She had a job for a big online bookseller. She was a programmer for part of the website. She told me that if I wanted to supplement my income I could independently write a new book review for the website and see if I wanted to write more after that.
She thought it could lead into a job where I could work independently from afar and write content for the online catalogue. I met a guy who did this full time and he made really good money and liked the job because it was fairly creative.
He got to write on several large topics such as gardening, outdoor survival and so on. I’d been working for lawyers and doing much less creative jobs so this sounded appealing.
I spent some time cruising their website and I settled in to write a book review. I chose a section that contained some art books I was interested in.
I spent a few hours reading other people’s book reviews so I could get a feel for it and then I tried to write a book review myself. I found the first one easy because I had actually read the book I was reviewing.
I decided the exercise wasn’t the easiest thing to do in the world, because when the guy who had the job writing content for the online catalogue wrote his content he would have the books he was creating blurbs for in a box in front of him.
A past job I’d had was as consignment buyer for a book wholesaler and I had been doing a lot of writing for their monthly newsletter that got sent out to all their active customers. I’d gotten used to writing reviews of plenty of products as I was also the sideline buyer. I bought incense, essential oils, candles and so on as well as books. I spent all my free time writing catalogue entries using the backs of books primarily.
Even though I was used to the process, I didn’t find writing book reviews for the website to be an effective way for me to show I could write effective content for the online catalogue. It did however, get me interested in some books via reading reader’s reviews, and I did review a few books myself because it was pretty fun. I just didn’t think it’d lead to a job.