Book Reviews by the Numbers

So this is assignment #11 and I have to admit, I haven't been all that interested in the last three of the assigned tasks. This assignment does sound interesting so I shouldn't have trouble finishing this one (that is as long as I don't get distracted by something else).

This week’s task is a content analysis of book reviews to get some info about reviews. How long are they? How personal are they? How many paragraphs does the average book review have?

By comparing book reviews written by bloggers to reviews written by professionals, I hope we can come up with some interesting stats to know more about what makes a book review.

Add here’s the task:

* Pick a book review you’ve written that you’re particularity proud of. Then, search around until you find at least one other professional review of the same book. If you don’t write book reviews, compare a review of something else instead.

* When you have some time (I’d say 30-45 minutes) follow this link to a Google Docs spreadsheet (nice anchor text, right?). It should look something like the picture at the right (but hopefully with more lines filled in).

* Fill in your name, blog URL, and book title in the lines. Feel following the columns and answering the questions as best you can for both of the reviews you have.

* Once you’re done, spend some time thinking about what you’ve observed. This can be about the numbers, or it can just be general impressions of the two reviews. If you’re feeling excited, write a post explaining some of your findings and what this comparison helped you learn about your reviews or about reviewing in general. Leave a link back to your post in the comments.

* For extra credit, find a few more reviews of the book you chose (another blogger, or a professional), or pick another book and add the stats for your review and a professional review. The more entries we have, the more I think we can learn.