This weekend's NYTBR

[alanajoli]

I will be the first to admit that I am not a print newspaper reader. I actually detest the format. The pages are unmanageable and unweildy. The print makes your fingers black just from touching it. They even smell bad. So when the announcement comes in from both Publishers Weekly in this week's talk-back section on PW.com and the NYTBR (which I read online) that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is dropping their book review section, it matters very little to me. I get my book reviews, as a reader, from industry magazines (which I read online), the NYTBR (which I read online), industry news sites, and blogs. I get monthly e-mails from the publishers that offer such things that tell me about their new books. I check amazon and BN.com for pub dates. (Okay, so sometimes I actually call my local bricks and mortar B&N. I'm not so online-exclusive that I won't use the phone.)

But I realize that just because I'm completely unaffected by the increasing trend over shorter review sections (or no reviews at all) in print newspapers, that doesn't mean it's a non-issue. So I highly recommend reading this week's NYTBR (which also features a delightful article on why bad books are valuable and a review of a book putting forth the remarkable idea that communication, perhaps even language, stemmed from alcohol), and perhaps popping over to PW's Talk-back before they change the topic.

I'd also love to hear what the writerly and editorly type folk who occasionally comment here think about a) newpaper reviews, b) online reviews, and c) reviews in general. We've been told for ages that they're a useful marketing tool, but all of us who have watched Spidey 3 know that a bad review can just about end a career as well. What is a review's value in an electronic age, and how do you gage the value of one type vs. another's?

Comments

[eriksdb.livejournal.com]

Reviews truly are really important for our business, eh?

Myself, I don't read all that many reviews. I pick books largely on my own (by looking at the cover, text on the back, etc), or by recommendations. Part of this is having a full time day job and at least a part time night job.

The reviews that I do read, actually, are of my own work. That obviously isn't for gauging the quality of the work (I *know* that measurement already), but for checking in with the audience to see how things are received. The occasional "Depths of Retardness" review surfaces, but generally the reviews I've got thus far have been informative and given me a great deal to think about.

I do read a great deal of movie reviews, and they have occasionally been successful in steering me away from a poor film. The reviews I tend to read are generally negative in character, so I look more for content than for tone. (Much like how I read book reviews.)

In RE: the initial topic, I think reviews are terribly important. Either positive reviews or just lots of reviews (positive and negative) can give the impression that a book is widely read and/or "good," and having just a few reviews can leave a book floundering. In my limited experience, I've found that it's more about the number of reviews and the quality of reviews than the positive/negative character of reviews.

Cheers

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

In my limited experience, I've found that it's more about the number of reviews and the quality of reviews than the positive/negative character of reviews.

Quantity rather than quality, eh? I think you're right--the more attention the book is getting, the more likely it is to be something people remember when they hit the store. When I was working at B&N, we used to talk about putting books, particularly new ones that we had lots of copies of, face out in several locations in the store, because it takes about three times seeing something before a customer actually notices it. It's reasonable that the same is true of reviews. I can't say how many times I've checked out a book to someone at the library and known something about the book--but couldn't remember what. There were probably reviews involved, but only enough that I recalled the book, not enough for me to remember anything informative. My default reaction is, then, that it must be good if I'm recalling it but not remembering anything specific.

[eriksdb.livejournal.com]

Well, quality too, but not whether it's a "I loved this book" or "I hated this book." A review that says how the book wasn't very good, but lists all the things it could have done better, is still helpful. Maybe you're reading along, and a reviewer says something like: "the author attempts to shape fundamentally non-human creatures (drow, for instance) into something almost human." Now, whether or not the critic likes that, if you're reading along and YOU like that, you'll go pick up the book.

See what I mean?

Reviews that are SPECIFIC are usually better than reviews that are GENERAL, which are always better than three-word, "I loved it/I hated it" reviews.

Cheers

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

That's definitely true, as well. Any press is press, but good press is still better--and detailed press better yet. I've read some Kirkus Reviews where everything they say about the book makes it sound like something I love, even though the critic hates it.

Actually, that's something I should keep in mind while I'm doing reviews. I do try to spread out a lot of "what the books is about" type stuff with the "what was successful/not successful" for the book. But now that I'm actually thinking about specific, I wonder how much more I can do...