Review Publications

This assignment hits close to home, because I’ve been on the other side of trade reviews as a book publicist (it was a lot less glamorous than it sounds—trust me). Although, I will say that even when the books I repped got dragged by Kirkus or another review source, we were often able to eke out a phrase or two that still made it onto the book’s publicity materials. The worst was no coverage at all! A big part of that job was managing author expectations. Everyone thought their book had a shot at the New York Times bestseller list.

Librarians rely on reviews for collection development, because no one can read everything, or be aware of every book that is published. Reviews from reliable sources help librarians make decisions quickly and with the highest probability that the book will be well-received by readers in their communities. After familiarizing yourself with review publications, you begin to get a sense of their individual personalities—what they review well, what they don’t, what they won’t even touch. Obviously, if ebooks or alternative genres aren’t being reviewed as often as traditionally published books and popular genres, librarians are less likely to add them to collections unless they specifically make a point to seek them out. The same is true for any nontraditional publishing method. There’s also a disparity between books published by one of the Big 5 and books published by independent publishers. I can verify this from anecdotal experience, because the company I worked for distributed books published by independents. A lot of this is due to budget—Penguin Random House has more money to throw at the publicity machine than indies. This is not fair, but it’s going to take time to change the tide, and librarians and readers coming together to legitimize other sources of books and their reviews.

My opinion of negative reviews is split. Where librarians are concerned, don’t think they’re any more useful than simply not reviewing the book at all. Less face time, smaller chance it will be added to a collection. I’m sure when you’re pressed for time, you’re scanning for positive reviews only, and maybe even limiting your attention to starred reviews. On the other hand, they’re really entertaining, and sometimes they highlight flaws in the writing that add up to a bigger theme librarians and readers should watch out for, like the latest scandal involving the novel American Dirt. Originally, the book was picked by Oprah’s book club and lauded by a lot of major review sources and celebs. Then, reviews by Latinx authors, particularly Myriam Gurba’s scathing take-down, pointed out that the author was capitalizing on the pain of migrants even though she had no personal relationship to them. I'm not saying you shouldn't read it, or you shouldn't add it to your library's collection, but by staying informed you might be more likely to balance its perspective with a novel written by a person of color. It’s just as important to read reviews by diverse reviewers as it is to read a variety of review publications.

Angela’s Ashes: getting positive reviews in all of those sources makes me very intrigued to not only add it to my collection, but also to read it personally. I’ve seen situations where a book will get positive reviews in one or two of the trades, and middling reviews in the others. So the fact that this title got glowing reviews in all of them is really something to be proud of. Way to go, Frank!

The Billionaire’s First Christmas: by comparison, these reviews are lower in quality. They have typos, incomplete sentences, and writers make vague statements about their own opinions but don’t provide a lot of reasoning behind them. I don’t know what Deborah’s standards are—what’s a 5 star book for her? But at least she’s told me one useful thing: it’s a clean read. One thing the Amazon and blog reviews have in common is they speak colloquially and base their reviews on personal taste rather than specific elements of craft. I am not inspired to add this book to my library’s collection.

I’m not currently a librarian, but when I look for reviews for personal reading, I start with NPR and my friends. I also follow favorite authors on social media, many of whom post about the things they’re reading (the poetry community is especially great at this). Because of my work background, I still find it fun to read reviews in trade publications or make note of blurbs from them on back covers of books in bookstores and libraries.