Book Reviews
Do you read books? Do you have opinions on the books you read? Do you want to share those opinions with the rest of the world? Can you actually write a legible and coherent book review that is a bit more useful than “it’s mint!”?
If so, you might want to take a look at me old mucker Dan’s Revish site. It’s not actually open for business yet, but it’s going to be a book review site where you can register, and post reviews of books you’ve read.
I’ve got to say that this certainly appeals to me because I like reading, and I’ve generally got a lot to say for myself – as you may have noticed.
One of the questions I’ll have to ask him is whether or not it’s against the rules of Revish if I were to also post the reviews on my own site as well, on the basis that if I’ve gone to all the trouble to write something, particularly if the review is a beautifully crafted piece of literature in its own right — which lets face it, coming from me it’s bound to be — then why shouldn’t I publish my literary masterpiece on my own site?
Actually, I should probably start charging a subscription for you all to share in my genius, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that you might not rate my genius that highly…
Anyway, it obviously it depends how Revish’s rules work. I’ll have to ask Dan.
Dan! Dan! How do revish’s rules work regarding this?
Anyway, that said I’m sure it’s going to be a beautifully crafted and pretty darn accessible site that will be an excellent place to go to find a book review. If you’d be interested in contributing reviews yourself, why not pop along to Revish and add yourself on to the mailing list?
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Ah Jack, straight to the nitty gritty as ever. None of this is finalised, but this is how it will most likely work:
When you add a review to Revish you’ll be granting a non-exclusive licence for us to use the review on the site, so the simple answer to your question is yes, you will be able to post it here too, because it belongs to you. In fact I’ll be actively encouraging reviewers to do just that, and providing an API to make it dead simple - add a review to Revish and you can have it automagically appear on your blog (if you want). Or you can have a list of recent reviews you’ve completed, or a list of books you’re currently reading, together with links to the relevant pages on Revish.
There will be some rules - no posting of reviews which have already appeared on another book review site (we’ll link to them instead); no posting of reviews that appear on Revish to other book review sites (they can link to them instread); there will be a minimum length for a review; and we’ll reserve the right to exercise some editorial control - “OMFG dis book is teh pwn!!!!” isn’t a review, I hope you’ll agree. There will be a facility to add comments to a book or a review, which is where things like this truly belong.
Darn it, I’ve given too much away, and better stop before I get in trouble.
Book reviews? On t’Interweb ??
Hasn’t Amazon already done this ?
Oh no! So they have! Damn, all my base are belong to them.
If you’re happy with the reviews on Amazon that’s great, but personally I often find them somewhat lacking, both in their content and the way Amazon lets me navigate, find related books, access reviews, and so on.
Revish will do an awful lot more, because it’s focussed on reviewing books not on selling them. You really should sign up…
How very Web 1.0…
Tim over at LibraryThing.com is always looking at new mash ups to integrate. So if there could be some sharing of reviews I’m sure he’d love to hear about any new book site.
LOL, whereas web 2.0 is about spamming multiple copies of the same content all over the web? With RSS and a half-decent API anyone who wants to will be able to access or link to the data on Revish, so there’s little reason for reviews to be posted on multiple sites. Or did I misunderstand?
And I’ll certainly be banging on Tim’s door in the near future. I didn’t know about LibraryThing until a couple of weeks ago, and it’s amazing how much data they have over there. Tim’s gone way further than I’m intending to with book data, but that reflects the different purposes of the sites. Interesting that they’ve released a service to rival xISBN (which I’m using), I shall have to investigate.
Ah, I read your statement as literally meaning that revish reviews weren’t allowed to appear on other sites. In which case there would be no point in there being an API to allow them to appear on other sites…