Friday, May 12, 2006

Why book sections matter

CRITICAL MASS: Why book sections matter
John Freeman, over at the NBCC blog Critical Mass, has a great post on book sections in newspapers. Coming from the publisher's side of the desk, what we see is more and more books in the marketplace, and less and less space for coverage in the papers, which is very frustrating. Compounded by the fact that of the few books that DO get covered in the last remaining book sections that don't reprint reviews from the wires, well, they often end up reviewing the same book. Which is not to say that 25 different takes on The DaVinci Code is necessarily a bad thing, but it would be wonderful if the book section had a little more space to breathe, review some more excellent but overlooked books (or more excellent Overlook books for that matter).
And I don't think there's a book review editor out there who would disagree with that... The money men, though, that might be a different story.
--John Mark

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