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How to add a Book Review to the 100,000 Book Challenge
by Lorie-eHarlequin on January 5th, 2008, 9:48pm
Hello eHarlequin.com 2008 100,000 Book Challenge Bloggers.
In this thread you'll find the instructions as to how to add a book review.
You may print these instructions off for yourselves if need be. The thread will remain open so you have an opportunity to ask questions.
First, I’m going to remind everyone… one book per review please, because we have an automated counter now and it will count each review as one book towards our grand total. Because our ultimate goal this year is to provide books for those less fortunate, we want to ensure every book counts.
Also... Each of your reviews will show up in both the main blog, and your personal blogs. There is no need to duplicate the reviews.
Okay, so to add a book review…
Begin on My Profile.
On the right, you will see a menu beginning with:
My Blog
Below that you will see:
Create Content
- Blog Entry
- Book Review
Choose Book Review
This will pull up a page for you to fill in.
-
Title, is intended for the title of the book.
-
Next, a drop down menu is provided for you to choose the imprint and series the book is from.
-
Tags are keywords, intended to make your reviews easier to find for those interested. For example, If I were reviewing a Luna I might type – Luna, Fantasy, Magic
-
Book Format allows you to choose what format your book was read in. ie ebook, audio or print. This, along with Tags and the Series drop down menu, is optional.
Once you get to the posting box at the bottom of the page, you type your review, remembering to give some sort of personal reflection on it (how well you liked it and why for example)
And then press Submit.
And Congratulations, you’re done and now we're one step closer to our Grand Total of 100,000.
adding a review
Thank you Lorie for the above instructions. I thrive much better with someone telling me what to do in a new or unfamilar situation, although I have been negotiating around the new site and think it is great!!
congrats!!
Linda
Literacy is for Life!!
Instill the love for reading in our children and reward them for life!!
Hi
You're welcome Linda.
I thought, with the changes, and so many new people joining us this year, that instructions would be good.
Lorie
Adding minis / novellas / other shorts
Remembering that online reads don't count, let's discuss the "best practices" way to add a "Book Review" once we've read enough minis or novellas or other shorts to add up to "one book."
I'm thinking we should do a title like
"Five Minis to Equal One Book". And then within the "Book Review" each blogger should include the title and author (and source? do we want people to include the source?) of each story.
Another nit-picky point is, should a group of shorts all be either Harlequin or non-Harlequin? For each line, we could put the lines in the "tags" field ourselves I think. IMHO a group should all be either Harlequin or not so that the percent at year-end is correct.
What do y'all think? Good idea, bad idea, good idea but should tweak it here and there?
Penn
"Best Practices" Protocol for the "Title" field in "Book Review"
I was wondering what y'all think of strongly encouraging everyone to put both the book title (when it is one book) and the author(s) in the "Title" field when doing the book review? I've noticed some "Book Reviews" don't have the book title at all and some have the title but not the author. I always like both. Well, I like the publishing/line info, too, but that might be asking a bit much of everyone.
Do we just let people continue to customize in their own way? That's probably Harlequin's prefernce but I sure would like to see title and author. I wondered if it would be possible, once the system is truly up and running and the ees at Harlequin aren't running around tweaking and fixing things, if we could get a field for "Author" added. Might tie up the system too much.
Anyway, is it a totally bad idea to strongly encourage everyone to include both book title and author in the "Title" field?
Penn
title and author
I'm with you Penn. I like to see at least the title of the book in teh subject line, though it's nice to see author as well. But i can live with just the title so long as the author is listed in the body of the review. And I'm on my way over to add my first entry to teh challenge blog right now.
Go visit my blog for the 2007 10K Challenge!
Using "NFM (No Further Message)" for short reviews
A friend was telling me about a place that she hangs out at online that uses "NFM" when a message is over and she loves that she knows she doesn't need to click on the "more" button for that entry. I wondered if some of us (those of us who read this entry) wanted to use "NFM" when doing a very short review -- the kind that we've told Sadhbh she could do. Since we see the first few lines of each "Book Review" it would be nice to know, for example, that she's actually only written a few words and that we can see the whole review.
So it might look like "A charming read about a lawyer and her janitor and how they reach their HEA.
NFM (No Further Message)"
I think for a while, we'd need to type out the whole "no further message" since many (most? none?) of us know what it stands for?
What do y'all think? Esp. those of you who do write short reviews that can be totally seen in the preview-like window?
