We have been having a discussion in the LinkedIn Crime Novel group about book reviews and it made me think more deeply on the subject. Most people, both authors and reviewers, think about reviews in this way: Someone reads the book, summarizes the plot, describes what he/she liked and didn't like, and gives it some kind of a grade or score. But isn’t the main purpose of a review to help readers pick books that they will enjoy reading?

At the base of it all isn't the idea, the desired result, to have a skilled, trusted person act as a filter to sift through hundreds or thousands of books in a genre and pick out only the ones he/she thinks are worth the reader’s time? I suggest that the value of a reviewer is to filter out the bad to mediocre stuff and pass along the good to great stuff.

If you think a major best-selling book is terrible then there is some value in a site publishing a review that essentially says, “I think this is a terrible book because … In my opinion it is a waste of your time and money.”

But, if we are talking about books that people are unlikely to find on their own I think that there isn’t a tremendous amount of utility in a book review website publishing a “don’t buy this book” review or a “this is a mediocre book” review. The odds are very high that the reader will never just stumble across that book on their own so why waste limited time and energy and blog space telling them to skip it?

If you are dealing with little-known books, wouldn’t it be much more helpful to readers to sift out the mediocre and below books and only publish reviews of books you thought were well worth their time? It seems to me that the most useful thing a reviewer can do for a reader is to say:

“I’ve searched through the twenty Sci Fi [or whatever genre] novels that were sent to me last week and I found this one that is terrific. Here is what it’s about and here is why I really liked it. I think that this book is worth a few minutes of your time to check out on Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ feature. The other nineteen books that I looked at were all mediocre or below so I won’t waste your time with details about them.”

If a review site operated that way the reviewer could probably reject half the books by the time she/he finished the first chapter. As soon as the reviewer found himself frustrated with a book, he/she could stop reading right there and move on to the next candidate. No need to read the whole thing.

Winnow the to-be-reviewed pile down to books that the reviewer thinks scored at least a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 and skip the rest. Limit the review scores to

(7) Good solid meat and potatoes read – Something for the beach/airplane
(8) Very good – add this to your bedtime reading list
(9) Superior – Start reading this one as soon as possible
(10) Terrific – Start reading this book NOW

When you get right down to it, doesn’t the reader just want to know what books are worth his/her time to check out, what the plot is, and why the reviewer liked it?

So, my proposal is that someone start a review site where the books are separately listed by genre and maybe even by sub-genre and the site only prints reviews with the above ratings. Books that aren’t at least a seven on a scale of 1-10 are ignored.

That way the reviewer can plow through the inbox, immediately discarding the books that don’t meet these criteria, and concentrate on the ones that the reviewer thinks are worth his/her reader's time.

Something to think about.

--David Grace