Hiya!
I decided to make a page that explains my book review process since it can be hard to see creative works given lower ratings than expected.
My Belief
Reviews should always belong on a spectrum. You can’t enjoy the positive without negative. Reviews have to have good and bad. Just because you enjoy something doesn’t mean everyone will.
Also, reviews aren’t always for the writer/author.
It may sound odd, but reviews (in all areas) are for the consumer. Yeah, authors/writers may find the feedback and criticism helpful, but it isn’t always for them.
Why do I have a process?
So, I’ve been doing private book and film reviews for a long time. Usually, just a few words about what I liked, along with ramblings, then a rating number that felt right. However, when I decided I wanted to write reviews, I realised after a few that I had no baseline for assigning a rating. I was basing it on the final vibes of the work. So, I needed something a bit more concrete. Something I could categorically work through and come to a rating.
Naturally, from this, I made a form to fill out.
The Form
The form I use is a PNG file that I made on Canva, which shows ten categories that are marked out of ten each.
For Books, the categories are;
- Genre SCORED OUT OF 5
- GPF/Editing SCORED OUT OF 5
- Characters SCORED OUT OF 10
- Worldbuilding SCORED OUT OF 11
- Pacing SCORED OUT OF 11
- Dialogue SCORED OUT OF 11
- Plot SCORED OUT OF 15
- Prose (Graphics for Graphic Novels & Manga’s) SCORED OUT OF 16
- Enjoyment SCORED OUT OF 16
GPF stands for Grammar, Punctuation and Formatting.
Each category is marked out of numbers that represent the value of each category to me, which then adds up, giving me an overall score of 100, which works as a percentage score. As my rating system works one through seven, I also needed to find a way to divide up the percentages to fit each rating number.
The Percentages
The percentages are done in two ways. Since most places like Waterstones, Goodreads and Amazon do a one to five-star rating, my seven-star rating system didn’t fit in nicely.
Seven Stars
For my seven-star system, this is how the percentages are broken down.
Seven is given a significantly smaller field of success simply because the percentage ranges are so large that it would be reasonably easy to achieve a seven-star rating if it followed the same as the other six. I made this decision as I wanted to make achieving seven stars special. Not many things are perfect, and I wanted my rating system to reflect that.
As you can see, though, there is a large margin for each rating, so just because a book gets a five doesn’t mean it was awful. It could have scored seven out of ten in every category, which is good, sitting at 70% but it puts it in the five stars percentage.
Five Stars
I did the same thing for the five-star ratings, only with five sections.
1 – 0% – 24%
2 – 25% – 48%
3 – 49% – 71%
4 – 72% – 94%
5 – 95% – 100%
Again, the top rating has the smallest percentage margin simply because I wanted this to be special.
Is this necessary?
For me, yes.
My mind can get scattered and fuzzy, especially when trying to assign ratings to things. Since I’m posting online, I know that people who have worked on and created these pieces of work may come across them.
I made this system so that I could back up my rating. The review, of course, would do that, but it would be something I could look at and say, “I scored different categories that are important to create the whole piece”, similar to how my university makes me aware of their marking scheme.
It also gave the ratings a value instead of just a vibe, which is what I was doing before.
I also needed this system to be equal on my blog and online. I found it hard to assign the ratings with the difference, but I also tried to work out how to be fair.
If I read something that wasn’t in my favourite genre and felt it was okay by the end, it would score lower than a fantasy horror I enjoy. With this system, even if that does happen, there are so many other things I need to score that are separate from my enjoyment and focus more on the critical analysis side.
This system can also mean that the plot and genre are excellent. However, the editing, dialogue and characters could be better, which can lower the overall rating, not because the story is terrible but because other areas need work.
I’ve read books where the story is excellent, but at some point, the pacing has slowed nearly to a stop, or the editing was so poor there have been multiple mistakes per page. Each time it’s been to the point I’ve struggled to the end and hated it, or it’s been a DNF.
Final Words
If you’re reading this, and I’ve rated your work, or you’re wondering why something got such a low rating, I just want to say I hope you understand how now.
I do not intend to hurt anyone’s feelings but keep my reviews honest, which can hurt.
I have seen some people say that if the rating is less than three, don’t post it for books. However, I’ve been on the side of having my pieces of film/tv/music video marked and trust me; it hurts just as much as having your writing scored, which I’ve also had critiqued.
My perspective is it is okay to score whatever you want on films and shows, whether it’s from a small YouTube channel with no budget or a massive Hollywood production so books can be offered the same.
And speaking of that, somewhere on my blog, Video Game and Film reviews can be found as I used to do them. I have the same forms for them; only the categories change slightly to fit each medium. There are two or three reviews on my blog that never used this system, simply because they were written before I created the system.
So, that is my review process. I’m not sure if this help or not but I hope this has helped you understand why I’ve rated things the way I have and provided comfort that every review I post uses the undergoes the same review process. The review process may change over time, but if it does I will update this page.
Updates
Only significant update dates will be recorded here.
Original Post – Saturday, 30th July 2023