When I first thought about writing book reviews (decades removed from writing music reviews at the college newspaper level), I thought it would be easy to get new releases from publishers. I had no idea how difficult it would be. I discovered that publishers – being reasonable business people – want samples of your work [...]
I have people who say to me that writing book reviews is hard. I would generally agree. After you’ve spent hours, days, maybe even a week or two reading someone else’s words, organized in their own fashion, it can feel difficult to organize one’s own thoughts and reactions. Plus, there’s always a sense of self-doubt [...]
A female book blogger mentioned recently that whenever people learn that she writes book reviews they ask her a common question, “Where do you find the time to read so many books?” It’s a good question, and one that I’ve been tempted to ask film reviewers. “How do you get the time to watch so [...]
One seemingly easy question facing a book reviewer is: When should a book review be published? Yet the answer varies greatly – and surprisingly – in the publishing industry. I say “surprisingly” because I once wrote music reviews for a college newspaper. At that time, if one asked when a record album review should be [...]
“If you introduce a character that’s already familiar to somebody they have a vested interest.” –Sarah Bagby, managing partner of Watermark Books One of the pleasurable facets of reading modern popular fiction is that once you discover an author (and it’s more likely to be a she than a he), you can read her earlier [...]
“You’ve got to shake your fists at lightning now/ You’ve got to roar like forest fire…” Joni Mitchell (“Judgement of the Moon and Stars: Ludwig’s Tune”) You don’t see many book reviews concluding that the book being reviewed is average. Yet in truth, many books are simply average, and this can present a problem for [...]
The typical nonfiction book deals with either history or sports, or serves as a survey book. The term ‘survey book’ refers to one that covers a field in a technical and sometimes textbook-like fashion. In most cases, survey book authors who seek to appeal to a broad audience will keep their language as non-technical as [...]
For almost a year now, I’ve had the pleasure of reviewing books for both the Sacramento Book Review and the San Francisco Book Review, and as is the case with a book reviews, the subject has been newly released books. While I’ve always tried to pay attention to newly released literature prior to doing these [...]
Long-distance runners are said to be lonely individuals. That’s because they put in miles and miles alone. Then, one day, they join hundreds or thousands of other runners in a competitive event. Book reviewing is a bit like that. The book reviewer is alone while reading advance copies of books that others will not see [...]
Reviewing books is a pretty symbiotic relationship. Publishers that don’t have a marketing budget (and, really, who does these days?) use reviewers to get the word out. They use outlets like PW and Kirkus to reach book buyers, and consumer outlets like the Sacramento and San Francisco Book Reviews to reach readers. As more and [...]
I enjoy doing reviews. I usually pick the books I’m interested in and review it for another potential reader, with the goal of letting them know if the book is worth the price, and as importantly, is it worth the time commitment. Personal time is important to everyone. Reviews mostly go un-commented on, other than [...]
A book reviewer needs to find a fine balance in approaching a new work of fiction, although the reviewer is not always going to deliver the product that each reader is seeking. A reviewer should perform a service by answering the question, “Is this book worth my money or – even more importantly – my [...]
One thing that happens when you are a book reviewer or editor is you get on a lot of email lists. Some voluntarily, some because you’ve reviewed a publicist’s book and they’ve added you to their media contact list. I find that some companies use email well, others hardly at all, and some create a [...]
2.17.10: A Tale Of Two Publishers As an example of why some publishers get reviews more often from us than others, I’m going to use two publishers we’ve been working with for more than a year. Both are independent, both publish a number of mid-range art books ($50-75), along with pop-culture and other titles. Let’s [...]
2.9.10: Book Triage Here is a practical example of what I do each week with incoming books. This picture is a sorta-light load of books for a week–about 225 titles total and one T-shirt (was part of a media kit, and got separated from the book within a couple of seconds.). It took me about [...]
Want more? View ARCHIVES
