Is Online Book Reviewing Sustainable?

 As pointed out by Ron at Galleycat, there have been some interesting posts in the last few days about how viable online book reviewing is as an activity and a means of generating publicity.

As the article says, some bloggers feel that running a book blog feels less like a hobby and more like a second job, while some others are scaling back their coverage.

Even in the genre blogosphere, the strain has started to tell, with SF Signal's daily link round-up being temporarily out-sourced to the blogger and publicist Matt Staggs.

The article raises an interesting question about the sustainability of book blogging.

At the moment, despite newspapers cutting back on their book coverage, publishers are getting more coverage than they ever have before.  Aside from the various people operating as critics, there are also a host of bloggers who are happy to write up a short review of pretty much any review copies publishers decide to send them.  All it costs is a review copy, some postage and a bit of good will.  Even if a critic pans the book, the results can be good.  Consider my negative review of Scott Bakker's Neuropath, it generated some discussion on various forums and I'm sure that I'm disliked enough that some will consider my negative review something of a recommendation.  All it cost the publisher was an ARC and postage from Canada.

But in order to sustain this level of output, the blogosphere has to work quite hard.  In order to build up a successful blog it takes time and energy.  Not only do you have to keep on producing decent material, you also have to learn to write about certain topics in certain ways so as to pick up links from other people and increase your subscription rate by tapping into others' subscription bases.  As the article suggests, building that technorati rating can feel like working a second job.  With some book bloggers showing the strain and quitting, I think the time may come in the future when publishers will have to do more than send out review copies.

Yes, some blogs and sites are sponsored but some of us feel genuinely guilty when we a) don't read review copies and b) pan the books that we did get for free.  As a result, having a publisher or an author pay directly towards the upkeep of our sites may well be utterly intolerable.

However, there is a way around this.

Strange Horizons reviews three books a week and is a paying market for all of its reviews.  It is not funded through sponsorship but by donations from the public.  I think it would be a good idea if genre publishers donated money to community resources such as Strange Horizons or any of the other paying review venues.  I suspect that this may be happening already but if it is then it should be spoken of more so as to encourage others to do the same.

By putting some money back into the institutions that help make publishers' products visible to the community, publishers would be helping to maintain discussion levels as well as, in the case of Strange Horizons in particular, investing in the next generation of writers by supporting a paying short fiction market, one of the places many writers learn their trade.

And because it is a donation model, it is just throwing money in the pot.  Not plastering websites with reminders of how much is owed.

This model could also be exported to the newspapers with publishing companies effectively clubbing together to pay newspaper publishers for guaranteed coverage not of their books but of books in general.  At a time when less and less people are reading for fun, every book read is a gain for the publishing industry.


EDIT : Upon publishing this post, I attached a picture of one of the World Trade Centre Towers collapsing.  This was not out of any desire to reach for hyperbole or to make a political point, it was simply one of the first things that came up when I googled for an image of a building collapsing.

Upon being informed of the cultural insensitivity of this particular choice of picture, I changed it.  I apologise  unreservedly for any offense I might have caused as it was in no way intended.




EDIT THE SECOND : There have been a couple of nice follow-ups to this discussion -

• Collen Mondor at Chasing Ray suggests that we all get ourselves removed from the unsolicited ARC mailing lists
• TadMack at Finding Wonderland talks about the "guilt thing" and how it can lead to self-censorship.  "None of us wants to come across as snobs or people who are vicious and mocking" made me laugh.  I think TadMack pretty much encapsulated my online persona with that one sentence :-)

Comments

[Shaun CG]

"some bloggers feel that running a book blog feels less like a hobby and more like a second job"

I completely agree... one reason why I cut right back on my reviewing was that the fun was draining out of it and I felt completely burned out on it. I'm sure this varies from person to person but I just got fed up for it. Now I'm reviewing for Vector and that's almost it (occasionally I get contacted directly to review something on my blog).

It can also feel like shouting into the wind, sometimes - people sometimes read but people rarely comment, which I imagine is usually because they've not read the material in question, or because they've already discussed the work in question elsewhere. Sometimes I get thank-yous for reviewing something, but that's almost all. In fact the expressions of interest about my review of The Taqwacores are the closest I've come to prompting discussion... that said, I'm halfway between book reviewing and criticism so chances are I'm failing to interest both camps.

