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Series of articles on “Book Reviews, Revamped”
October 5, 2009 | 11:09 am
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By Paul Biba
It’s not only books that are going “e” but reviews as well. Publishing Trends has a series on how book reviews are changing and adapting to the digital world. This little excerpt is from the first article, and if you go there you will see a links to five more articles in the series. All of them are worth reading.
Today, worries about vanishing newspaper book review sections—and vanishing newspapers—have only accelerated the pace of gloomy headlines. But it’s unclear whether a golden age of book reviewing ever existed.
Then again, with the emergence of sophisticated online book reviews, the golden age could be yet to come.
These reviews aren’t like Amazon customer recommendations. “The best advertisement for a book has always been word of mouth,” says Steve Wasserman, Managing Director of the Kneerim & Williams New York office and a former editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. “The internet only makes more formal the rumor mill that had always served to spread the good news about this or that book. [But] that isn’t exactly criticism, it’s the enthusiastic acclamation of ordinary readers who don’t want to keep the news of something worth reading to themselves.”
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Thank you for writing about our series! Read it here: http://www.publishingtrends.com/2009/10/book-reviews-revamped/
I couldn’t see a link to the series in your post. It may just be my eyesight; but if it isn’t, then here’s a link.
Publishing Trends wonders if a golden age of book reviewing ever existed. I think any reader of the New York Review of Books would say that the golden age is still here, Publishing Trends is just looking in the wrong corner.
The problem with book reviews — past and present — is that they are so narrow and limited in comparison to the number of books offered. In the U.S. alone, more than 50,000 books of all stripes are published every year, but only a very few, and almost only those from larger publishers, get professionally reviewed (i.e., reviewwd by publications like the New York Times Book Review, the London Review of Books, and the New York Review of Books). Contrast this with movies.
The problem with the Amazon-style reviews is that they are not really reviews, they are merely expressions of like and dislike in 50 words or less. A review in the NYRB is not only a review of a book’s qualities or lack there of, but it is also a history lesson and a comparison to other similar works. For example, its recent review of “Abraham Lincoln: A Life” (Michael Burlingame, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) pointed out both the greatness of the work and its flaws and noted the books that address those flaws. A NYRB review is a literary work in itself, worth reading for the information it imparts even if the book is not one of interest or one loses interest in it after reading the review.
The other advantage — at least to me — of a publication like the NYRB is that it exposes me to what is being published — books that I would not otherwise hear about. For example, I often see a title that looks interesting in a NYRB ad and order the book (my most recent order being the books “Why the Drefus Affair Matters” and “Jewish Terrorism in Israel”). Amazon-style reviews rarely lead to such discoveries.
Amazon-style reviews are important because they give a sense of what the average reader thinks of a particular book and the reviews are generally more useful for the mass-appeal tomes. But the further one strays from that type of book, the less useful and valuable such a review is. Amazon-style reviews gain their value when there are numerous reviews of a single book; NYRB reviews are useful and valuable in their own right.
The loss of NYRB-type reviews is simply a reflection of the decrease in reading for the value of reading. Too many “readers” are 1-book-a-year readers who only read mass appeal books and thus want to know that 1,000 people gave 5 stars to the book. It is a sad commentary on the state of education, which hasn’t instilled in younger readers the value of reading to gain knowledge as well as enjoyment.
In the article, I argue that one of the reasons online book reviews are so valuable is that they cover many genres of books that aren’t covered in print book reviews. And many of the reviewers I spoke with mentioned the benefit of being able to review older books. I absolutely disagree with the statement that “the loss of NYRB-type reviews is simply a reflection of the decrease in reading for the value of reading”–it’s also a reflection of decreasing advertising dollars in traditional review sections; but more importantly, the bloggers I spoke with are incredibly passionate about books and reading. In fact, they’re reviewing for no pay, and usually with full-time jobs.