Although I have been avoiding the NBCC, I haven't avoided the diminishing print reviews issue since lots of commentary on it appears all over the Internet. Thankfully, not everyone is as ill-equipped as they are at rational discourse.
Over at Britannica Blog, Frank Wilson of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Books, Inq., has composed a civil post on print media's recent slams: "Dissing Allies: The Critics' War on Bloggers." He writes:
Book bloggers and print reviewers are, in fact, natural allies against a common antagonist: media executives who think that the only thing people want to read about in the newspaper is what they see on television and that the only way to attract younger readers is to try to cover the bands they listen to. But I recently saw an overflow crowd of people under 30 (900 of them for a 300-seat auditorium) come to hear Chuck Palahniuk read. And I suspect those people were more likely to read about books online than in the newspaper - especially since newspapers are providing fewer and fewer reviews.
And:
One thing I’m pretty sure of: if the print reviewers can get the book bloggers behind them, they have a better chance than they would otherwise of getting the attention of those media execs.
Damn straight. And I'll tell you this much. If I got word that Frank's position was being eliminated, I'd gladly sign a petition and drive down to Philly for a read-in at the Inquirer's office. Why? Because he gets it.
Of course, I'd also sign a petition if it would force Richard Schickel into retirement. Why? Because he's an elitist burro.
Lissa Warren of Da Capo Press has written "The Decline and Fall of the Book Review Section...and What It Means to Publishers" for The Huffington Post. She states that shorter reviews means that books may not be reviewed thoroughly enough and, therefore, may not contain many quotable parts.
And if there are fewer quotable parts? It means fewer reasons for publishers to take out an ad--there's just less to crow about--and fewer ads mean fewer book review sections will survive because many of them rely quite heavily on their advertising revenue. A vicious circle, to be sure. And don't even get me started on the fact that, if fewer books are being reviewed, a bad review hurts more since there will be fewer good ones to offset it.
I can certainly see the potential for a deeper cut from a pan in a future reality containing fewer, shorter reviews. However, I'm not sure I follow the logic behind the vicious circle, mainly because I rarely see print ads for books in my local paper. I see plenty of movie ads, and some of them quote only one or two words out of ginormous reviews and whole phrases from tiny ones—including pans.
Look, publishers are cheap. (I have the pay stubs to prove it.) Very little money is budgeted for advertising individual titles because publishing is like gambling. Out of 100 books, one or two big hits bankroll the next several plays. If you don't know how strong your hand is, it's not worth betting $500 on a single print ad when it might not return even money. Of course, sometimes bluffs win—like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code
