I have no problems with limiting access, it's the terminology that grates
Larry Send a noteboard - 02/12/2011 05:03:31 AM
William Morrow recently sent a letter to reviewers that someone scanned and posted on Google Docs that said, among other things, the following:
Under the new system, you will no longer receive titles piece-meal. Instead, you'll receive 1-3 emails during the month with all of our upcoming titles available for your review, one month ahead of the on-sale date. You'll be directed to a Google form where you can request up to three of your choices. Of course, we'll still happily pay the shipping. Your job is simply to review the book within a month of receiving it and post your thoughts on your blog or site. Ideally, we'd like for reviews to appear online within two weeks to a month after the on-sale date, so you might keep this in mind when selecting books.
When you've reviewed a book you've chosen and sent us an email with a link to the posted review, you will be eligible for a free giveaway copy. Just let us know in the email that you'd like to host a giveaway. We'll pay for the shipping to the winner within the US and Canada.
Additionally, you'll no longer receive books that you didn't order. No more random books showing up on your doorstep! You'll only receive the titles that you want.
If it isn't already clear, WE LOVE THAT YOU LOVE OUR BOOKS! And to allow us to continue to offer free copies and free shipping to you committed book reviewers, we will be tracking how many reviews we receive from you. If we notice that you request books but aren't posting your comments or sending us the link, we may suspend your ability to receive review offers from us. We know you're busy bloggers – if you don't think you'll be able to post a review within a month, please pass on that offer so we can continue to offer you free books in the future!
Anyone else notice the reduction of what should be an independent, co-equal relationship between critic and publisher to a quasi-job relationship between employee and employer? Such nonsense convinces me further that I made the right decision to step away from soliciting review copies last year, as I couldn't stomach the thought of begg...err, asking for review copies with such conditions attached.
Thoughts?
I don't know Larry. I think it's a fairly logical decision. Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later and bloggers who do intend to do what they claim to publishers they're doing should welcome such measures, as it will in the end ensure the practice of getting arcs when you're a blogger who do review books from the publishers you request ARC from will continue and spread.
The problem I have is not with the restriction of review materials (as I said on the blog, I don't solicit anymore and I still receive a half-dozen or more books each month), but rather the way it is cast that the blogger is working for the publisher.
The traditional way worked quite well back in the day when publishers could budget this easily by determining if for book X they wanted to reach the national media, or down to the local level etc. They kept up to date mailing lists of all the press, literary magazines etc. and for each release they could get a pretty accurate picture of where they stood (e.g.: we almost never get reviewed in the local media in that area, and the sales stats for the national newspapers are like this or that. Advertising agencies rely massively on stuff like this to advise its clients about media placement and targeted campaigns).
I can agree with this, as I too have thought it's rather wasteful to keep sending me books that I don't want and have stated that I am going to be very selective as to when I review and what I review.
The explosion of book review blogs is spectacular (and of all kinds). That's certainly an opportunity for publishers - and advertising/marketing agencies are extremely aware of the phenomenon and are studying all this closely (and I don't mean only or primarly for books), but there's very definitely a cost attached. I know of at least one Canadian publisher (that I'm not allowed to name as I freelance for its ad agency - but it's not one that publishes in English) who got the research dept of the agency last year make an extensive research just about that, four years after they've accepted to give free copies to non-professional reviewers. They thought they were on the vanguard (locally) with this and it was worth it, but they wanted to know exactly, not done on the fly in house with google, how many reviews they got from bloggers, students and so on, how many people read each of those reviews. It turned out most (by far) of the ARCs sent to non-professional were pure losses. They had increases the number of ARCs they sent massively, and got very little results for it. Many of those reviews were very unprofessional or terribly superficial or too badly written, many of these people didn't even have a blog anymore, or had stopped reviewing the books after the first one or two they got ARCs for from this publisher, or their pages barely got any hit. It's a small publisher, by US standards definitely it's minuscule, and the cost of those ARCs, shipping and so on was pretty high for them (not to mention stuff like the ecological costs, for the paper, transportation and so on). The study showed it would be a much better investment to put that money back into targeted advertising for their books. They've stopped sending hard copies of the books to non professional media. They've handpicked reviewers they consider "semi-professionals" and keep track of the results. For all the others, they have to register with the publisher (and fill a survey), they get lists of upcoming releases and must choose which they want, and they get ebooks only.
Again, this makes sense. NetGalley, where e-ARCs can be selected, is growing in popularity for the reasons noted.
I'm really not surprised to hear an American publisher seems to have drawn similar conclusions. The vocabulary they chose (speaking of "job" and so on) is bizarre, but it may not have been unintentional. If you read between the lines, they seem to remind the bloggers that to them this is business, and ARCs are a long established tradition with well respected unwritten rules on both sides. They know if the professional media decide to review the book, it will be timely, for one thing. If the bloggers want to be treated like the professional press, than they need to act like professionals do. It seems obvious from this message that William Morrow has concluded they're sending ARCs to tons of people who don't act professionally enough and unlike the press they need clearer and more restrictives ground rules, or they stop being of any use to WM, and if so, why lose money on them? 3 books/month from the same publisher is very generous. Unless you run a WM review site, exactly how many books a month from this publisher the average blogger expects to read and review each month? (and I'm betting the publicists are allowed to bend those rules on a one on one basis).
Yes, but the business end cuts both ways. Although I am not a "major" reviewer in the sense that I receive thousands of hits per review, I am a freelancer who has had reviews published in other venues (including Amazon's Omnivoracious on one occasion and an upcoming one in a quarterly print magazine) and I sometimes get dozens of requests for me to review a particular book/promote an author tour and I have to turn it down (or in some cases, not respond at all, since I don't do business with certain presses). In those cases, it is two independent agencies that do not coerce or are able to coerce the other. That is what troubles me most about this letter, the implied imbalance here.
It's still somewhat manageable for genre publishers and specialized bloggers and sites (relationships are a bit more personal, the people at Tor for example can still relate with all the bloggers/fansites they send ARCs to, and they're big enough to have the staff be able to keep an eye on everything), but I wonder how many thousands "non professionals" worldwide are on the lists to receive the books from a big mainstream publisher like William Morrow, and how much exposure for their books they get in return for this investement. If you multiply their number of releases per year, their total investment for ARCs is probably significantly higher than it used to be, and typically that's money they've diverted from advertising that covers these new costs, not new money.
That is something that perhaps would be better handled by restricting access a priori contacting/negotiating arrangements.
The other aspects is that they've automatically created a database of the bloggers their media tracking personel can use to get all the necessary stats and assess the quality of the reviews they get, which is far more efficient for them, and far less costly. There's no delusion there, they were already trying to keep track of everything, it was just difficult due to the much higher number of blogs than professional media and their far lower reliability/permanence - just like they have long kept track of the professional press. They just made this much more simple and efficient, reducing their costs.
Again, this speaks more of the marketing department and much less of traditional arrangements with critics. It's not that I'm opposed to companies reducing their overhead as much as I am irritated by the approach chosen. I don't work for any publisher and any review copies I receive are going to be gambles because I didn't solicit any of them. Any that I agree to receive when solicited by publicists is a different matter, yes, but even then I try to add a few caveats to it.
Again, the terms they've used were not the wisest choice, but I would interpret more as a message that WM is a business and isn't in the business of giving away free books but selling them (and offering promotions is also a reminder they're a business and if you scratch their back, they'll scratch yours and make your blog more popular by letting you hold contests and such, just like they do with the professional media, those that agree to such practices, like often radio stations do). If you have a blog on which you review 50 books a year at most, none of which have been from William Morrow in a long while, why have you requested ARCs from them anyway, if not to get to read their books for free, or to be the person in your social circle that always have tons of books to give away or loan to family and friends (not to mention the increase of the unethical re selling of ARCS phenomenon)
That's why I don't request copies, as my interests tend to go more toward more niche releases, most of which I purchase anyway. But I have no qualms about taking the street release copies of books I never requested and have no interest in reading to a used bookstore and trading them in for credit to buy books that I do like, because otherwise those books would be rotting in storage that I sorely need for something else.