[chance]

Are you actually illustrating this post with a photo of 9/11?

And a followup if the answer is yes, what the fuck is wrong with you?

[Jeff VanderMeer]

Um, what Chance said, actually. I mean, talk about making a grossly overwrought connection. The actual blog post you wrote is interesting, but this image is...it's just grotesque to connect the two subjects.

Jeff

[Larry]

As Jeff and Chance said, the post itself is interesting, but that image...I had former co-workers who lost family/friends in that event and it's appalling to see it illustrating a post that has nothing to do with the terrorist attacks. Could you please take it down?

[Jonathan M]

Okay, changing it now. Apologies for any offense caused as none was intended.

I picked it for no reason other than it was one of the first images that came up when I went looking for pictures of a collapse and because it is an example of a collapsing building.

[Larry]

Fair enough.

As for the article itself, while there are times that I feel pressure to review more, that's strictly from myself and my own desires to create something that is "middlebrow," or accessible to a wide range of people. ARCs are just one subset of books I'll consider reading/reviewing and I have no problem with using "Book Porn" posts to show the books I've received, even the ones I have no intention of ever reading, much less reviewing.

As for the future with publishers, I'm not really all that concerned with it. I suspect in five years, if I'm still blogging regularly, my blog would have morphed quite a bit in the interim. I'm just eager to discover what it'll morph to.

[Jonathan M]

You should consider yourself lucky Larry :-) I always feel guilty when I receive an ARC and I don't get round to writing about it.

Less so when they're unsolicited. For example, I seem to be on Del Rey's mailing list and I think I've written about a couple of things they've sent me but by and large it goes to friends or the charity shop. I don't feel bad about those books as I'm not sure how I got on their list to start with. I suspect maybe Gabe set it up back in the Scalpel days.

But when I'm offered an ARC and take it then I feel really bad about not writing about it.

As for ARCs I've explicitly requested then guilt always gets the better of me and I always try and write something. Which is why it tends to be quite rare that I actually request something. I've asked for stuff for Fruitless Recursion and have been trying to find homes for it and when I wound up Scalpel I requested that the people who had taken ARCs find someway of writing about the books.

So yeah, I definitely feel the pressures of patronage and I think that despite my tendency to produce negative reviews and to turn my nose up at everything, I would be very uncomfortable working under any kind of sponsorship.

It's not even a desire to be clean of the system as I have no problem with reviewers who do also do PR but I wouldn't be able to work that way.

[Larry]

When I receive about two dozen books a month these days, many of them unsolicited, I just don't have the time to read all of them and do them justice. Right now, I've been struggling for almost a month to write a massive review for Strange Horizons and it's drained me. I have promised that I would try to review books for almost a half-dozen others by the end of the month, but I'm realistic and will have to push a few to mid-August. I do hope to get that Rieder book reviewed for you in the next two weeks, but I have still have the Le Guin review to write and then one on Kathy Sedia's latest book.

With that pressure, I've learned to prioritize and admit that I cannot read every single book that arrives. What I do is scan through it, make at least a photo post of the book to show that I did receive it, and wait a few months in some cases before reading it, or giving it to friends to enjoy. But when I receive the occasional Newcomb, that immediately goes on the "Do Not Read" list and I wait until I'm in the mood to go to the library and donate it to them.

[Rob B]

I think the time may come in the future when publishers will have to do more than send out review copies.

I agree, to a point. I receive anywhere from 2 to 8 ARCs a week and it is impossible to read all of them. So, that begs the question (and maybe a separate post) how do I determine which book to read and which to relegate to the donation pile?

Like Larry (and Jeff, Andrew Wheeler, and a lot of others) I started posting a weekly list of books received to at least not ignore what I'm receiving.

I think it would be a good idea if genre publishers donated money to community resources such as Strange Horizons or any of the other paying review venues.

Not a bad idea, but that may lead to (or give the perception of) an aura of propaganda whereby publishers are simply paying for reviews, especially if the reviews lean towards the positive.

