Imma tell you how to write a book review on Amazon or Goodreads — one that will be helpful to the writer and to fellow readers.

It isn’t hard, and it could just be one line, although longer and more comprehensive is better.

The main purpose of a book review is to help other people to know whether or not they’ll like the book. Just stating your opinion won’t do that. “This book sucked” is not helpful. Neither is “A great read!” or “Meh”.

The most helpful book review begins with a sentence — very most helpful is 120 characters or fewer so it can be tweeted and retweeted on Twitter — using the title and author’s name and a reason. This works whether you like the book or not.

Love zombies? FAKE BOOK by Imaginary Author is for you.

You can then follow with more details.

Personally, I hate books about zombies. I only downloaded this book because it was free and I liked the picture on the cover. As promised, it features the kind of zombie that shuffles around and drops bits off itself while it moans about eating people’s brains. Fair enough, the cover and book description told me to expect that, so I can’t claim to have been unpleasantly surprised.

So why did I give the book more than one star, when I didn’t like it? Because it isn’t the author’s fault I don’t like this kind of book, and because it’s well-written. The plotting is tight and, given the premise of a zombiepocalypse, believable. The characters, even the dead ones, are well-drawn and individual, and the dialog is snappy.

Too bad it’s about zombies.

OR

So I only gave it one star, partly because: zombies, but mostly because the plot meandered all over the place and had loose ends that were never tied up. All the characters, dead and alive, sounded and acted alike. The dialog was unnatural, and not in a good way.

Not everybody has it in them to even begin to write a book, let alone finish and publish one, so I hate to sound harsh, but FAKE BOOK really needed a good developmental editor or critique group to help shape and polish it. I wish Imaginary Author well on future projects. Even if they have zombies in them.

[note: This is not a real book review. No actual authors were harmed in the writing of this example.]

That tells prospective readers some things about the book, so they can make their own decisions based on specifics: zombies, writing, plotting, characters, dialog, zombies. It gives the writer a reason to tweet your review, even a bad review, which is good for your review cred.

“But it says nice things about a book I don’t like.” What are you, the book sheriff? Is it a crime for somebody to write a book you don’t like? It costs nothing to be kind. “So shines a good dead in a naughty world,” as dear Mr. Shakespeare said.

A WRITING PROMPT FOR YOU: Go write a nice book review.

MA