The Book Babes: Does the Worth of Reviews Lie in How Many Books They Sell? Are They Mere...

Hello Margo, friend and fellow critic:

A deflating piece of news floating into my "in" basket the other day: In a press release promoting The Making of a Bestseller: Success Stories from Authors and the Editors, Agents and Booksellers Behind Them, up popped this revelation: Reviews don't matter?not as a sales tool, anyway. A blow to those of us engaged in the righteous crusade of book criticism.

Based on their survey of more than 100 editors and agents, authors Dee Power and Brian Hill concluded that, contrary to prevailing opinion, book reviews take "nearly last place" as a way of marketing books?behind more important factors such as the writer's track record, writing quality, timeliness of topic, fan base, word-of-mouth and the author's own promotional efforts. But there's a bit more to the story than that blanket judgment suggests.

"We didn't separate out whether it was a major industry-influencing publication, or a local review," acknowledged Power, a former business consultant who lives in Fountain Hills, Ariz., when I gave her a call for more information. After she noted a few exceptions that prove the rule?the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal?I began to see things in a new light. It's not that book reviews don't matter. It's that the survey didn't begin to address the variables: the publication in which they appear, how close to pub date they run, what kind of play they're given, and how well they're written. I guess God dwells in the details.

So I contacted Jacqueline Deval, author of Publicize Your Book!: An Insider's Guide to Getting Your Book the Attention It Deserves, to embellish the thought. A former book publicist who is now vice president and publisher of Hearst Books, Deval addressed the virtues of the review. Positive reviews, she said, can not only generate more publicity for a book but also stimulate the publisher's internal enthusiasm. (This may help counteract the musical-chairs effect in most publicity departments, which Adam Langer noted in one of his On the Road tour columns.) More broadly, she notes, "Reviews need to be part of a larger campaign so that consumers are hearing or reading about the book from more than just one source."


This last seems like the critical piece to me?that a book review, whether in USA Today or the Toledo Blade, is just one part of a cumulative drive for the consumer's attention. To find a buyer or a reader, a book has to appear more than once on someone's mental radar screen. As for the review's importance to a book's critical success. . . . Well, Madam Margo, what do you make of that?


Dear Ellen the critic, or should I say, critical Ellen,

This puts a whole new twist on the term critical mass, doesn't it? It seems logical that the more people hear about a book, the more likely they are to buy it. And I guess from a marketing point of view, it doesn't even matter if the publicity is good or bad. But I'm always nervous when anyone starts judging the worth of reviews by how well they sell books.

The value of reviews depends in part on whether you see them as a service to readers (giving them a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down on whether they should buy the book) or an end in themselves. I have always viewed criticism not as a marketing tool, but as an ongoing cultural conversation that adds to our accumulating knowledge of the world. I'm not against a review encouraging book sales, but I wouldn't automatically conclude that a review that doesn't register in $$$$ hasn't been successful. What if it's a bad review, for example, one that exposes the self-indulgence of an author or even the dishonesty of a work? It may discourage sales, and that could be a public service. Or what if the review is of an obscure work that then finds a limited audience, thanks to its publication? That might encourage the publisher, as Jackie Deval points out, or even the writer himself, to go on. Or what if the review merely encourages an ongoing debate about a particular subject? That, too, would be a public service.

I see reviews, in other words, not primarily as a marketing tool, but as a way for us to encourage literary excellence. Putting reviews in newspapers, in particular, sends a message to the general public?and newspaper subscribers in particular?that ideas matter and reading is essential.

Of course, selling that idea to the marketing people, who seem to have a stranglehold on most newspaper newsrooms, is another problem.


Good point, Margo,

Regarding the purpose of running reviews, as seen from a journalistic perspective. The authors of The Making of a Bestseller spell success in terms of units moved, but as we know, books are not mere widgets; they are, as you say, carriers of the culture.

As to your last point, about who and what is running America's newsrooms, there's conflicting evidence about whether the $$$-heads are in control. Even in the face of declining circulation and ad revenue, it's hard to get anyone to admit that things are being run on the cheap. In search of a poster boy to prove that book coverage was being slammed, I called Steve Wasserman, who, as you know, is handing back the reins of the Los Angeles Times Book Review to become a literary agent in New York. (His last day is May 13.) Wasserman stated unequivocally that he and his section have been no victim of manhandling from above: His book section, he said, has just celebrated its 30th year as a separate (and money-losing) supplement, indicating that "Captain Crunch" hasn't taken a bite out of book coverage at the L.A. Times. For a brief period, the section was bounced up in size from 12 to 16 pages?until recent cuts newsroom-wide brought it back down. "I'm leaving at the top of my game," declared Wasserman, in his inimical style.

Wasserman believes that book coverage in most newspapers languishes in a "virtual ghetto." But it's hard to tell whether that decision comes from in or outside the newsroom. From everything I can tell, arts coverage in general and book coverage in particular are prioritized from the top as either a consumer service or an advertising draw. The emphasis is on reader-friendly tabs that focus on what's happening in terms of going out?certainly not in more abstract terms.

And that brings us back to The Making of a Bestseller. According to the same survey from which its authors deduced that reviews don't count, the two things that matter even less than critical commentary in determining a book's success are the size of the author's advance and?are you ready??advertising. This supports the standard publishing worldview that money is better spent on promoting books than placing ads.

But it also puts book sections in the standard double bind. Book sections grow if they have advertising, but if advertising doesn't help sell books, why would publishers spend money on ads?