By Edward Nawotka
In today’s lead story about the demise of Kirkus Reviews, former Kirkus managing director Jerome Kramer asks “whether the industry still needs advance reviews the way it used to?” Kirkus was known among the major journals that published pre-pub reviews—Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist—as the “mean” one. Kirkus didn’t sugarcoat its reviews, which may, in the end, have been part of the problem. (The New York Observer quotes a number of agents who are particularly pleased with the publication’s demise.)
What utility does a prepub review—particularly, a negative one—hold for the trade any longer? Often, by the time the reviews appear, the booksellers have most likely already ordered stock for the season. What’s more, books are returnable, so if the book is a disappointment, they can simply return it. And booksellers, these days, typically get the books just early as the pre-pub review outlets and are just as likely to have read a books by the time the prepub review comes out. A negative one? Heck, the bookseller might just disagree.
Librarians, on the other hand, don’t have the option to return a book that turns out to be a disappointment. With limited budgets, they need to be even more careful in their buying, and whatever knowledge they can glean about a book is valuable. But still…if librarians are the last remaining audience, that’s not a very viable one for a long-term business.
The question is, beyond their obvious utility to the marketing and publicity departments at publishers—who can at the very least use a prepub review for a blurb for the dust jacket on a new book—what’s the use of the prepub review?
Let us know what you think in the comments below or via Twitter using hashtag #ppbonus.
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Kirkus Reviews: The End | Publishing Perspectives
7 months ago
[...] BONUS: Are prepub reviews irrelevant? [...]
Erin
7 months ago
Pre-pub reviews are incredibly important because it tells booksellers, reviewers, and other media what they should pay attention to, it cuts through the clutter and glut of publishing, and also sometimes provides a pithy way of categorizing a book. I have never been what one would call a “fan” of Kirkus because, while I applaud anonymous reviewing of titles to prevent any grand-standing or personal attacks, I didn’t always feel like the stable of reviewers were qualified to review for a publication that dictates so much later in the book’s life.
Ann Kingman
7 months ago
I disagree with several of the points you raise in regard to the impact of prepub reviews on booksellers.
You write, “Often, by the time the reviews appear, the booksellers have most likely already ordered stock for the season.” Few booksellers actually place one order for the entire lifespan of the book, and in fact positive pre-pub reviews can generate further orders ahead of publication. No bookseller wants to be caught short on a title that is in demand by customers, and if there is an indication that a book will be heavily and positively reviewed, a store will want to increase their initial order.
You also state: “What’s more, books are returnable, so if the book is a disappointment, they can simply return it.” While I agree that it’s rare for a bookseller to cancel a pre-pub order based on a bad early review from Kirkus, I do feel it necessary to point out that returns cost money to the bookseller, both in terms of labor and paying the freight back to the publisher.
And lastly, I got a great laugh out of your comment that, “[B]ooksellers, these days, typically get the books just early as the pre-pub review outlets and are just as likely to have read a books by the time the prepub review comes out.” Um, have you been in the back rooms of any bookstores lately? They are piled high with galleys across all categories, and there is no way that booksellers, even those with a very large staff, can read even a fraction. And while the booksellers can and often do disagree with a pre-pub review, that same review can often interest a bookseller in the title and drive them to pick up that galley and read it.
Carol White
7 months ago
I usually read the PW review (posted on the Loudoun County, Virginia public library site as part of their online catalogue) before reserving the book, and similarly with Amazon or Alibris before I make a purchase. Since many books are now bought online, PW reviews helps to fill the gap created when I don’t go to a bookstore and browse their shelves.
Jeff
7 months ago
The real question should be: what’s the revenue model for a pre-pub review vehicle, be it print or digital? How does an initiative that is somehow like the Kirkus model make any money out of providing that content? who is the market (do we think that large chains are paying attention or making their ordering choices independent of Kirkus-style reviews? how about libraries?) and what and how are they willing to pay for the value of this content?
Emily W.
7 months ago
I always found the length of Kirkus rather daunting, especially at a clip of every other week, but the structure of the reviews made them easy to skim – and yes, pre-pub reviews like this can definitely help draw attention to genuinely wonderful books that might otherwise be under the radar. If a book isn’t written by an established author and didn’t get a huge advance, and thus isn’t an automatic candidate for a large allocation of publisher resources in marketing and promotion, the pre-pub reviews can be its best chance to get a little momentum going before publication. There were many times I thought Kirkus got a book right when PW didn’t (and vice versa, but that’s why monopolies are bad). Without this kind of safety net that ensures a large number of the books published each season get at least one dedicated read before they’re consigned to obscurity, I worry that the big books already dominating the market will be left to suck up all the oxygen. I can’t see any way blogs will replace the kind of methodical culling of publishers’ catalogs that Kirkus did.
Charlie Boswell
7 months ago
To expect blogs to make up for the lack of Kirkus or any other pre-pub review source is expecting rather a lot from what bloggers I’ve seen so far. The “best” bloggers seem to be personal friends whose judgement I can parse or a few industry-insiders whom I have found worth trusting-that’s about 5-6 people total so far. How such a small group can replace the Kirkus combination seems an unrealistic if not incredulous expectation to me. Plus, all the earlier comments about the reality of actual bokstores are all quite accurate. This loss seems yet another disturbing prospect of the quality to be offered by publishing in the future.
