How I do a Book Review

So as I was going over the first book that I will be doing a review for, for my blog, I decided that it was a good time to explain how a basic 5 star review system works and how I do a 5 star review. For example the most basic use of the 5 star systems is.

1 = I hated it
2 = I didn't like it
3 = It was OK.
4 = I liked it.
5 = I loved it

Now I will explain how a 5 star system works for me when I do a review.

1 = You wrote a book and published it.

1 = The cover was eye catching with no formatting errors and it made me want to look at the interior. (This is almost never a full star.)

1 = Formatting of the interior was perfect. (This is almost never a full star.)

1 = The preview of the book grabbed my attention and made me want to continue reading the book.

1 = I enjoyed the book; for whatever reason the story or subject matter personally appealed to me.

So as you can see from my system that if you write a book and are brave enough to publish it I give one star. I really don’t like the, “I hated it rating.” If someone is brave enough to put out a book especially when self publishing, they deserve at least one star. Then you can see that 2 stars come from formatting, the cover and the interior. I will almost never give a full star on either of these things. This is because there always seems to be some kind of mistake. As a self published author I understand this because I have come across these mistakes on my own works. Even after fixing these mistakes there always seems to be a new formatting problem. Unlike most reviewers I don’t get hung up on this and if I see these simple mistakes that seem to be on almost everyone’s eBooks, I just give a half a star and move on. I will not point out every single formatting mistake. If there is one or one million, I will give the same rating on it. The forth star for me, is simply your book making me want to read more than just the preview. This doesn’t mean I enjoyed the book as a whole but that it was good enough to make me want to read more. You can have the greatest ending ever but if your intro to the book is lacking it won’t matter.  And of course the last star means I enjoyed the book, as I said above, for whatever reason the story or subject matter personally appealed to me.

So just to make clear, you could get 4 stars for your book and I could actually hate it. By simple writing a book and publishing it, having a perfect cover with no formatting problems, having a perfectly formatted interior, and by having an intro to your book that grabs my attention.

I hope that explains how the 5 star system works and how I do it. If you have any questions please leave in the comments or email them to me.