The Art of Assessment

The Art of Assessment

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by Magdalena Ball

If you love to read, listen to music, attend concerts, go to restaurants, or have children, and can write, you can become a reviewer, and earn money while getting lots of free review material. If you've always wanted to be a reviewer, but didn't know where to start, The Art of Assessment is the best, and only guide you need. If you are already a reviewer, The Art of Assessment will help you hone your craft, discover new niches for your work, and venues for expanding your profession.

The Art of Assessment is a complete guide to the review process, from how to write good reviews, how to use interviews to add depth to your reviews, obtaining review copies, marketing your reviews, and plenty of examples and references to help you become a working reviewer.

Welcome to the world of consumerism. There are a lot of things to buy. Advertisers want your money. Authors want you to read their books. Film-makers want you to see their films. Music publishers want you to buy their CDs. The consumer needs reviews to help them choose where to spend their hard earned money. The advertisers need reviews to help the consumer choose their products.

Everything for sale is open to review, and reviews are in hot demand. The combination of free review material, and the opportunity to get paid for your opinions has made reviewing a very sought after career option. However, it isn't as easy to write a good review as it looks. The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything addresses this market niche.

152 pages softcover

View a sample of this book.

Customer Reviews:

Cory Heneker  (Wednesday, 26 November 2008)
Rating:

When conducting a review, whether it is for a book, car, house, film or theatre there are principles one must keep in mind. Who it is going to read
the review and what will their expectations of the evaluation be. Like all good writers the reviewer must decide who their audience will be, and aim
their writing at that audience.

The Art of Assessment sets out to provide practical guidelines to prospective reviewers, on how to perfect
the techniques required of the craft. Set out in thirteen chapters the book takes the reader step by step through the process of reviewing. Each step
is highly detailed and backed up with examples of what is required. There is also a wide listing of potential reviews markets detailed throughout the
book.

What makes this book stand out from others of its type? It is in the simplicity of the presentation both verbally and visually. The
book is not cluttered to look at and does not talk down to the reader, or lecture at them through an academic format.

All the information
about what a review, types of reviews, formatting, research and interviews are presented with great clarity. It is reflected in the book's
construction that the author has a great wealth and experience in the field of reviewing. The book does not ignore the pitfalls of reviewing if one is
seeking to make a full-time living from the exercise. It does emphasize that for reviews to be taken seriously, they must be well crafted and
researched like any other form of published work.

Overall the book gives excellent guidance for a person contemplating traveling down the
reviewing path. It is a journey that needs patience, dedication, grammatical skills and a thick skin. Not all those who you write reviews for will
appreciate your views and will not hesitate to tell you. Financial reward will not be great in most cases, but the pleasure of completing a
well-written review is a true reward in itself.

The Art of Assessment is a very useful tool to guide potential and practicing reviewers to
greater heights of excellence in their chosen field. Until recently I ran a book review service for authors, and having access to a book such as
Magdalena Ball has written, would have made my reviewing tasks so much easier. For those wishing to try their luck at reviewing they could buy no
better text on the subject.

Warren Thurston - Owner of Pentales
http://www.pentales.com


"The Art of Assessment is one
book that every beginning or even seasoned reviewer should have the chance to read... This is not a straight-line how-to book. It is so much more. Ms.
Ball goes into great detail and lists many resources the reviewer can use on daily basis. She also lets us know that there is a need for reviewers in
just about everything, book, products, secret shoppers, music, etc. There is a world out there for those who love to give their opinions and some may
even get paid to do this. I have been doing book reviews for over a year now and thought I knew exactly what needed to be done for a good review. The
Art of Assessment has proved to me I still have a lot to learn. If you are serious about wanting to be a good reviewer this is one book you will be
happy to read."

Kim Draper, Book Review Club


Guide to Reviewing
"If I was a new reviewer, this would be a great self
guide book that would help me along the way, and I highly recommend this book to help writers."

