ABSTRACT - SHVOONG http://www.shvoong.com/summaries/ an abstract review of this very abstracts-review page. As one of their
more prolific writers, and
readers I find the pages here very useful. The reviews are often informative and entertaining. The readership varies from the curious, to students hoping to get a summary of texts they have to study for various projects. Amazon Books tend to add their own reviews, which are adverts for books that they are selling, and as site sponsors, who can blame them. It is reviews by ordinary people that really shine however. It is a good idea to read reviews of books that you have already read and formed an opinion on to get an idea of the overall quality of work presented. There are aspects of the site that could be improved of course. 1/. The search engine facilities within
Shvoong make it hard to find reviews that you know exist there. I have even had difficulty finding stuff I have written myself. 2/. Readers often neglect the ratings system. Payment of royalties is not base don the number of visitors a page gets, but the number of visitors who rate a review on the 1 to 5 scale and the vast majority of readers do not do so. I have reviews that have received five hundred visits without anyone clicking on a rating. Shvoong should make the ratings system more pronounced. 3/. Few people notice the site option to comment on reviews either. Of my one hundred plus pages, only six have received reader comments. 4/. The categories list for which genre a book can be listed under is grossly inadequate. You can put a book under short stories, or under erotica or under humour, as you see fit, but if your review is of a book that is a short story collection on the theme of humorous erotica then you only get to use one category rather than multiple ones. Readers can do a lot to boost their own ratings, but with such very low profit margins, (about one cent per hit) it is hard work. Occasional competitions and the affiliation programme (enabling you to share the profits of new reviewers introduced by yourself) are good finance boosters though. Payments are only made when the total earned hits $10.00 which can take a considerable period of time unless you write prolifically. Many writers will get disheartened and stop writing if they do it just for profits. Writers should try to offer links tot heir own reviews through their own web pages and blog pages to draw people in. This will also help other writers here, as once in Shvoong, people will be more inclined to browse around other reviews as well. As Shvoong reviews websites as well as periodicals and mainly books, writers should alert a website and its forum of any reviews that they write about that page, as then its readers may come to see the page you have written about them too. Again, this can boost your readership, but Shvoong is not going to earn writers a living. It is pin money that you will see trickle up slowly. Many people write for sites like Wikepedia for absolutely nothing, so why anyone would hope to make a fortune here is beyond me. It is a site for writers who just write for fun rather than for profit purposes. That said, it is a very interesting website and I hope it will go from strength to strength.