A professional reviewer is doing a job, and usually follows a professional ethic. He/she can't be expected to review more than a small percentage of the books he gets, that's part of the game, but that's where publicists enter the game if the media tend to neglect their employer too much or treat it "unfairly" to their tastes.
Fair enough and due to my previous public comments and my corresponding lack of reviews from certain publishers, my copies have dropped (thank God) because the flip side of me not wanting to feel like I "work" for them is that I don't care if they feel as though I'm a useless venue to them.
Honestly, as a big buyer of books, I can only support such rationalization from the publishers. In the end, it's the readers who are paying for the bloggers who get books for free. I find book review blogs extremely useful, and when you follow a few more closely, you can often get much more worthy cues from this type of reviewers than from many professionals, a fair amount of which seem to care more that their reviews get read than the books they talk about get read (you know the type). Of course serious bloggers should get promotional copies like the professional press, but consider the exponential number of blogs, always increasing, I don't find it unreasonable or unethical at all that William Morrow is taking such measures to make sure their investment is worth it.
Indeed, and I agree that there are too many people getting into the review gig just to get "free books." I am much happier purchasing 90% of the books that I review these days and I think those reviews are better for me having a vested interest in reading those stories in the first place (since spending a few thousand dollars a year on books is a major commitment).
On the other hand, bloggers need to stay realistic. They're not a one-person NY Times, they're one person reviewing books part time. There's absolutely no reason why they should receive systematically as many books as a professional paper does, with a book section and many reviewers on staff or freelance. Why should a blogger arrange to get hundreds (or more) books from so many publishers at once and all for free when they know perfectly well they can review only a small percentage of them? It's very suspiciously more like a scam to read for free than anything else, if you ask me. A gross abuse of a system that was created with the professional press in mind and that the publishers could control the costs of. I don't think all bloggers are like that, but man being man, I'm willing to bet a very great deal are. I even know some. One of my mom's friends (ex, she grew disgusted with the woman) has had a book review site for nearly fifteen years. And she's totally abusing the system. She's really not above such practices as begging a publisher of costly coffee table books to get review copies then giving them on purpose a few biased over enthusiastic reviews to ensure she'll get all their releases she turns into birthday/christmas gift (true story, it's after receiving from her Eco's history of beauty and getting the explanation it was nothing and how she managed to get those books my mom distanced herself from her. Mom is a bit over sensitive with such things, but she felt like she had gotten a stolen book).
That sort of thing I consider to be unethical, which is part of the reason why I declared in October 2010 that I wouldn't solicit any review copies or accept publicist requests to review one unless I had a working relationship in the past with them. I just won't view it as "my job" to review books that I don't want and if those are the new terms, then in the immortal words of Johnny Paycheck, "they can take this job and shove it."
Illusions fall like the husk of a fruit, one after another, and the fruit is experience. - Narrator, Sylvie
Je suis méchant.
Je suis méchant.
William Morrow sends a letter to reviewers that some might find to be out-of-bounds
- 02/12/2011 02:02:52 AM
1634 Views
Sounds to me like he's tired of sending out free books to freeloaders.
- 02/12/2011 03:09:33 AM
930 Views
There's more to it than that
- 02/12/2011 03:25:39 AM
938 Views
Re: There's more to it than that
- 02/12/2011 05:36:06 AM
815 Views
I think they're doing the responsible thing Larry. New realities call for new practices.
- 02/12/2011 04:31:48 AM
899 Views
Re: I think they're doing the responsible thing Larry. New realities call for new practices.
- 02/12/2011 04:34:24 AM
1035 Views
I have no problems with limiting access, it's the terminology that grates
- 02/12/2011 05:03:31 AM
962 Views
The LA Times is now blogging about this, with a link to the OF Blog
- 03/12/2011 01:48:25 AM
943 Views