At Idea Sandbox, we read books as if they’re going out of style. It makes us smarter, increases our expertise, and expands the mind.

While you can find a “must read” list on the Idea Sandbox website and books-by-genre on the Idea Sandbox wiki, until now, we haven’t offered a way to provide you – the reader – with a guide to judge the quality/value of the business books we talk about.

That’s why the folks at the Idea Sandbox Institute have developed a rating scale based on key attributes we look for when reading business related books.

Review Categories

Below are the categories you will now find posted along with our reviews.

• Dog Ear Score – If there is something important on a page that we want to return to, we’ll fold the page corner over (dog-ear the page). The more pages with dog-ears, the more useful we have found that book. As a way to quantify the value of the book, we’ve developed the Dog-Ear Score.

  A Dog-Ear Score is determined by taking the number of dog-eared pages divided by the total number of pages in the book. That ratio is the Dog-Ear Score. A book with 23 dog-eared pages and 239 total pages would produce a Dog-Ear Score of 9.6% (23/239=.096 or 9.6%)

• Usability – We primarily read business-related books for the enjoyment of applying the knowledge within the books. The more useful the content and the easier the author makes it for us to use that information the better.
• Coverage of Subject – How complete was the author in discussing their key topics? Did they leave us disappointed with thin coverage or wow us by adding something new?
  The scale spans:
  “left us disappointed” (thin/bad coverage),
  “eh?” (average),
  “good” (expected),
  “complete” (excellent), and
  “wowed us!” (extreme coverage, added something new)

• Contribution to Topic – Because we read many books on the same topics (creativity, problem solving, marketing techniques, brand building) we’re looking for new insights. We want authors to add something new to the conversation. New ideas. New concepts. A new approach on the topics.
  The scale spans:
  “same ‘ol, same ‘ol” (nothing new added),
  “good.” (expected), and
  “revolutionary.” (new approach, new ideas)

• Ease of Reading – How easy is the book to read? Has the author bogged it down with unnecessary jargon? Is the language too lofty? How swiftly does the author get the point across? These considerations are factored into the ‘ease of reading’ score.
• Visually Pleasing – While we’re not necessarily looking for a business comic book, we want authors to make a picture worth a 1000 words. Make the book easier to digest by breaking-up vastness of text with relevant design, visuals, and charts.

Genre(s) – We will categorize the books by key genres and will link, when appropriate, to additional topics related to that genre.

Example Review Chart

• By: Seth Godin
• Genres: Meaningful Marketing, Remarkability, Be a Champion, Brainstorming< - clicking genre links will take you to additional resources
• Hardcover book of 239 pages
• Published on May 2004 by Penguin Group (USA)

Dog Ear Score: 9.6% (23/239)
Usability (4/5)
Coverage of Subject (5/5)
Contribution to Topic (4/5)
Ease of Read (4/5)
Visually Pleasing (4/5)

The folks at the Idea Sandbox Institute hope you find this new grading system useful.

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