speak book review

speak book review

The Power of Persuasive Book Reviews

1. Introduction

In the age of the blurb, when the consumer is used to getting something free and to the point, book reviews have developed a certain reputation. Some people believe a book review is synonymous with a book report, but reports tend to be a simple description of a plot and even when they are evaluative in nature, they don’t constitute the kind of persuasive writing that’s being called for here. The issue of children, specifically teens, and even more specifically boys, doing a “quick search” on the web for book reviews for school assignments is a concept deserving of its own inquiry, but for the most part, when people in the book industry refer to book reviews, they are concerned with the standard book review in print sources and more recently online publications. Despite the rapid changes in what and how we read, ideas propagated by books seem unlikely to go anywhere fast or quietly, and because of this, books will be written and people will continue to find it necessary to sift out the worthwhile literature from the rest. As long as this activity persists, book reviews will not only survive, but flourish. This may seem to make book reviews sound parasitic, but that is far from the case. Book reviews are crucial in that a good review can bring a great work to the attention of a reader or save a reader from wasting time and money on a book that will only disappoint them. At their best, book reviews can stimulate discussion, debate, and an exchange of ideas both in the public domain and private. Because the book review’s success depends on it being read and judgment passed on it, the more people are skilled in writing persuasive book reviews, the better off we all are.

2. The Art of Persuasion

Here’s an overview of those central concepts and a guide to the required elements in creating a review aimed at persuading readers to share in your opinions. Persuasion is a skill to be envied. One who can argue convincingly is in the enviable position of convincing others to accept his position or conclusion. For most of us, persuasion is a difficult art and must be executed with care and precision. At its base, a good review is an argument. It starts with a premise – a book that is worth reading. It builds a case to support that thesis. If there is one single thing that makes a review worth reading, it is its originality. Whether in an interesting thesis, an entertaining writing style, or a controversial opinion, originality is the spice that makes an argument worth reading. But what are the different aspects of a review that make it a convincing argument?

3. Crafting a Compelling Book Review

Your detailed understanding is evident in the book review, “The Power of Persuasive Book Reviews.” Use of topic sentences: The report we got from him had this to say was the first sentence of the summary in the book review. Each paragraph, however poorly organized, had a topic sentence. Using topic sentences helps to achieve coherence, especially during the writing process. Sometimes during the writing process, it is much easier to spot a flaw in logic if it is in written form. Transitions are all too easy for us to forget about, especially when we are writing about a topic which is particularly interesting. Transitions are the writing between paragraphs, the glue that holds ideas together. In the book review, he identifies the transition between the first and second paragraph as in need of improvement. If a word or idea is not contributing, then it is not needed at this time should be posted as a reminder above your computer. Too often do we become so indulged in what we are writing that we forget to even ask ourselves the simple question, “What am I trying to say here?” An example in the book review of where this question was not asked comes in the first paragraph of the evaluation section. “Rowling made the story more intense as the series continue.” This idea is completely off the main idea that the paragraph. With a stronger sense of individual paragraph idea and more frequent checking to see if the idea is on topic, the reports would have been much more focused. His attempts to evaluate his own writing reveal a strong awareness of what he was trying to accomplish. In the self-evaluation, he examines how his own writing can become more focused. If the writing is our roadmap, then it needs to take a route which best gets us to our desired destination. This destination would be the completion of a top-notch book review. All great routes have a detailed map to guide the driver, and in terms of writing, his map is the plan of action to stay on topic. By using topic sentences to state the main idea of each paragraph, the task of staying on course will be much easier to accomplish.

4. The Impact of Persuasive Book Reviews

Let’s now consider the influence of a persuasive book review. It is a broad fact that book sales can be considerably affected by a review. Coomes et al (1994) note that “book review columns are generally believed to promote sales and create publicity for publishers.” It is later stated that there is a direct link between a good review and a purchase of a book. They use empirical evidence from the US that shows that an increase in the number of new titles reviewed is positively linked with an increase in sales of trade books. Furthermore, reviews affect economics of books directly; books titles that are reviewed in economics journals have the price of the book increased by the author or publisher prior to sending to the publisher in anticipation of a positive review. This shows the confidence of the author in his own work, and the potential wealth increase and successfulness of the piece. It could also be hinting at the fact that economists have the tendency to write positive reviews for their friends. Cognitive states that reviews are used to “reduce cognitive dissonance” by making a decision to buy a book seem entirely correct. This could be followed by the only way to reverse a dissonance creating decision, by returning the book and the prevention of this occurring by making the decision to buy the same book by reading someone else’s persuasive review. This could signify that a persuasive review is effective for both reinforcing pre-meditated decisions to buy, and it is also useful to change someone’s decision to buy or not to buy a book. This leads to the concept of “reflective change” employed by some fiction authors. If the work is designed with the specific intention to change the point of view of the reader to the fictional world and it sets a reflective change in one’s cognition about the real world, reviews can be seen as a tool to change the decision of the reader buying the same author’s future work. This stated by Kunkel et al (1993) who believe that reviews are a tool for publishers to set consumer buying patterns and increase the sales of certain genres.

5. Conclusion

To capitalize on the rising popularity of academic book reviews in scholarly journals, it is important to understand how reviewers go about writing their reviews and what the key persuasive strategies are. The first step in this process, in fact, the first aim of a review, is to summarize the book. While keeping the summary to a minimum, the reviewer should still offer the reader a sense of what the book is about and what issues it touches on. This is often done by explaining what the author’s main thesis and main supporting evidence are in the first few pages of the review. This strategy is directly related to the aim of giving the reader information while trying to persuade them as to the worth of the book. By incorporating the thesis of the review into the thesis of the book, and then informing the reader of the success of the book based on the review’s thesis, a strong summary and a strongly persuasive review are created. Additionally, a well-written review will always hint or suggest to the reader what the book is like. This will include the assumptions the author makes in his argument, the manner in which the author has structured his argument, and the nature of the evidence used to support the argument. This sort of information plays into the reader’s own assessment of the book and readies them to compare notes with the reviewer. If the review can persuade the reader to agree with the assessment of the book before the book has even been read, then the review has recommended the book in the finest manner possible.