Dragonlily wrote:Farseer, I expected better of you. Less generalization, for one thing. "Hack writers are too likely to give sweetheart reviews." Two questionable generalizations in one sentence.
I don't make such generalizations without backing. (Before I go into detail, I'd like to know how you make (a) TWO generalizations out of that sentence, and (b) any generalizations at all. There are hack writers; in fact, most writers are reasonably describable as hacks, though hardly any of them would admit to it. It's one of those pie-for-breakfast things. There are also sweetheart reviews: i.e., reviews more favourable than the book in question deserves, motivated by reasons of personal camaraderie. The latter are frequently written by the former. And please reread the words 'too likely': the probability is nonzero. It is not 100% either, which is why I don't consider it a 'generalization'. That doesn't matter, though. In my opinion,
any nonzero probability of a sweetheart review is too much — and too much is what I said it was.)
Now, an example of the prevailing mentality: the reviewer Herbert Gold made the mistake of actually admitting that he was friends with an author in a favourable review of his work. Here's what happened —
Herbert Gold wrote:The book-review editor rejected my notice by saying, 'we don't admit friendship plays any part in reviewing. If it does, we don't admit it.' And it was also clear that he was rejecting me for betraying the charade of objectivity.
(Source: Herbert Gold, 'Reviewmanship and the I-Wrote-A-Book Disease,' quoted in B.R. Myers,
A Reader's Manifesto.)
It's a notorious phenomenon in the 'literary world': friends giving unjustifiably good reviews to friends, or to people they fear may give them reviews in future. You've noticed, perhaps, that hardly a novel is published without some glowing praise from a reviewer printed prominently on the dust jacket — and most of those books are awful. (As Theodore Sturgeon used to say, 90 percent of
everything is crud.) Someone is not being honest. Someone is committing PR and uttering BS — and it happens thousands of times a year.
My other major point is, the job of a reviewer is not to write literature, it is to match the reader up with a book he/she will enjoy. There are readers who actually enjoy mindless repetitions of the same unlikely stories, and if we said "This is crap," they would miss out on their good times.
You overestimate your influence. The readers who enjoy mindless repetition know where to get it, and won't be talked out of it by reviews. Do you have any idea how many scathingly negative reviews Danielle Steel and Jackie Collins received during their careers? All the lambasting that the
Times and the
Globe and
Kirkus could dish out could not prevent their books from selling untold millions of copies.
The author has the right to be understood, and the responsibility of making himself understood, to the appropriate level of readers.
That was true long before there was such a thing as a book reviewer, and will continue to be so when the last book reviewer goes to join his ancestors. And it is true right now in fields where most readers never encounter a book review except on jacket blurbs. Science fiction & fantasy are such a field, you know. The only periodicals I can think of offhand that review sf & f regularly and systematically are
Locus, Science Fiction Chronicle, Asimov's, Analog, and
Fantasy & Science Fiction. If every single reader of every one of those five magazines bought Robert Jordan's next book,
and no one else did, it would be considered a colossal flop. None of those magazines has a paid circulation as high as 50,000, and their readership overlaps extensively.
The big reading public, you know, does not base its buying decisions on book reviews.
Publisher's Weekly and
Kirkus are sold only within the trade, and most newspapers review only a handful of books each week — or none at all, having found it impossibly difficult to sell advertising on book-review pages.
Tom Doherty, publisher of Tor Books, has told me what research shows are the top three reasons why readers buy books:
1. Name recognition — having read the same author before.
2. Physical package — the cover or jacket design, teaser, first few pages, and the general appearance of the book, inside and out.
3. Recommendations by word of mouth.
These three reasons account for about 75 percent of all trade-book sales. All others combined — that includes reviews, advertising, author tours, convention and conference gigs, you name it — account for the remaining 25 percent.
Don't get me wrong. Book reviewers
can offer useful consumer advice, even useful literary criticism. But in my experience, the more famous a reviewer is, the higher his or her profile,
especially if he or she reviews books in print for one of the big New York review publications, the less useful and honest those reviews tend to be. (It's a commonplace in publishing that if a book jacket contains a glowing review from
Publisher's Weekly — and nothing else — it's a stinker. PW will praise
anything. After all, it stays in business by selling advertising space to publishers.)
I applaud the work done by independent book reviewers such as yourself, and the comparatively small number of honest professionals left in the field. But I don't kid myself that your work is typical of the field, or that book reviews in general have any important effect on sales. That would just be wishful thinking.
Gives me at least a bit of an idea of whether or not I should try an unfamiliar author or book. 
Thanks, MM. Another Julian May review coming soon. Duchess, check out THE SECRET OF SHABAZ under "Young Adult" in a couple of days.
) Like the book reviewer, I do not hesitate to purchase music based on the recommendations of the local critic -- and that person covers lots of obscure jazz, bluegrass, classical, folk, and other largely ignored fields of music. 