Huffington Post has advice for book publishers here on how to appear on said electronic publication. First, what it aint:
This is NOT a book review section. Let me say that again, because I know about 72,000 publicists just plotzed because they have no idea what to do other than ask for a review. Huffington Post Books is not a review — there’s a reason those sections in newspapers are dropping like flies. Book reviews tend to be conversation enders, and when you’re living in the age of engagement, a time when people are looking for conversation starters, that stance gets you nowhere.
What, then, if not reviews?
Blog, blog, blog, blog, blog. You, your authors, your authors’ friends. And especially editors. Yes, you can come and blog about the books you love, the ones you are publishing, just make it clear to the reader who you are and what your relationship to the book is. Look. At some point, you got that manuscript or proposal in from an agent, you fell in love with it so madly that you were willing to face the firing squad (aka acquisition board) in order to sign up the book. To get past that hurdle you had to be a hell of an advocate, and you had to believe deeply in the author you were asking the company to invest in–because your job depends on your instincts being right.
Well, I suppose I’m all for advocacy, but is there really no room for critical assessment? Are they really asking for nothing but post after post of yes-man promotional content? If reviews were conversation enders, would folks like me link them–like I did recently (if, in that case, only to mock)?
Perhaps I should declare a bias here–one of those things publishing industry blogs probably need to do–insofar as my own first published works of any kind were book reviews. Since they weren’t great, I’ll throw in a free argument for these folks: bad reviews are beyond useless. They’re uninformative, misdirecting, and generally unhelpful. But then, so is bad anything in print.
I suppose their argument is at least consistent. The official HuffPost line on this sort of thing is that if something’s amiss in mainstream journalism, more blogging will cure it. If that creates problems of its own, well, clearly we need more of the same. I’m reminded of one-note economic policy types who, when things are good, want to avoid (say) inflation at all costs. When things go sour, what do they worry about first?
Of course, there’s room for this sort of thing. God wouldn’t have made press releases otherwise. But you’ll note who’s supposed to read those. And what they do for a living. And speaking of those press releases, what exactly do you expect publishers’ and editors’ and even authors’ blogs to look like? Thoughtful land critical assessments of their own work? Reasoned advice on what books to buy and not?
In any event, if there’s something wrong with a sustained critical assessment of books, why are books themselves that much better? Books are (non-fiction, at any rate, and often fiction as well) sustained presentations of a viewpoint or critical stance. Why would the Post want to involve itself with these things if that sort of long–or even short–form one-view writing is a bad thing?
PS: And while I’m at it, cutting and pasting from Huffington Post automatically adds a plain-text link to your clipboard. This is annoying, trite, and slowes me down (like I wasn’t going to link to it anyway). They really ought to rethink this.
