How to get Involved in Saving Book Reviews
The National Book Critics Circle has launched a Campaign to Save Book Reviewing. This post is part of a blog series featuring posts by concerned writers, op-eds, Q&As, and tips about how you can get involved to make sure those same owners and editors know that book sections matter.
If you're reading these posts about book coverage in America today and are worried about our critical dialogue --don't worry there are things you can do. Here are a few:
#1) Sign a petition. The NBCC has started a petition to protest the removal of Teresa Weaver's job from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. In just over a day, it picked up several hundred signatures, including those of James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Karin Slaughter, Denis Lehane, Allan Gurganus, Anne Fadiman, Gary Shteyngart, Todd Gitlin, Robert Draper, Craig Nova, Clyde Edgerton, Julie Phillips, Troy Jollimore and dozens more writers.
#2) Write to your local paper. Believe it or not, someone does read those letters and if you live in a town affected by these cutbacks -- or have no book section at all -- get involved. Local independent booksellers have been key in the campaign down in Atlanta, and would most likely be great place to begin with in your home town. In coming weeks, the NBCC will take this campaign to other cities and other newspapers where book coverage is at risk.
#3) Engage with literary discussion -- even if it means just writing in to a blog, or joining a book club, or going to your local library for a discussion of a book: the more we talk about books, the better chance we have at defining our own cultural values, rather than having them defined for us.
#4) Join the NBCC. If you're a working critic and have published three reviews (online or in print) over the past five years, join us -- the more voices we have behind us, the greater our chances will be at preserving the cultural dialogue in this country.
#5) Send these posts to a friend. If you're reading this post, chances are you have a friend or two who like to read -- probably many. Send a link to these posts to them and ask them to pass it along. There's a reason why this blog is called Critical Mass.
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posted by Critical Mass 6:45:00 AM
8 Comments:
As book lovers so often observe, literture is a grand conversation, and book reviews have long been integral to this invaluable exchange. Stories, observations, discoveries, and knowledge expressed in clear, thoughtful, expressive, engaging, and intriguing language is essential for our well-being as individuals and as a society. Critical response to books of all kinds keeps us vital, connected, receptive, empathic, and involved. As an NBCC member, I'm so grateful to the current NBCC board for providing a forum for readers and writers to speak up forthrightly and dynamically in protest over the demolishment and diminishment of newspaper book review sections. Newspapers have always played an essential role in our democracy, and books belong in newspapers as part of the mix that constitutes news, culture, and life. We must defend what we need and love, from clean air and water to biodiversity and a diversity of books and book reviews.
mI am approaching the authorship of my 800th book review. A vast majority of these reviews have been published in periodicals such as PW, Kirkus, and other magazines; I also have written for the New York Times,Philadelphia Inquirer, and other major city Sunday book pages. I am a regular contributor to the Dallas Morning News, at present, a book page that has seen the amount of space devoted to book review shrink drastically over the past twenty years. At the present time, it is still hanging on.
Book reviewing is probably one of the least well understood of all literary efforts. It also can be one of the most controversial. Although such writers as Gore Vidal and William Goldman have assailed book critics, sometimes humorously, most all other writers of note have recognized the significant impact of book reviews on the life and expectations of published work. As an author of books, myself, I am sensitive to the power that book critics have not only on the success or failure of any given title, but also on the professional future of a writer.
The meat and potatoes of book criticism remains in the Sunday book pages of major city dailies. I can't provide statistics, only observation, but it has been mine that more people read and react to reviews in those pages than actually read books. Certainly book buyers read the reviews and form their opinions based on what they've read.
Maintaining the integrity and the honesty of book critics in this vital publishing format is essential to the entire book publishing process. Coming to know and respect the bylines of book reviewers is an important element in the average reader's makeup. Removing this by publishing only anonymous wire-service reviews would remove this element, or at best, compromise it. It will have a devastating effect on publishing.
