Books Deserve Credit: A Guide To Ethical Reviewing

Image designed using Canva.

In academic or formal writing, referencing is very important. In the Hive Book Club community, every day, book lovers write reviews about the books they have read and one mistake most people make is to not reference and also using excessive quotes. Picture it this way; how would you feel if you spent years working on a book and then when you publish it, you see people copying and pasting your entire work without giving credit to you? You wouldn't want that, right? In simple words, referencing means giving credit to the original source when you use someone else’s ideas, words, or work. For example, if you want to write something about what someone else has written, you must acknowledge them by citing their work.

About two years ago, I took a course on Literature Review and Research. I learnt the basic ways to give credit to authors. There are different types of referencing styles, such as APA and MLA. The commonly used style of referencing in the literary world is the MLA 7th edition format. It is important to note that there are different editions. Don’t worry too much about these technical details. The important thing you need to know is that writers put so much into their work and it isn't fair to quote or copy their works without giving credit to them. In fact, it is not just unfair. it is actually illegal. Do you know you could face legal actions for breaking copyrights rules?

I understand that not many of us would like to break these laws, but sometimes we do it unintentionally. Two weeks ago, we had our usual Hive Book Club hangout. We were just four members and the hangout was so much fun and educational. Thanks to @macchiata who brought the topic up; giving credit to authors. Many members of the Hive Book Club community break copyright when they do reviews of books and quote excessively. Some people go as far as to quote multiple sentences. Not that alone, taking images of a book and using it in your reviews is actually not the way to go about it. Prior to the time we had the hangout, I liked the idea of adding pictures of the books in my reviews. I would take pictures of the beginning, middle and end pages. But I realized that I was doing it all wrong.

It is fine if you didn't know about this until today. We keep learning new things every day and now that you know about it, you should try as much as you can to avoid copyright issues. So, how can you go about it? How can you make reviews and not break the copyright rules?

The first important thing is not to quote excessively. It is okay to quote a few sentences from the original source, but it shouldn't be more than that. After quoting the author, try to interpret them in your own words. It makes it better that way. More importantly, don’t use pictures of the book in your review. It is fine to take a picture of you reading the book. It is fine to take a picture of the front page and design it with Canva or any other app, but you shouldn't take pictures of the main content.

As long as you follow these simple tips, you’ll be able to write better reviews, respect other people’s work, and avoid breaking any copyright rules. Books deserve credit!

I designed the thumbnail using Canva. The other images in this post are mine.

Thanks for reading through.