User:LEvalyn/Where to find book reviews

If you want to show that a book meets the criteria to have a Wikipedia article, the simplest way is to show that it has gotten at least two WP:NBOOK-qualifying reviews. But if you just search online for the name of the book and the word "reviews", you're likely to be drowned in Goodreads, Amazon, and blog-based reviews that do not qualify for NBOOK -- they are all "user-generated content", and NBOOK requires professional reviews. Here are my tips on the first places to look for useful reviews. This advice is most useful for books that are less than 50 years old, but I have some notes for older books at the end.

1. See if the author did the work for you

Check the author or bookseller's website to see if there are any reviews they are bragging about. Important: these are not independent sources, and blurbs do not count. You're just looking here to make a "to do" list for your real search.

How can you tell the difference between a "blurb" and evidence of a review? Look at how the quote is attributed:

• "Terrific!" -- Barack Obama N This is a promotional quote from a non-professional reviewer, provided via private correspondence to the publisher. It is a blurb and not useful for NBOOK. No matter how cool or relevant this person is, ignore it.
• "Stupendous!" -- The New York Times Y This promotional quote is cited to a publication which means it is a blurb and evidence of a review
• "Changed my life!" -- Bob Woodward of the Washington Post ? This is a promotional quote provided by a professional journalist in an ambiguous way. It is a blurb and possible evidence of a review. It might have been published in the Post, or it might have been provided via private correspondence to the publisher. It will only count toward NBOOK if it was in the Post.

I've used the phrase "evidence of a review" here because in blurb form these quotes are not "independent". To actually use them as sources, you have to confirm that the author isn't misrepresenting things. So, if any of the blurbs mention a newspaper/magazine, go to that newspaper/magazine's website and search the title of the book (in quotation marks). If you find the review there -- even if it's paywalled -- you can use that URL as one of your sources for NBOOK!

If you are able to find a bunch of blurbs but they don't include at least two published reviews -- if they are all from individual people, such as other authors, experts in the field, etc -- that is not promising, but you can keep looking. (It's actually a more promising sign if you can't find any blurbs at all, since that means you're still at the "no evidence" stage of the search.)

1.5. For scholarly books, check scholarly search engines

Highly academic books are in a separate publishing ecosystem. This is advice for books of academic research like Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture, 1668-1801, not just regular non-fiction books like A Brief History of Time. In other words, books written by professors for other professors, and often published by university presses.

These almost never get reviewed anywhere other than academic journals, but they do usually get reviewed. Checking the publisher/author page might still be a good shortcut to find out which academic journals reviewed the book, but it's less consistent.

To find the reviews, you need to search places where academic journals will be indexed:

• At Google Scholar, search the book's name in quotes. Look for items that have the same title as the book but aren't marked as "[book]": those are usually reviews.
• You can also search any university library's website; if you search the name of the book in quotes, you're likely to see several entries marked as "reviews" in the results as well. For example, try the University of Toronto library search, or any local university you're familiar with.

You will probably hit a paywall, but as long as you can find the full citation information of the review (journal, volume/issue, year, author of review), you can use it as one of your sources for NBOOK.

If this doesn't turn up two reviews, you can try step 3, but you may need to consider other NBOOK criteria, or the book may not meet the criteria to have an article.

2. See if a review aggregator did the work for you

The review aggregator Book Marks can be used the same way you might use an author/book page, as a source of "bread crumbs" to tell you what specific newspapers to check for reviews. Note that per WP:BOOKAGG, the aggregators themselves are not considered high-quality sources and should not be included in articles.

The same logic applies for the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, which is particularly useful for older SF works.

3. Check some newspapers and magazines directly

If you're still coming up empty, things are not looking good, but especially if the book is more than about ten years old there may be some real gems to be found in newspapers.

The easiest process is to use the Wikipedia Library to search Newspapers.com for the book's title (in quotation marks). If you don't have access, you can also check some prolific book-reviewing newspapers directly:

• The Guardian
• The Washington Post
• The New York Times
• (for SF) Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Locus, Reactor

For older books, it's worth trying the Internet Archive: search the full name of the book in quotes and check the "search text contents" option. This can turn up reviews in older magazines. To cut down the clutter, consider restricting the search to just a few years after the book's release. You'll have to check each result individually to figure out if it's really a "significant coverage" review.

4. Check common review venues

Most mainstream novels and non-fiction books get reviewed in one or both of these places:

• Publishers Weekly
• Kirkus Reviews (per WP:KIRKUS, note that Kirkus Indie is a pay-for-review program for independent authors, so if the article ends with "Review Program: KIRKUS INDIE" it does not count for NBOOK)

Also, library trade journals, like Booklist, Library Journal, and School Library Journal, pretty comprehensively review books so that other librarians know whether or not they want to buy them. The School Library Journal is particularly likely to review children's and YA books. However, because they are not particularly "selective" review venues, reviews here may not be seen as sufficiently "significant coverage" to count at NBOOK.

If you still haven't found anything, it's extremely unlikely that this book meets the NBOOK#1 criteria to have an article.

Addendum for historical books

I primarily address modern books above, because those show up most often at Articles for Creation and Articles for Deletion, but if you are writing about a book that is more than about 50 years old, the tips above may not bring you to extant historical reviews. A few brief tips:

• For books published in the 20th century, go directly to Newspapers.com (using the Wikipedia Library) to look for newspaper reviews.
• For books published in the 19thC or 18thC, there are probably digitized periodical reviews, but they may not be in Newspapers.com. Start with a Google Scholar search for modern scholarship, which counts for NBOOK and is also likely to mention historical reviews. Then try the Internet Archive with the "search text contents" option and a chronological filter around the book's publication. Or, consult a bibliography (such as Literary reviews in British periodicals, 1798-1820) and then look up the specific periodicals the reviews are in.
• For books from the 17thC or earlier, focus on Google Scholar and other search processes for modern scholarship. There may be scholarly reviews of more modern editions (so, try step 1.5 for those). The "introduction" in a scholarly edition can also count for NBOOK if it contains in-depth analysis by an expert.