Book Reviews
What exactly is a book review? Who writes them? Why do they write them?
I guess there are professional book reviewers who make a business out of reading books and then creating a review that they then sell to companies that want to market books. Alternately there are people who already work for companies that sell books whose job is to read and review. Of course there are also people who work for magazines and news media of one sort or another and their job also is to read and review.
There may well be amateur book reviewers who publish their news, views and reviews on their web pages or perhaps their blogs however these do not come to attention as easily as those whose missives fill the pages of our printed media or blare from our radios and TV screens.
Is it worth reading these reviews?
This is an interesting question. We already KNOW that generally, people who write reviews, are either going to sell their product to someone or are being commissioned by someone to write them in the first place. The cynic within me would suggest, that those working directly for a book publisher, are less likely to write an unfavourable review of a book that is being published by their firm, since they have been retained to put the best possible spin on the product that their employer has given them to review. People working for large media organisations would seem to be less affected by the views of their employers – after all newspapers, radio and television stations want to sell their advertising and so the more popular their product the greater the chance of it selling.
Unfortunately this view does not take into account the cross media ownership issues that abound in our society. Is it more or less likely, for example, that a reviewer will be favourably disposed towards a product, if the company for which this person works also owns the company that is publishing the book being reviewed?
The jacket on the cover of the book usually contains a lot of information about the contents of the book as well as the author. Is it better to read this than the official review?
More to the point, is it more worthwhile to find and read blogs that provide a view about the book that is (hopefully) less likely to be influenced by where one works. On the other hand there are so many people blogging these days who make their living from advertisements on their pages that even their views are likely to be subject to being influenced.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment