JLG sees books–manuscripts–probably six months to a year before we do. Whatever they choose goes automatically to their subscribers–if you subscribe, for example, to JLG’s YA novel plan, you’ll get a YA novel chosen by JLG every month. Reviews from HB and elsewhere have no effect on this process. The possibility of collusion only comes in after the fact, where the Horn Book could give starred reviews to JLG selections, thus making them look good in some generalized kind of way. Media Source has assured me they have no interest in Horn Book doing this, I imagine because a), it would undermine our value with our subscribers and b) because it would be so transparent as to be worthless.

But the perception a few people have seems to be that a good Horn Book review could make people buy a given book from JLG when in fact this is simply not possible. JLG customers are not buying books–they are buying a service that pre-selects books for them.

Hope there are no big changes. We love the Hornbook and the blog as it is!