Quality of Writing x Size of Audience = Sales?

ONE OF THE ISSUES which was danced around at BEA, but not fully discussed -- in part because it's really difficult to get hard data on this -- is whether or not book reviews sell books they way they used to.

At the Bookforum panel on Thursday, Jonathan Galassi said he felt book reviews don't seem to be moving copies as much anymore, in part because the general readership's knowledge-base has shrunk. So, the logic went, people reading book reviews don't have the context in which to place a value on a critic's conclusion about a book. Therefore, it's simply just another opinion.

I agree with Steve Wasserman and Oscar Villalon, who have reminded on separate occasions, that the purpose of book reviews is not to sell books. The purpose of a review is to discuss the book at hand and aspire to a minor-but-real art form along the way. It gets critics off-topic to think much about what happens after their work is read.

But the reality of the situation is that everything here is connected -- if publishers don't see book reviews helping book sales, they won't support them; if newspaper publishers sense a slackening in the connection between themselves and publishers, they, too, will back off on reviews or critical coverage. At the very bottom of this chain are aspiring writers, who are free to publish their thoughts on blogs now, but not (except in a rare few cases) for pay (and this is important), and not (except in a rare few cases) before large audiences. At the Bookforum panel, James Shapiro reminded that Virginia Woolf essentially supported herself for many years as a book reviewer.

So it's important to look at this idea -- that book reviews don't sell books -- before it becomes a kind of untested accepted wisdom. My personal opinion is that writing is writing, and good writing (and good arguing) will compel someone to buy a book, no matter where it is published, and whether or not it is a "good" or "bad" review. Furious engagement with a book suggests the book is worth engaging with -- I imagine this is why Powells.com and Amazon.com are publishing reviews (and often by very good writers).

Right now, certain audiences are larger than others -- and while the print world isn't as traceable as, say, Amazon or Powell's websites, where you could probably trace someone's exact path from a review to check-out, print reviews still do move books. At the NBCC review panel, City Lights publicist Stacey Lewis mentioned San Francisco Chronicle reviews often led to a spike in sales of their books. And in Boston last month Pulitzer Prize winning critic Gail Caldwell wrote a very compelling review of Don Delillo's "Falling Man" and the book immediately shot to #1 on the bestseller list there.

Do you have similar stories? Something different? To the publishers out there: can you remember a review or piece of coverage that made all the difference in your book's publication? Has a take-down review of one of your authors ever driven people to the bookstore? We'd love to hear from you in the comments section.

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