If you’re one of the many authors, publishers or readers concerned that your favorite newspaper is\u00a0eliminating or cutting its book review section, you aren’t alone.<\/p>\n
Trade associations, book clubs and other groups, including the academic press, are petitioning newspaper publishers who have decided to eliminate or shrink their book review sections because they can’t generate revenue to pay their own way.<\/p>\n
I\u00a0doubt publishers care, and the protests won’t do much good.\u00a0The entire newspaper industry is in such dire straits right now, with circulation and ad revenues sliding, that publishers are looking every place they can to save money.<\/p>\n
When I saw an article<\/a> on this at the Inside Higher Ed website, I responded with these suggestions:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n —Instead of concentrating on reviews in the printed paper (which costs money to produce), concentrate instead on getting reviews into the newspaper\u2019s online edition.\u00a0Many papers use their website for articles that didn\u2019t fit into the newspaper. Some of the bigger dailies have online versions of the paper that are very different than the printed versions. Ask for a meeting with your local editor. Volunteer to recruit book reviewers and provide one or more reviews every week or month to the newspaper. Make it easy for them to say yes. (See “Special Report #34: Secrets to Becoming a Columnist in Newspapers & Magazines.” This report refers only to unpaid columnists.)<\/p>\n —Craigslist<\/a> is one of the\u00a0top 10 most popular websites. Why not post information about your book\u00a0at Craigslist in the city nearest to where you live? I\u2019ll bet more people in your city read Craigslist than read the local papers. (See “Craigslist:\u00a0A Valuable Publicity Tool.”)<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n —Authors, or anyone for that matter, can\u00a0also review books, CDs and anything else at Amazon.com<\/a>. People reading those reviews might be curious about what you’ve written and visit your website. (See “How to Turn Amazon into a River of Gold.”)<\/a><\/p>\n —Pitch bloggers<\/a> and ask them to review your book. Getting in front of just one influential blogger can often result in catching the attention of even more bloggers.<\/p>\n Certainly, authors and publishers like book reviews in newspapers because they validate their work.\u00a0 But they’d do better concentrating their time and efforts\u00a0on\u00a0building the buzz for their books online.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you’re one of the many authors, publishers or readers concerned that your favorite newspaper is\u00a0eliminating or cutting its book review section, you aren’t alone. Trade associations, book clubs and other groups, including the academic press, are petitioning newspaper publishers who have decided to eliminate or shrink their book review sections because they can’t generate\u2026 Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":1,"wds_primary_category":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[608,43,634],"class_list":{"0":"post-931","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-marketing","7":"tag-authors-publishers","8":"tag-book-marketing","9":"tag-craigslist","10":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41101,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/931\/revisions\/41101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}