Push the Key

This last month, December, I noted the appearance of a “Most Recommended” list from the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC).

The idea was to replace lists of bestsellers with recommendations for reading compiled by people whose job it was to review books. It sounded good, but the end result was, I think, a very ho-hum list of five fiction and five nonfiction books that appeared on any number of lists derived from sales. Later that month, however, Publishers Weekly reported that the NBCC released the results of an internal survey of its membership that was much more interesting than their recommendations.

NBCC polled its 800 members on “The Ethics of Book Reviewing,” and 364 of them responded. The survey contained thirty-three questions, and space for comments. Being critics, some nineteen hundred and thirty-eight comments were logged in. The most interesting findings include the following:

• 64% of respondents thought that critics who provide unpaid blurbs for a book should not be permitted to write a full review
• 68% thought that anyone mentioned in a book’s acknowledgements should not review it
• 76% felt that critics who don’t read a book in its entirety should recuse themselves from reviewing it
• 52% of respondents don’t think book review editors should favor books written by regular reviewers
• 60% think that there’s nothing wrong with the policy of many newspapers to ignore self-published books
• 34% of respondents thought that it was unethical to back out of a review to avoid publicly trashing a book they hated (down from 75% in 1987)

The good news is that the survey results suggest that critics are an ethical bunch. If you’re a self-publisher trying to get some mainstream attention, however, you’ve still got your work cut out for you. The survey was administered by Carlin Romano, critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer.