Book Reviews...

[Khelbiros]

Another suggestion - what about having book reviews in a similar fashion to the reviews on RPG net?

And also, to get people interested in the site, you could announce either a short story writing contest or a review writing contest and publicise it throughout the SF Lit blog/forum scene that way.

[mcrow]

I believe the plan is to do exactly the same sort of review system as rpg.net.

A SF writing contest would be cool.

[ShannonA]

I need to rewrite the RPGnet review software, but I hope to do that in the next couple of weeks.

I've seen interest from a couple of folks in having some type of writer support, so something along those lines would be good.

[One Horse town]

Perhaps it would be worth posting one or two 'review threads' until the review software is running? It might create a bit more traffic in the short term and also mean that when the software is running, you have some ready made reviews to put up.

[ShannonA]

Sounds like a great idea. Just mark them as [Review] and give me an OK to repost them with the software, and it'll give me some test cases for the software, which is getting there.

It'll use a 1-10 scale, just like the book index, by the by.

[One Horse town]

Would it be worthwhile to give ratings for Plot, Characterisation & Writing? The RPG reviews have a Style & Substance rating, so would it be more worthwhile to be a bit more specific on book reviews, just like the RPG ones, rather than a blanket rating?

Edit: I guess that those ratings can then be averaged to get the final one, but maybe some kind of differentiation should be made. For affionados, at any rate.

[ShannonA]

I really hate the Style & Substance ratings because I don't think they're used consistently. I'm afraid the same would be the case here, and that a singular rating would be much more meaningful, but I'm willing to hear other opinions since I'm not quite to the bit where I program in the new rating system for Xenagia.

eBay has surely gone in the direction of more definition lately.

I guess one of the questions is do I, as a review reader, care if if it's a good book or a bad book, or if it's a well-characterized but poorly-plotted book. The other questions is am I, as a review writer, really able to make that distinction, or does it become meaningless in many cases.

Sideways, would a tag listing a book's strengths be a better choice? How about the current summary?

[One Horse town]

I really hate the Style & Substance ratings because I don't think they're used consistently.

That's the problem with subjectivity! I've had a few problems with it myself and probably got involved in my first and only flamewar because of it. :o

Sideways, would a tag listing a book's strengths be a better choice?

Yeah, maybe that would be better.

Seems like i voluntered here. It was a general you! :D But i'll see what i can do. I'm reading the first book in the Malazan Books of the the Fallen at the moment. So i'll start making a few notes about it. I'm a slow reader though and it's a big book...