning struck him and he decided why not.