At the same time, it doesn't take a degree in journalism to know that book reviews (like movie reviews, recipes, gardening columns, and so forth) are filler. They are not hard news, and every column inch they occupy is a column inch that could be devoted to advertising that pays. Paying an editor and free lance or staff reviewers is also expensive.
But newspaper publishers might want to ask themselves why people still buy newspapers. The hard news of the front page is generally covered before the paper hits the streets by the internet, television and radio news. People who buy and read newspapers are looking for something more than a quick overview. They are looking for more depth, breadth, and extent of coverage.
More, though, they are looking for other things. They are, seriously, looking for gardening tips and recipes, they're also looking for obituaries and feature columns from their favorite (often local) columnists on subjects ranging from politics to sports to religion to society to what movie to see this weekend.
And they're looking for book reviews.
If there's an argument to be made to save the book pages of major city Sunday papers it's that. It's that the local paper has an obligation to its readers to provide more than furniture ads and announcements of a great deal on new cars. It also has an obligation to provide intelligent, honest and fair journalistic editorial response to the culture and society it serves. Book reviews do this.
I am a professional book reviewer, and I'm also an academic. I have publihsed literary criticism of a "serious sort," more than two hundred articles and essays and several books. When my colleagues in the academy make disparaging remarks about book reviewing as being somhow a "lesser" form of criticism than the work they may be doing, I am quick to point out that more people read and respond to any one of my book reviews than have read or responded to all of my academic scholarship put together. I reach people with my opinions on books.
This doesn't mean I'm always right. It doesn't mean that my opinion matters more than anyone else's. It does mean, though, that I have an obligation as a book reviewer to be honest, objective, fair, and to maintain a sense of integrity and gravity in every review I write.
I am proud to be a book critic. I am sensitive to what book critics write about my fiction. I am respectful of their right to dislike my work, provided that their reviews are balanced, well thought-out and reflective of the best principles of journalistic practice.
Book reviews are important. Very important. We must take whatever steps we can to preserve this important part of the fifth estate. The future of quality publishing and writing depends on it.
Book reviews are advertising. Book reviewers are shills for the marketing departments of big publishers. So is the NBCC. Book awards are hype, bought and paid for like any other hype. So-called writers aspire to get themselves on bestseller lists. "Good" reviews and awards by the stooges of sales guys get them there. Big whoop. Books are commercial commodities, the same as Corn Flakes. With pretty packaging and plenty of hype, any piece of junk can become a work of lasting literature...for a month or two, then it's on to sell something new, to hype something different. As long as books are nothing but yet another means to make money, book reviewers aren't going to be anything but advertisers and low paid publicists and nothing worth reading, writing or reviewing is gonna get read, written or reviewed. The only people who care whether book reviews and book awards are eliminated or not are agents, editors and publishers and their motives are strictly commercial. G.
As a bookstore employee, I see a significant amount of traffic generated from book reviews.
It would be a terrible shame to see local and national reviews disappear.
Have you thought about creating a badge that people can post on their own web pages/blogs? It's a simple way to help spread the word.
Hi Ensie--we are working on making a button to use on other sites right now!
As a reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, I have the luxury of working at a magazine that understands the importance of book reviews. But the larger world seems to be losing this understanding.
Book coverage seems to be viewed as less crucial in the past--I am often stunned to see issues of Time and Newsweek with not a single book review.
Podcasts such as the L.A. Times is planning are wonderful, but they are not a substitute for intelligent criticism. Less book oreview space means fewer books will be brought to the public's attention (woe to the midlist novel!), and it means there will be fewer voices weighing in on each book. And we all know how important a multiplicity of voices is--every reviewer brings different views, strengths and tastes to a book.
i don't always read book reviews. i will if it catches my eye. what it comes down to for me is. I would like the choice. i love looking at the art. book covers are amazing these days. and i think people are just as passionate about a good book as they ever were. so please lets continue to give ourselves the choice.
There are a lot of great books out there but like anything else, you have to know what you're searcing for. One book I can recomend is entitled, Behind The Velvet Curtain by Dominique Stone. Dominique Stone did a great job developing the story line and making the characters come alive!
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