[Eoghann Irving]

I don't get enough books for review currently. I'd like to have a wider selection.

But I can definitely see the problem. Holding down a day job and having a family it can be difficult to free up enough time to do a thorough read and review of a book. I owe one author a review I said I would do last month.

It is particularly difficult to generate much revenue in the science fiction arena, even more so with books. The donation approach has possibilities, but it's not an easy one to make work.

If publishers were to be donating, I think it would have to be some sort of anonymous system so there wouldn't be any feelings of indebtedness. Either that or just go for an outright patronage system so the potential bias is known.

[Jonathan M]

Hi Eoghann :-)

Agreed about the anonymity thing.

Seeing as we are now down to 5 or 6 Publishing metacorps (I forget how many it is exactly), you'd think it would be easy for them to contribute to a fund which would pay money to newspapers to keep their fiction reviews open and and also to the smaller online venues to keep them up and running and their reviewers hungry and motivated.

The issue, in a way, if not just about getting particular books reviewed, it's about keeping reading alive as a hobby and newspaper coverage and a hungry blogosphere feed into all of that.

[gav (nextread)]

I'm trying to decide about this. If all the book bloggers stopped blogging what would happen to sales of books?

It's an unanswerable question now really, I guess publishers might have some idea but I don't think that bloggers do. Not really. I can't say that there is one blogger that I take all my buying advice from.

I guess what might happen though is that a lot of new or previously undiscovered voices might loose out and that there would be more focus on established writers with a track record rather than going after the next big thing. Which might not be such a bad idea.

When you're not getting paid and it is a hobby there is a high chance that once the excitement and kudos factors fade away and if you're still blogging you're going to keep at it as long as you want to. Some blogs with shine and burn. Some will change.

I don't know what is going to happen to mine. I'm still exploring it. I do know I'm building relationships with publicists so I'm selective in what I ask for and they are getting to know my tastes so I get sent books they think I might like. I don't get a lot of random books that I probably won't read anyway.

In the end people like telling people about things they've enjoyed, so if there ain't the same blogs there is going to new ones, forums, twitters, and ways of finding books we've not thought of yet.

Reading is an indulgence and a self-ish one at that and a pleasure that once you have it you don't easily give up. So there is always going to be readers. Though what they'll be reading I have no idea.

[Jonathan M]

Hey Gav :-)

A recommendation from one friend to another is one thing, but it is not what the blogosphere is set up for and I don't think it's what publishers want. I don't need a blog to tell my friends what to read. I don't even need twitter. I just tell them.

This is more akin to talking about the kind of books you like on a street corner with a megaphone and I think that to the extent that publishers want to preserve people who are currently in the blogosphere, then they need to think about donating to review sites.

I think that a focus on established voices would be disastrous for the culture, let alone the publishing industry.

[Joe Sherry]

Jonathan: Like you, when I receive an ARC I request I feel an obligation to review it and feel guilty when I feel that it is taking too long to get to read it.

Unsolicited copies: No guilt. I don't have many of them (just got one this week, though), but I'll get to those when I do. At the moment there are not so many review copies sitting on my shelf that I won't get to them this year, but I'm spending just as much time reading strictly for pleasure via the local library as I am working on any one ARC. I wouldn't complain, though, if my ARC pile grew. It would make choosing the next one to read and seeking to sell reviews a whole lot easier.

[Jonathan M]

Hey Joe :-)

The only time when I don't feel guilty is when I give up on a book because I've really taken against it. Then I feel as though I am doing them a service by not giving voice to hours and hours of frustration and annoyance.

Also I hate writing ranty reviews. My normal mode is praising the stuff I like whilst admitting that by and large the book isn't as good as it could have been (which is true of most books), but the alternative always feels self-indulgent as it stops being about the book and starts to become "how many creative ways can I come up with for saying that this is shit?".

[Joe Sherry]

Yeah, but I need to know if the book is shit. If you can't finish, you've got to say so, even if it's not a salable review. I haven't had to do so very often, and I want to be polite at the same time, but I still need to recognize that it stinks.

[Joe Sherry]

This should have been in the last comment, but I agree with you on ranty reviews. A good rant doesn't really serve the review or the book.

Feels good for a couple minutes, though.