Danielle Naibert, The Book Reviewer
Site


How to Review Anything Even These Books
"The Art of Assessment doesn't just tell how to become a reviewer; it teaches basic
writing skills such as the revision process. Ball offers a wide variety of review resources and organizes her material very well...The Art of
Assessment's aim is to teach how to review anything, and it does that. Ball's ideas are very developed in that she covers what to review, how to
review, and where to review. She has covered all the areas which makes for a useful book...
No potential book reviewer should be without this
book."

Niki Ann Taylor, Suite 101


Bookwired.com Review: The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything by Magdalena
Ball
Copyright 2005 by AICIM
Review Date: Oct 27, 2005

Maggie Ball gives straightforward help to those that would want the dread,
thankless, assignment of being a book reviewer. There is enough information in this book to give just about anyone that can read a better-than-average
good start.

Like a magician giving away trade secrets Maggie Ball walks a thin line of teaching, how-to and the secret wizardry behind
providing the talented reader an income. Overall the E-book The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything by Magdalena Ball is a must for anyone
wanting to get into the hermit-style life of being a reviewer.

Something that Maggie left out, but is not mandatory, is speed-reading if
you are going to accomplish much, speed typing and a good word processor such as . . . let's just say the one your computer came with is not used any
longer by State offices because of its grammatical errors.

Book reviewers as other types of reviewers, must be able to read several books
in a day, retain enough of each book to do an outstanding review and get that review out in a timely manor. Again none of these are requirements, but
if you are offering your services and expect the freebies, then you must realize the time commitment involved and how the lack of these talents can
consume your time.

I do have a problem with one major theme in the book. That is the same problem I run into with other reviewers across
the globe. Each person you know has a story, maybe several. Most of them have more than one novel, good novels inside of them. Oh, if only they would
tell the story. There is no such thing as a bad book. You may not like the book. Maybe the book has grammatical errors, maybe it has slow spots, maybe
it isn’t you’re type of book, as one reviewer stated. It is my opinion that if you cannot find enough good about the book to write a decent
review in its favor, then it is a book you should pass on to someone with a different perspective.

That being said, The Art of Assessment:
How to Review Anything by Magdalena Ball is a must-have for anyone wanting to become a reviewer. There are other things that would help your effort,
maybe to be included in future versions, but if you want to get a good start now and know what is needed to become good at what you want to do, you
need this book.


Inside The Cover Book Reviews
Review by Betty Winslow
Online review can be found at:
http://www.absolutewrite.com/novels/art_of_assessment.htm

Let me say right off the bat that I prefer my writing books in hardcopy, so that
I can red them in bed, in the car, or in the bathtub (not a good place for an e-reader). However, Magdalena Ball's e-book, The Art of Assessment: How
to Review Anything, made sitting in front of my computer worth the crick in my neck I ended up with.

I've been doing book reviews for
about five years now, and I more or less fell into it one day, when (at my second job as school librarian) I read a professional librarian review
magazine, thought to myself, "Hey, maybe I can do this, too!" and sent in my first review. A bit to my surprise, the editor liked my work, and I've
been doing reviews for her ever since.

More recently, I've sent a few clips from that magazine to other publications and have made a place
for my work at several other magazines (some of which even pay!). Along the way, I've learned a lot about doing reviews, but I had to do it pretty
much on my own, since no matter where I looked, I couldn't seem to find a book about this field. When someone in one of the on-line writer's groups I
belong to mentioned Maggie's book, I sent off for it right away. Now, after reading it, I only have one thing to say-- Maggie, where were you five
years ago?

If reviewing interests you, don't mess around like I did; buy this book and read it cover to cover (uh... screen to screen?
Whatever...). Maggie not only tells it like it is, in chapters like "How to Write Reviews" and "How To Review Anything" (in which she discusses books,
concerts, CDs, and other products you might not have thought about reviewing), she includes plenty of useful resources, too. Some of them may not be
useful to you unless you're also Australian, as she is, but all in all this is one of most valuable niche marketing books I've read in a long time.


Betty Winslow is a staff writer for Absolute Write and moderates one of our BBs. Her bio is at

http://www.absolutewrite.com/site/betty.htm.



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