Diana Finch
7 months ago
Two observations from an agent: 1) The timing of pre-pub reviews are definitely a relic of a pre-digital age, as PW especially and even Kirkus had such a struggle to keep up with faster production schedules for books. Recently the ‘pre-pub’ reviews for many books have been running on or even after publication.
2) I always welcomed a pre-pub review as evidence of a new book’s official existence in the marketplace – the first acknowledgment outside of the publisher’s own listings and the author’s website. Once upon a time Kirkus and PW reviewed virtually every book, and over recent years the percentage of books that receive pre-pub reviews has grown smaller and smaller (with many, especially timely nonfiction, receiving only online reviews). This of course puts a much larger burden on the publisher – but ultimately on the author – to Get The Word Out! It also just contributes to the industry’s reliance on celebrity authors . . .
Kirkus closing calls reviews into question « Industry in Progress
7 months ago
[...] publishingperspectives.com via Publisher’s [...]
Norma Jean
7 months ago
Kirkus will not be missed…their reviews were mean spirited, sometimes vicious and had more to do with the reviewer…look at me, aren’t I clever….than they did with the book and the writer. And their subscription base was miniscule.
Bill Trzeciak
7 months ago
As a librarian I have long used, and loved, Kirkus Reviews. I’m about to retire and I was hoping to subscribe to Kirkus on the eReading device I’m expecting to get this Christmas so I can know which books will be worth buying for myself on the device. I don’t trust user reviews and while I realize we wouldn’t be a huge market, I would think a few thousand of us nationally, librarians and academics, would subscribe online at least.
ReadHowYouWant
7 months ago
I will miss having an old, familiar member of the conversation not be there anymore
There are so many new voices in current discussions in the publishing industry that it is nice to still have some of the old voices around. Anyway, times change, alas.
Kidlit43
7 months ago
People who think Kirkus Reviews are mean-spirited haven’t read Kirkus in a while. And you should know better, Norma Jean. Subscription base for the print magazine had little to do with how many people used the reviews. Libraries shared them among staff while only buying one subscription. Librarians depended on them being available through their distributors. They were read with reverence and attention by most savvy buyers. A Kirkus star had real meaning, because Kirkus was so careful about praise. ‘Nuff said.
Kathleen
7 months ago
To say that “booksellers, these days, typically get the books just early as the pre-pub review outlets and are just as likely to have read a books by the time the prepub review comes out” is ridiculous. Kirkus has about 60 people who review children’s/YA books plus however many review books for adults. No bookseller matches that. As to bloggers replacing professional reviewers, I review children’s books for Kirkus (and I don’t think I’ve written a vicious review in my life). I’ve been a children’s librarian for 25 years, reviewed for different publications for 20 years, served on Newbery and Caldecott, and written guides to children’s books. I teach graduate children’s and YA lit classes. Quite a few Kirkus children’s reviewers have a similar depth of experience, which not many bloggers do. And Kirkus has excellent editors, something bloggers also lack.
On Kirkus and Pre-Pub Reviews « SONYA CHUNG
7 months ago
[...] In light of the recent announcement that Kirkus Reviews will close down, some wonder whether the pre-pub review is even useful or relevant anymore. Here’s a post at publishingperspectives.com. [...]
novelist
7 months ago
As a novelist who has been reviewed by Kirkus and PW each time out, my experience has been that Kirkus reviews were not only peevish and weirdly personal, always written as if there was a hidden agenda just below the surface, but also — they were often wildly inaccurate. Even the praising reviews felt strangely hostile.
“If the book is a disappointment, [booksellers] can simply return it.” « Florida Writers Association Blog
7 months ago
[...] 2009 December 16 by Chris Hamilton The title is a nugget buried in a blog post in Publishing Perspectives, a newsletter about the global publishing community. The post is speaking about the demise of [...]
Don Lafferty
7 months ago
I make a living helping authors and publishers find their readers, so waiting for the Kirkus review has become one of the milestones of our prepub buzz-building schedule. Double-edged to be sure, but a known commodity in a world where online reviews have become diluted by host of underlying motivations and undisclosed connections.
This past 18 months has witnessed an overall devastation of the book review market, as traditional media outlets trimmed staff and freelance hires for work related to the arts in general.
Fortunately, credible early review programs in communities like Goodreads and LibraryThing have already become important facets of our prepub effort. The programs have been crafted to encourage transparency, reliability and quality, so as credible book reviewers emerge in these places, their impact has the ability to partially plug the gap left by Kirkus.
Review blogs too will naturally be held to a higher standard now as they jocky for position to fill the gap. I can tell you from a publicists perspective, that now more than ever, ranking book review bloggers – by genre, by timeliness, by quality, by transparency and by consistency – is something I would LOVE to see come from a mainstream publication like Publisher’s Weekly.
Michael Cogdill
5 months ago
Seems in these times of traditional media collapse, an Amazon review perhaps carries a weight once reserved for the likes of P.W. Anyone agree?