Penn
Penn ..... I agree on the title and author
and to make it uniform (if the powers that be here at eHarl agree) and they need to do is edit the text for the form that comes up for the review to read "Title and author" ..... that should be a fairly easy fix and I think a valuable one
thanks for posting the question of the multiple novella / minis ..... I hadn't bookmarked this discussion in my favourits and totally forgot it was here, so I asked over in the Ask Lorie and Jayne LOL ..... but this is definitely the place to discuss that issue .... so I"m no adding this discussion to my favourites too :D
~~ KatherineT ~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it! ~~
hey my color stuck!
I did the exact same thing I've been doing all along and this time it took and didn't default to gray. woo hoo!
Go visit my blog for the 2007 10K Challenge!
NFM notice
I like that! I don't like that we have to click through to see the full blog but I guess I understand why they do that. But i REALLY hate when you take the extra time to click through only to find nothing there.
Go visit my blog for the 2007 10K Challenge!
Adding / Sizing a Picture in a Book Review
While I'm adding things to discuss, I saw Katherine helping someone (Sandi?) add a picture of a book cover and Katherine talked about controlling the size of the pic.
I haven't tried adding a picture to a "Book Review" yet but thought that if we're going to give each other pointers that here was a good place.
So to start us off:
what else should I be asking that I don't know (yet) to ask?
Penn
Katherine, it was actually your post
over in the "Ask Jayne and Lorie" thread that made me post! You're inspiring!
Penn
mini's and more
I'm going to edit the intro and rules, to better clarify how many "mini's" equal a "book" and how we should title and review them.
I think I may also need to clarify the difference between a blog entry and a book review. I have to go back over the whole challenge and read them piece by piece again and edit accordingly.
So, anyone who has posted a blog entry as a book review, if you don't change it yourself I'll be doing it for you, and expect email. I will do it this one time, it is technically not part of my job to do this, but I want it fixed before we go any further.
Lorie, you mentioned somewhere else
sending an email. I think that's an excellent idea b/c people aren't getting everywhere that they need to get to (yet) and so aren't seeing all the info that they need to see.
You deserve a day or evening of pampering!
Penn
Lorie .......
Perhaps above you may want to add instructions on how to "delete" and book review ....... and that once a book review is posted it cannot be changed to a regular blog entry ............ I do think the techies should consider my suggest of the "confirmation" before posting a book review .... it may catch the majority of errors and prevent tons of work
........ I think we need to have a PJ party once everything settles down ...... with all the Hosties and Techies as guests of honour ...... we could make margaitas and tell scarey stories
... or group watch the neat video I just came across explaining what Zombies are and how to protect yourself 
~~ KatherineT ~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it! ~~
Lord Katherine, every day
Lord Katherine, every day you remind me a little more of myself... (yes, you should probably worry)
We had no hydro the other night. (electricity for the u.s. gals) so my girls and I were sitting around the dinner table, eating nachos and salsa by a single candle, and discussing a screen play of a zombie movie they want me to write...lol.
I can try and change the blogs to reviews, I should be able to. I'm going to try it in a few.
book covers
Penni, I don't think I have written instructions up yet. It slipped my mind to do so.
I do know that they are usually 127x201 in dimensions.
I'm hoping that the techs are going to fix the imaging button, as this is the easiest way for y'all to do it.
If they can't then I'll write up a set of proper instructions.
Lorie, the "image" button works ..................
or at least it's working in Internet Explorer 7 .... not sure about the other browsers out there
PS --- sorry you were one without hydro ... wicked wind storms we've been having ...... though when you have that screen play done you'll have to invite your girls to put on a play for us
~~ KatherineT ~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it! ~~
book reviews
...I do think the techies should consider my suggest of the "confirmation" before posting a book review... I agree with Katherine about this and I'd love to be able to spell check before posting. Oh yeah, and be able to write in color!!
I think I'm starting to get used to the book review process now.
Gold Eagle book reviews?
I hope I'm asking this in the right place....Isn't Gold Eagle a Harlequin imprint? I see the Rogue Angel books as an option but I'm currently reading the first book in the Room 59 series and I don't see an option for that or any of the other Gold Eagle books for the book review drop down menu. Help!
Deb, yes Gold Eagles count ................
we discussed this on the old site just before it closed ..... some of the Gold Eagle books are now being offered in the eBoutique under Worldwide Mysteries
....... but Gold Eagle has been a Harlequin Imprint for ages! ... and the backlist on some to the series by Don Pendleton is in the 100's!
~~ KatherineT ~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it! ~~
I thought they did...
But what do I use on the drop down menu for them? Worldwide Mysteries? There isn't a category for them....
Deb .....
for the time being use Worldwide Mysteries ..... and ask Lorie or Jayne if they can add Gold Eagle
I'd also put Gold Eagle as a Tag
hey, did you notice, they changed the default font on the posts! .... and we now have a "add comment" button at the bottom of the page too!
~~ KatherineT ~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it! ~~
Thanks Katherine!
