1. As I told Cavendish’s top dog, Margery Cuyler on the phone, I have been around almost fifty years in the publishing business and if I have learned one thing, it is to wait till the second (and sometimes the third!) shoe drops before deciding something is good or bad or makes no matter. Whether Amazon really is $9.99 upside down is a personal position and though I occasionally I have ordered something from them, I buy big at local Indies.

2. If you look at some bloggers (not the good ones, not the well-read, well-thought out blogs like Seven Impossible Things and Miss Rumphius Effect and the like) they serve up mini-blurbs. Sometimes, as is pointed out above, the reviews are little more than a slightly rewritten blurb from what the publishing company sent, or a gloss on the flap copy. Some reviewers review so many books in a week/month, that I have to wonder how (or even if) they have read all the books, and wonder, too, if they have given much thought to any of them. I get a lot of reviews of my books sent to me, and most of them, alas, are blogs of the “pictures-compliment (or complement, depending upon the literacy of the reviewer) the text variety. Or they merely ramble on about how much their children liked or didn’t like a particular book. Or they say, “A real treat.” A real review–or at least the ones I pay attention to–try to understand the book at hand, not the one they wish the author had written. The real review speaks not only about the story, characterization, plot, but also tries to place the book within the context of the greater body of literature. Hard to do in six or seven sentences? Well, yes. Of course it is.That is why there are so few really good reviewers out there. It takes not only a good reviewer, but good review medium to hold the reviewers tootsies to the fire.

3. (Oh, didn’t I mention there was a three?) this is a very small publishing world, but when I was reviewing, either one did NOT review a lover/spouse/partner’s/cousin’s/best friend or hated enemy’s book or -if doing so– declared it openly.It often seems that many reviewers on various internet sites (Amazon included) are clearly friends, relatives, neighbors, or love partners (or a combination thereof) dragooned into the reviewing service of the author. (Akin to my children and various friends going into B&N and turning my books cover out!) And sometimes it is even the author himself/herself in disguise.

Jane

Up to now, I would guess Marshall Cavendish has depended on reviews and institutional sales for much of its success. For that reason, it seems such an odd match for Amazon. I do hope it will bring the company’s books to more eyes, not fewer, and like Jen, I am anxiously awaiting answers from my friends at Marshall Cavendish.

For a book reviewer, the issues are very much linked. They are both about the place of independent criticism in a cultural economy that wants to exist without it. Publishers trying to make bloggers part of the marketing department; Amazon trying to create a closed system of book production and consumption; hell, let’s throw in embargoed books–these to me are all symptoms of the same thing.

I’m not sure why the story about MC/AMZ does not rate its own blog post, rather than being linked in with the Morrow debacle – the two seem to have nothing to do with one another. But perhaps I am missing something?