Building a Good and Great Grade: SAW Publishing’s Review System
And now it’s time for SAW Publishing to review SAW Publishing’s Review System!
Conflict of interest? Totally. Still somewhat valuable? We can at least hope so.
In fact, it has been over a year since we launched our new 100-point grading system, and as promised I am coming back to take a look at how it’s working after fifteen months and 30+ reviews.
5 Things I Love
1) The expanded number of points in the new grading system puts a bit more emphasis on pros, and a bit less emphasis on red flags.
2) The 100-point concept makes it super easy to convert reviews to a percentage grade. The percentage grade, in it’s turn, allows easy comparison between reviews.
3) Building the system around ten core categories lets me focus on a book’s strength and weaknesses in each area, instead of just giving an “overall impression” grade.
4) Using precise definitions for the “scale of one to ten” mean that numbers are less of a stab in the dark.
5) Systems give me energy—so having a review system gives me a bit of motivation to review a book!
5 Things I DON’T Love
1) The in-depth approach of SAW Publishing review system is unquestionably time consuming. (I know I would review a greater number of books per year if I could do it more quickly.)
2) While red flags dominate the review less than under the old system, they can still end up taking a prominent role.
3) The review template is a little bulky! (I basically need to either read with my computer within reach, or print a double-sided review sheet for each book.)
4) Using the percentage grades to compare between age ranges/widely-differing-genres can be difficult.
5) I, personally, hate making decisions! (And a review system, by definition, is a decision-making field day.)
My One Serious Regret
The only thing I seriously regret about the past year of reviews, is that I think, in our unfamiliarity with the tool, we gravitated towards grades that were consistently five to ten points too low.
How good is really good? How great is really great?
They are subjective questions that we are trying to answer in an objective way. In the desire to give the most conscientious review possible, I think the SAW Publishing staff (who are the essence of conservative, in the broadest and purest sense of the word!) erred a little on the side of caution. 60% grades could possibly have been 70%—70% could have been 80%—and so on, up the scale.
Obviously, no system is perfect, but with the experience of the past thirty-some books behind me, I think I would probably have boosted most of the middle-to-high percentage grades a little if I were doing them over again.
Will We be Using SAW Publishing’s Review System Another Year?
Yes! We totally will!
SAW Publishing’s review system will continue to be our evaluation tool (Lord willing) going forward. In fact, we already have some reviews waiting in the wings for their turn in 2022.
The 100-point grading format can be used for much more than books. In fact, our templates for novels and non-fic grew out of our original poetry-grading worksheet in the first place. If you are interested in using this tool to grade any form of literature—as well as a detailed explanation of how the review system works—see our previous post:
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How do you come up with a formula for grading poetry? Arts and languages pose an ongoing challenge when it comes to marking assignments. Our FREE worksheet for grading poetry offers a solution which is simple, accurate, and consistent.
SAW Publishing’s FREE Good and Great Poetry Grading Worksheet offers a simple and easy-to-use formula allowing teachers and reviewers to grade poetry quickly and consistently.
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