I'll add Gold Eagle as a tag. I don't use the tags as I'm not really familiar with the best way but that makes sense even to me!
Oh lord Katherine… my
Oh lord Katherine… my girls need no encouragement lol. Actually, given your sense of humour you'd probably love their story. They're going to brainstorm the whole thing over the winter they tell me. Of course I get to do the actual writing I'm told...
Yes, the weather has been really crazy. A huge branch hit the house last night, scared the heck out of me, especially since I know the dh was out working in it. I barely slept until I heard from him.
Shelley. I’ve got confirmation button on my list, which I will be forwarding to them some time this weekend. The writing in colour… honestly, we may not get that. Not until we find out why it’s acting so funny. Were you here the other day when everything went fuschia, then green… then on to some other color? my poor eyes, lol.
Debi, Yes, the Gold Eagle are a Harlequin Imprint, and I do count them towards the Har totals. I hadn’t noticed they were missing from the dropdown… thanks for mentioning it. Just put it under worldwide mystery or library for now and I will add the note of the missing gold eagle to my list of glitches.
"Best Practices" for adding books in an anthology?
We talked about this some at the old site but I figured back then we'd work out the details once we were up and running here.
So, when a book has two full-length novels in it (e.g. some of the Signature Selects, the Duets, the Nora Roberts and Betty Neels reprints), what do we think is the best way to handle it? Donna Alward did a Book Review of one of the Betty Neels combos and I told her to do it like this.
Book Review #1
in the title line = Title of Story#1 by Betty Neels (in Anthology's Title by Betty Neels)
Then to do her review of just that story#1
Book Review #2
in the title line = Title of Story#2 by Betty Neels (in Anthology's Title by Betty Neels)
Then to do her review of just that story#2
What do y'all think? Tweak it for me, please.
And since no one's coming here to tell me to stop being bossy or that my ideas are good, bad or unnecessary, do we just pass the word as we see these things happen?
Penn hoping SOMEONE (in addition to Lorie) comes by
okay .. before I comment .... what happened to the REPLY button
without the reply button we don't get a view of the post we are replying to and have to use our memories!
... and we all know that I don't have a memory!!
....... so darn it, I'm going to have to have TWO windows/tabs open on a conversation in order to know what I'm replying to!
~~ KatherineT ~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it! ~~
How to post a review if it is an edition with more than ONE book
Hi Penni
For an edition that contains more than one book, this is how I would review them ...............
Example: Under His Skin collection of stories by Lori Foster, Linda Lael Miller, Carla Neggers
to know that this edition has previously published books, simply look at the copyright page .... if the copy right dates beside the authors name is different than the copy right on the edition, than you are reading previously published books ...
so for this edition there would be THREE reviews
---
---
--------------- perhaps, only ONE of the stories in this edition is new to you (you've read the others within the last 12 months) ...... then simply review the story that is new to you .... though I would still comment from what edition you've read it
................ I think this is what you were saying Penni!
~~ KatherineT ~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it! ~~
Anthos and such...
Hey, i popped over after Penn posted on my review.
Rather than separate the 2 stories now (since I kind of reviewed them together) I will simply do it separately in the future. I did do Helen Dickson's separately as I'd already read the first book in the duet.
I just checked the rules and see that there is a 50k length, so anthos of novellas count as one book adn that you can use spice briefs but you have to have enough to add up to 50k. I checked because I have an antho coming up soon.
Donna
THE SOLDIER'S HOMECOMING, Romance, March 08, Aus/NZ April 08
FALLING FOR MR DARK AND DANGEROUS, Romance, August 08
http://www.donnaalward.com
http://www.donnaalward.blogspot.com
Hi Donna .....
if you click over to the "Introduction and Rules" thread here under the Book Challenge board, Lorie outlines the basic rules in her header ....
but in short, as you know anthologies are book editions that contain a number of novellas .... for the purpose of the Book Challenge, anthology editions are classed as ONE book
if you are reading "novellas" on their own, you may save the novella in a private blog and add more novellas until you have about about 200 pgs combined / 50K words .... once you have enough to equal a book you can do a "book review" on all the novellas
hope that helps!
~~ KatherineT ~ I'm a Harlequin Addict, and I'm proud of it! ~~
Yes, Katherine, that is what I was trying to say!
You did it so well!! (A couple of posts ago -- you and Donna got in while I was herding husbands and children LOL.) Your formatting was great. I haven't played with the formatting yet: I'm still waiting to get used to everything and to feel like the poor techies and hostys have caught up to the major problems -- I didn't want to accidently create a new one.
Thanks for you post!
Penn (PS - I'm with you, I want the reply button back; I wonder what it was doing that needs fixing?)