The Paper Clip

The well-heeled book review is disappearing from the newspapers we don't buy. As Book Reviews fold into Calendar sections, the world sighs. Barely.

Just another newspaper editor laid off if you ask me. I'd be concerned about the competition if their computer skills weren't so marginal. While it's true that print will always have the advantage of being contextual and coherent, blogs have the advantage of being read. For example, the Paper Clip has 14 readers. That's 28 eyes.

I was going to weigh the merits and shortcomings of book reviews vs. blogs in an incredibly half-assed fashion, but then I came across this comment in the LA Times book blog. The lament of the forgotten victim:

My middle grade novel is about an eleven year old girl and her relationship with her local newspaper editor.

Am I outdated?

Hard times are upon us and book reviewers are not immune. Publishers Weekly has been an insidery book publishing magazine for, what the NY Observer calls, 136 years. It's the first to review books: it tells reviewers what to review. To be sure, a starred review will guarantee glances by people who read about writing and write about reading.

For over 80 years these reviews have been written by nameless reviewers, creating an air of authority.  But now PW has had to cut review rates by 50 percent, down from $50 per review to $25, so it's offereing bylines in exchange for even worse pay. Meet your influence makers:

Kate Axelrod graduated from Oberlin last summer and then attended the six-week Columbia Publishing Course. (It's very hard to get into! I had to go to NYU.) Rachel Bravvman has written for several magazines, including one geared towards people who have bipolar disorder and their friends and family. But Liam Brennen is the reviewer to behold though. He even responded to the Observer's email:

Well, I'm a 24 year old writer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, having graduated just over a year ago with an English degree from the University of Manitoba. I started out writing for my student paper, covering Arts news and reviews and then managed to get a freelance job with the Winnipeg Free Press writing book reviews. In truth I hadn't actually heard of PW until I started reviewing really, and one day I noticed the review quote on the back cover of an old Stephen King book I was reading and thought that somehow I might be able to be the one who writes those! So I looked them up and within a couple of days I was reviewing for the fiction department. Shortly after that I got a job reviewing audiobooks (which is where I spend most of my time now) with PW and have since become a top reviewer in that section. And I suppose that's about it!

Well. I guess that is about it!