All book reviewers know how to review paperbacks, hard copies, and digital copies, yet many reviewers hit a road block when it comes to reviewing audio books. This road block is generally caused by not knowing what to write about or include in the review for a book without any visuals to draw reviewing inspiration from. Knowing how to review an audio book is an important skill for any reviewer as audio books have become much more popular now that they do not require clunky tapes or CDs. In fact since the launch of Audible, the number of authors creating audio books has increased exponentially and so has the need for audio book reviews.

What You Need to Begin Reviewing Audio Books

The first thing you need in order to review an audio book is a copy of the audio book in a format that you can listen to. The main ways that authors use to provide their audio books to reviews are: Audible codes that the reviewer uses to buy the audio book on Audible, a download file in the form of an AA, mps3, or mp4 file, and on the rare occasion, CDs. Before you agree to review an audio book, make sure you have the equipment you need to listen to the audio book (mp3 player, iPod, iPhone, computer, tablet, or CD player).

First Step: Making a List

The first step to reviewing an audio book is making a short list of what you should include in your review. An example would be:

1. Audio Quality

2. Sound Effects

3. Quality of Narration

3a. Character voices

3b. Character emotions

3c.Eliciting an emotional reaction in the listener

4. Flow of the book

5. Character development and character background

6. Description of setting

7. Plot

8. Overall enjoyment of the book

Second Step: Listening and Taking Notes

For the second, you should have your list in front of you as you listen to the audio book and you should jot down any comments you have regarding any part of the list while you are listening. For instance, the notes could look like:

1. Audio Quality - High

2. Sound Effects - None besides the narrator’s voice

3. Quality of Narration

3a. Character voices - does well with male characters, not as well with female voices

3b. Character emotions - changed voice tone perfectly

3c. Eliciting an emotional reaction in the listener - makes me feel like I’m in the story

4. Flow of the book - steady pace

5. Character development and character background - great development would like to know more about Sally and Mary’s background

6. Description of setting - Feels like the author really knew the location

7. Plot - Loved the twist with faked death

8. Overall enjoyment of the book - loved it, but wish the pace was faster

For this step the notes do not need to be written in full sentence form, in fact they only need to be long enough for you to understand them and remember what you meant when you wrote them.

Third Step

By the third step you should have finished the whole audio book and you should have a decent note sheet in front of you to use for the writing of the review. The review should generally be about three paragraphs long. The first should focus on summarizing the audio book, the second focus on your thoughts about the audio book itself, and the third should be on the narration and overall sound quality of the audio book.