Who Me? (How To Write A Good Book Review)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	How To Write A Good Book Review
Date:	24/06/09 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Suns out

Disadvantages: A very cozy section

You know you have been on dooyoo rather too long when you type in google + the subject you want to write about and your review sits on top of the google pile. That's pretty worrying really as someone may think my speakers corner drivel is important because it's atop that pile! And once you're atop the pile people press the first one and you are always top of the pile, googles biggest glitch. But we are here to talk about how to write a good book review (well we are supposed to) and already certain members are mumbling' yes right, he can't write for toffee in that section! For once I would agree with them. I just struggle with book reviews. That's why there's only eight reviews in this discussion section.

But before I give you my slant on that I'm here to go off on a tangent about dooyoo in general as I'm on a mission to also top the most speaker's corner reviews ever written on dooyoo, this pointless ramble being one more. I'm eight short of Andy Chargers impressive tally of 241 and Andy, like me, took issue over the guides high crown count and skedaddled in 2004, only to return two years later to write just one review but leaving again because he still wasn't happy, ironically crowned for it. I, alas, am still here and will fight the injustices of the world! Come back Andy its much better now. If you don't Im top dog! I'm throwing down the glove. Smell the glove Andy, smell the glove... I'm just two crowns shy of KJ`s speakers corner all time high of 41 crowns but however many I write they don't crown them, my one-in-five 2008 rate down to one-in-in twenty-five in 2009. Sadly dooyoo seems to have abandoned speaker's corner and so crowns very hard to get there so I'm Just going to have to write better reviews in places like. With dooyoo becoming increasingly feminine with more crowns going to female consumer sections and so more female guides appointed my macho flirting approach and aggressive writing may have to be tempered. Yes right!!!

As dooyoo are so proud of displaying our facts and feats on the front page heres my stats to fill this pointless review out a bit more.

(Approx)

Miles earnt - 900,000
Ratings received 30,000!
Ratings made 27,500
Comments made 29,500 (a record!)
Speakers Corner - 2nd most crowns (39) and reviews written (232)
Movie Crowns - 8th highest ever crowner
Total crowns- 7th highest ever crowner (138) on dooyoo for a member who has never been a guide (add 30 crowns to it.lol!).

I want you guys to try the above; it's good for the ego. But when it comes to my book reviews and section statistics it's not so good. For some reason I feel totally rubbish at book reviews and so don't expect the dusty library crown stamp to be used on me when I checked through dooyoos excellent (and incriminating) statistics bit. But my book stats are much better than I thought. 41 reviews and seven crowns wasn't too bad. I must have a vague idea what I'm doing then. A recent ex guide told me my book reviews are way too long, which I would agree with in most cases. When girls complain its too long guys just have to bend some. But recently they wrote a review that was that length and then some. They got a crown. I didn't leave a snidely comment. That person is high on the book crown hall of fame.

The top twenty book writers on dooyoo are very familiar faces. Seven are current guides, nine are ex-guides and only four have never been guides. The chicken and egg question has been asked that do guides get more crowns because they are better writers or do they become better writers and get more crowns when they become guides. I suspect the book section like the music reviews are the toughest to do creatively and so they must be the best writers. I find music reviews almost impossible and an extremely pretentious experience to write. Good writing is not always about product centred reviews that dooyoo love so much and often bore the pants off me and you. Good dooyoo reviews should be unique and not an instruction manual with parts list. The book reviews are tough because of that.

The guide's crown ration is around 18% in the book section, no more or no less than the rest of the site. My crown rate was once around 18% but has collapsed to one-in-ten on the site since the 50p thing, like many of your ratios have, so dooyoo can pay for the churn, the churn that pays for the site it seems. It's a paradox the guide's crown ratio is not affected by as it has gone up since the 50p thing. Dooyoo emailed me to say that they are still giving out the same amount of crowns (although they haven't submitted their expenses claims yet.lol.). I checked their claim. Do you guys think the crowns are falling too...? What I don't like about dooyoo is if your review is locked because it may have offended 1% of the site (and so not the other 99%) you seem to lose your crown privilege for a while. We shouldn't be stopping people having their honest say. Is that not the point of the place? We are starting to get too sanitised again and that's exactly why consumers turn away from companies blurb on their own products. They want it be independent comment.

I don't give tips on writing as my punctuation and spelling isn't worthy of most of you but what I would say is write what you want on here. The point of the internet is to explore those debates and conversations we are not allowed to have outside of the pub after a few beers. Dooyoo uniquely affords you a voice that if you use it right and will not only earn you a few quid here but an imprint on the net and a tiny bit of respect for having the ballbag for saying it.

My first must when writing here is a decent title to the piece. I consider myself to be the best on site at naming reviews, although I say it myself. If they see your title is clever or funny then you will get ten more reads on that alone. Also I like to make my work topical in the first paragraph, even if it's not that relevant to the review. Books are usually topical and of the moment so go for it. The review is about having your say on a book you purchased that you thought you would relate to and so you can have your say that way too, a particularly good tactic for biographies. My next book review will be on Freddie Flintoffs sanitised tome and as I have met the guy a couple of times through my cricket column I can tell you about that to earn your attention.

I afraid mid review I tend to revert to my notes I make during the read and just repeat the best bits and perhaps rather too keen to repeat the narrative to fill out the review. When I do biographies I really do waffle on. But you have to write something and what I don't like to do is get all pretentious over writing styles and the author. I can be an antagonistic writer and write what I think, even though it can be taboo, or I can be a puppy dog. But you know what they say about guys with puppy dogs around younger people. But books contain those things we don't talk about and we need to have the debates. People are only ever offended because they want to be or because the conversation hasn't been had enough in public.

To get your work rated with only five hours of new reviews listed up on site now you have to rely more on your work being interesting and rated back. We can no longer expect our work to hang around on dooyoo and be read that way. My technique is fairly obvious in that the 30,000 comments I have written has produced 30,000 rates coming back to me. I put myself around and I think that helps. Too many people expect return rates here and as I understand it that's not strictly allowed. If you religiously rate back you become part of a set group of raters dooyoo sometimes label as 'clicking cartels', mostly accidental, it a statistical likelihood that 'rate backers' will just bundle together through no deliberate fault of their own. Reading and rating is the name of the game here and sometimes dooyoo forget that. And if you do get upset about revenge rating all the time then quite frankly you're a plonker and full of yourself. The idea that all members actually read all our reviews we put our hard work into is fantasy, as is my next book crown...

Summary: Not for amateurs..