Publishers Weekly - Book Reviews

Book Reviews

The book review section, not added until the early 1940s, grew in importance over the past half-century, and it currently offers opinions on 7,000 new books each year. Since reviews are scheduled to appear one month or two months prior to the publication date of a book, books already in print are seldom reviewed. These anonymous reviews are short, often no more than 220 words, and the review section can be as long as 40 pages, filling the second half of the magazine. In the past, a book review editorial staff of eight editors assigned books to more than 100 freelance reviewers. Some are published authors, and others are experts in specific genres or subjects. Although it might take a week or more to read and analyze some books, reviewers were paid $45 per review until June 2008 when the magazine introduced a reduction in payment to $25 a review. In a further policy change that month, reviewers received credit as contributors in issues carrying their reviews.

Now titled "Reviews," the review section was once called "Forecasts." For several years, that title was taken literally when a review was followed with italicized sentences that attempted to predict a book's success. The "Forecasts" editor for many years was Genevieve Stuttaford, who greatly expanded the number of reviews. She joined the PW staff in 1975, after a period as a Saturday Review associate editor, reviewing for Kirkus Reviews and spending 12 years on the San Francisco Chronicle staff. During the 23 years Stuttaford was with Publishers Weekly, book reviewing was increased from an average of 3800 titles a year in the 1970s to well over 6500 titles in 1997. She retired in 1998. Former "Forecasts" editor Sybil Steinberg, who began reviewing for Publishers Weekly in 1976, later edited Writers and Their Craft: Interviews from Publishers Weekly (2003) and other books about writing.

Some PW critics are actually well-known writers. Katharine Weber was an anonymous PW reviewer before she became an acclaimed novelist. Texas novelist Clay Reynolds, in The Texas Institute of Letters Newsletter (February, 2004), gave a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the policies of PW and other review publications:

You were right on the money with regard to the impact reviews in Publishers Weekly (PW), Library Journal (LJ), Kirkus Review (KR) and the New York Times Book Review (NYTBR) have on publishers and sales; what you may not know is that I also write or have written for all of them. I’m approaching 700 reviews, by the way. I no longer write for KR and LJ, as their policies forbid anyone from writing for PW or one of the others (except the NYTBR), and the work they offered was steadier and more reliable. I’ve now done 87 reviews for PW (given three stars in all that time). For years, Sybil Steinberg was the Forecasts Fiction Editor there, but she retired about two years ago, and the position was taken over by Deena Croog . Sybil ran a tight ship and taut operation. Deena, who sounds as if she’s about 13, is a little less well organized, but she’s a tougher nut to crack in some ways. What’s interesting about the PW reviews, though, is that copy is sometimes altered before printing. On a few occasions, I’ve had opinions utterly reversed from what I wrote. I’ve questioned this, but I’ve never received satisfactory answers. I keep doing it because it’s good work and satisfies the university administration. I’m thinking of “retiring,” though, when I hit number 100.

In 1967, F. G. Melcher's son, David Melcher, explained what happened to the thousands of review copies sent to PW:

Needless to say, our house was always full of books, some of which became mine, but some of which were birds of passage which I had to read rapidly before they were taken back to the office. People often ask what happens to all the review copies received at the office of the Publishers' Weekly. They are worked rather hard actually, as I early became aware. Until they have served their intended purpose of being listed, forecast, reviewed, and commented upon, they stay on the working shelves and are taken out, if at all, only overnight or over the weekend. Later they become available for staff borrowing. Finally, they are divided up among the staff.

Before the use of e-mail, reviewers were given paper lined for a character count. They then made two carbon copies, kept one copy and mailed in the other copy along with the original typed on the lined paper. For years, freelance reviewers were instructed to return bound galleys after the review was written, but beginning in 2005, reviewers were allowed to keep those advance reading copies.

Some reviews now are published only online as "web exclusives". PW's long standing policy of not reviewing self-published or vanity press books changed in 2010 with the introduction of PW Select, a quarterly supplement requiring self-published authors to pay for a listing and the possibility of being selected for a review, as they outlined:

If you are a self-published author with a finished book that carries an ISBN, you can register to have your book listed in a seasonal supplement that will be bound into issues of Publishers Weekly. Overprints will be available for purchase and bonus distribution. Additionally, a digital edition and online database will be made available. The registration fee of $149 entitles you to a listing of your book—title, author, illustrator (where applicable), pagination, price, format, ISBN, and a description of the book's contents—all of which will appear in the supplement and online database. Authors should also include the online location at which to place orders for their book. All registered listings that meet the above criteria will be listed (though we reserve the right to decline an author's registration and return the fee if we if we deem the book inappropriate to our broad readership).