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Letter to Salon about the State of Book Reviewing

Although I enjoyed Kevin Berger's piece about the disappearing book review section, his perspective ignores a very interesting development. Of course, it is the internet. First, the reviews at Amazon are becoming more astute every day and more interactive (I get feedback about an amazon review I wrote every one or two weeks). While Amazon ultimately controls the content placed on their site by unsupecting readers, at least one takes comfort in the fact that eventually some nonprofit body will launch some sort of interactive book review depository/forum to serve as an alternative for commercial forums like Amazon.

Smaller webzines have definitely taken up the slack about book reviews. Salon, for example, has led the pack with their lengthy book reviews, as well as New Republic, and the New York Review of Books website. The Arts and Letters daily and the amazing wood s lot provides not only great links to book reviews, but compelling evidence that the Internet can turn traditional economics on its head, making possible certain ventures that might have been inconceivable only a decade ago. The problem with book reviews in newspapers is that paper cost money and publishing space is finite (unlike publishing space on the net). I have generally found that newspaper book reviews are unsatisfying because space requirements limit how adequately a reviewer can talk about a subject without worrying about the editor's red pen. Over time, the book reviews I recall most fondly came from publications with the most flexibility about length (magazines, webzines, etc).

This is another case where we lament a change without understanding why it is happening. The problem is not that corporate interests are ignoring book reviews, but that it is becoming harder and harder to run a daily newspaper profitably. Readership is down, advertising and classified ads are shifting to the Internet, and media outlets are unable to attract a national audience or at least a specialized readership just can't make it anymore.

On the other hand, net publishing is still thriving,. People are still discussing books and other lofty things in forums and mailing lists. (Just type in "book reviews" in http://groups.yahoo.com and you will find no less than 377 mailing lists about book reviews). Publishing book reviews no longer depends on convincing commercial establishments of the "economic utility" of doing so. That, I would argue, is not bad at all.