Pub Date? What Pub Date?
As the fall book season looms, the wierdly competitive game of jumping pub dates has begun in the reviewing world. Today the Times ran Michiko Kakutani's review of Claire Messud's new novel, a book which isn't in many stores yet -- you can't even buy it from Amazon (but you can pre-order). Over in England, the Guardian proved its commitment to readers by running a review of Vikram Chandra's "Sacred Games" a full three weeks before the book is officially released.
This may make these newspapers feel good -- look, we're first! -- but it helps no one. It certainly doesn't help the readers, who the newspaper is supposedly in the business of serving, because many of them will go to the store looking for the book -- and they do, just ask a bookseller -- only to find it's not there yet. It doesn't help the author either or the publisher, who often has to scramble at great expense to rush books into stores. And it doesn't help reviewing. Imagine what would happen if the New York Times started running its movie reviews before the films were actually released? At first there would be anger, and then there would be resignation. And then reviews would slowly become quite a bit less relevant.
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posted by John Freeman 9:38:00 AM
6 Comments:
I agree. 2 or 3 weeks back, the NYTBR reviewed Alix Ohlin's Babylon and Other Stories. I like Alix's writing and looked on the front table (I was reading the NYTBR at Border's on a Thursday night), then the new fiction section, then in the fiction/literature section - no dice. No open spaces for copies.
I went to the computer to search for the book. Not due until the following week per the Borders Inventory Search.
To me, that just led to frustration. I'm the type who tries to keep track of what's coming out, etc. so I'll go back. And maybe that's the case for anybody who is skimming the NYTBR, but it didn't leave me very happy.
I used to find the tendency of the NYTimes to jump the release date of books infuriating and petty. If the book is a big newsbreaker -- scandalous revelation, political expose -- the rush to print makes some sense, and the Times generally wins (ta-da) less for any journalistic acumen and more for its close ties to the publishing industry. But if the book is just a literary novel -- likely to be read by a few thousand? Why the ridiculous zeal? They're winning a race with no one competing.
Then I spent a year at Columbia and came to see how so much in the New York media was widely available on the streets there weeks before it was anywhere else. My magazine subscriptions -- which, supposedly, are meant to give me a jump (and a price break) over average folk because I'm supporting the publication over the long haul -- usually arrived 7-14 days after I could buy them on newstands.
And because there seems to be a Barnes & Noble every few blocks on Manhattan, competing with hundreds of expanded newstands, drugstores, etc., store managers are under greater pressure to crack open the boxes and put the new books out. One store employee told me that people would ask -- and then if he refused, they'd simply head down the street to the next store.
Given this situation, I find the NYTimes' response more understandable, though still irritating and still questionable with some books. But it's the same with movie or Broadway opening dates: The producers may not want critics to see it because we'll kill the buzz, but if people can see the book or movie or show, it's the paper's responsibility to cover it ASAP.
But to take a slightly contrarian position (and yes, I realize this is not in support of independent bookstores!), in the age of Amazon, the pre-order is extraordinarily straightforward and easy. Indeed, I used to preorder rarely, because frugality made me want to get up to the free super-saver shipping threshold ($25), but I'm now on a three-month free trial of Amazon Prime and it has made preordering the easiest thing in the world. I read the NYTBR online, I go to Amazon to put books I might want in the shopping cart.... (I'm oversimplifying, of course, and I am also often pestering various editorial people for advance copies of things, but I do think that this is more on the order of a temporary wrinkle in a process that will get worked out soon enough.)
What I find more annoying in the age of online book reviewing: the occasional long delay between US and UK release dates of some 'major' books. It renders the second round of reviews virtually obsolete, and certainly rather tedious; simultaneous release surely will come to make much more sense given an online readership that's checking out the book reviews at the Guardian and the Independent as well as the NYT, Washington Post etc.
As a bookseller, it's irritating for us to have to field ten thousand queries about one book.
Also, any good bookstore should allow you to pre-order books---we do at least. You can come in and find it at the front desk under your name the day it goes out on the table.
Booksellers, publishers and readers may gripe about this practice, but none of them have the power to call a staff reviewer into their office and chew them out for not running the review before a competing publication. Reviewers generally report to editors, who are very, very focused on getting things first --because that's what news is all about.
I agree that it's a bit silly in the case of a literary novel, unless the book is by one of the marquee names like Roth or Wolfe. However, it's also true that fewer people read the 4th or 5th review they see of a new book. Of course, only web publications like mine know exactly how many people read each story, but we've noticed that if we cover the book a week or so after reviews run in the major publications, it usually gets significantly fewer hits.
Well, maybe everyone could come to an agreement to abide by pub dates - no, really -- so that there wouldn't be this leapfrogging. It's an interesting point Laura brings up about Salon and online review readers -- who probably reach review fatigue a lot faster than people who aren't quite so plugged in to the number of reviews out there. I mean, I wonder how much a reader in Cleveland or Minneapolis of Houston cares if the book they are reading about in their Sunday newspaper has been reviewed the week or two before by everyone else -- it might still be news to them. Is it possible that the greater number of web-based review seekers we have, the more and more it'll be about having a review on or near pub date or none at all?
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