[Hampshire] Book Review Protocols

Hi,

Thanks for all the volunteers to review books. Here is a quick explanation of
how it works.

1) The publisher sends me some books that they want reviewing. We can ask for
anything but we are only likely to get books to review if there are not many
reviews in press already which probably means newish books and/or niche
books.

2) I'll drop the book of at a meeting, then you read it and write the review*.

3) The publisher wants the publicity, so the review needs to go on the
internet where people can see it. In our case that's on our LUG site,
somewhere like Amazon.co.uk and on your own web site if you want.

4) If you volunteer and write a review then you get to keep the book, however
if anyone else wants to review the book then it's only fair to let them
review the book too. The publisher wants the publicity and more reviews are
better than less.


* If we give you a book to review and you don't review it, it's only fair that
we ask for it back so that someone else can review it. Please don't ask to
review a book if you don't have the time to review it. The Edinburgh Perl
Mongers believe that 4-6 weeks is an acceptable time window to write a review
and I think that's a good idea too.

If they send us lots of books and don't get any reviews or they are "weak"**
then we get a bad reputation and we don't get any more books to review.

** You can be say what you like about the book but you need to be
professional, "it's rubbish" or "it's good" isn't enough. You need to
describe the book so people have a feel for what it is about, try to explain
the level it's pitched at and try to say if you liked it or not and support
everything with examples.

It is hard to stay objective and keep subjective opinions out of the review -
but if someone knows what your level and opinion is then they can judge what
you said about a book.

Ideally someone reading the review should understand what the book is about
and if it will help them decide if they want to buy it***.

*** The book review section of the wiki contains the first two reviews plus
some of my previous reviews from books I bought myself for padding.

http://www.hants.lug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?BookReviews

Here are book reviews from other groups:

http://london.pm.org/reviews/
http://www.lugip.org/bookreview
http://edinburgh.pm.org/book-reviews/

I will codify this up and stick it on the Wiki before I contact the publisher
so that know one is under any misunderstandings. As long as we play fair then
there should be no problems and we get some books to look at for free.

-- 
Adam Trickett
  Chairman, Hampshire Linux Users Group
    http://www.hants.lug.org.uk/