Pre-Publication Reviews
Cheating or informative?Some on-line retailers allow reviews of books not yet published and others do not. The issue is this: authors could abuse this, asking for reviews only from people they know would be sympathetic...or worse getting people who have not even read the book to post reviews for them!
On the other hand publishers send out Advanced Reading Copies (ARCs) and get reviews which are then published in trade magazines (like Publishers Weekly) well in advance of the novel’s release. Of course, those reviews are impartial as possible, but they are limited to reviewers who may or may not be the intended audience.
Is there a middle ground where authors/readers can get honest opinions at the major on-line retailers from their audience before the book is released?
What do you think?
NOTE: For those readers of the Mortal Coils ARC who want to say something about the novel (good or bad!) Barnes & Nobles is apparently open to pre-release reviews—here at the B& N Mortal Coils page.
Labels: Mortal Coils
posted by Eric Nylund at 11:16 AM
3 Comments:
That's kinda crap considering that people post amazingly positive reviews of truly steaming piles well after they're published and that's still ok when fingers should be cut off. Plus, I wouldn't think they would care if an author is able to create an audience for his book and, you know, customers to buy it. Isn't that how places like Amazon make their money? Yeah, maybe it sucks for the little guy, but there's ways to get the word out if you have enough imagination and aren't skittish about minor vandalism (stickers!) or good old fashioned self-promoting (business cards!). Either way, once the book is out, everyone will know what's what and most of those reviews won't matter.
The bottom line for anyone who reads reviews is:
1. Do you trust the reviewer to be honest?
2. Do the reviewer's tastes match your own?
These things take time to determine. Meanwhile, the day the review is released into the wild has little to do with whether a review is informative, useful, honest, or well written.
My 2 pennies...
Nikoda and John D—good points and thanks for joining the discussion.
Nikoda, the major on-line retailers matter more theses days because people go there—if not to buy—than to use their search engines and catalogs to browse in a way that cannot in a physical store (regardless of where they then buy a book).
Also, e-tailers may control a bigger (and growing) segment of the book market than you might think, some estimates say between 20-30 percent. See: http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6550867.html
Btw, wow—thanks for the best review ever! Holy smokes.
John, I guess I know a good review when I see one. It’s insightful, detailed, with no major spoilers. Also very rare, no?
John and Nikoda, re your points about once the book is released. Sadly generating buzz about a book the day of release in this market may be too late. It is rare for a new book to sit in a prominent position in bookstore for a month...rarer still to have any shelf presence at all after 2-3 months if it is not selling well. It used to be a good book could be released and generate word of mouth and buzz over time...now with many retailers shrinking their orders and inventories the situation becomes trickier.
This is why you see larger scale efforts to promote books ahead of time (there tends to be no “later”).
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