The Next NBCC Hot Issue: Litbloggers, Boxers or Briefs?
Written byPosted on June 12, 2006
Filed Under Uncategorized
Since I cannot login to the Critical Mass blog without signing up for a Blogger account, here is my response to Mr. Freeman’s flummery:
Mr. Freeman’s objection here is laughably tautological — a transparent attempt to tarnish a medium that he views, rather strangely, as a competitive threat while clinging to a red herring that, in an age when Target bankrolls an entire issue of The New Yorker (in which Critical Mass contributors Celia McGee and Laura Miller, both curiously silent, have appeared), is more Tinkertoy than tinker’s damn on closer examination.
If we are to quibble with picayune forms of income, one might argue that any freelancer employed to review a book for a newspaper also “gets a cut” for the book that she is reviewing — in large part because book review sections frequently run advertisements for the books being reviewed or have the regrettable interference of editors who decide, whether independently or after meetings with the lucre-minded top brass, what is saleable to their readers. Are not these advertisements, which sustain the publication and pay the salaries of the people who author the review, as “unethical” as the meager pennies that flow from the Amazon links? Is not the New York Times‘ recent failure to include a full-length Gilbert Sorrentino obituary “unethical” because the publication will not recognize subjects that certain Sunday morning upper-class basket weavers and golf players (they being the ones who hand over the cash) find comforting and nonconfrontational?
The rule here seems to apply only to the upstarts rather than these hoary hotheads, who lap up scraps like birdbrained predators incapable of observing the dying ecology around them.
Other than the notion here that litbloggers are cutting out the middlemen, I really don’t see what the difference is here. There may not be a traditional separation between sales and editorial. But this doesn’t mean that, with a great deal of alacrity, an enterprising litblogger might find a way to make a new model work while maintaining a certain autonomy which ensures ethical journalism. (I actually agree somewhat with Mr. Freeman about Amazon links embedded within content, but I also note Mr. Orthofer’s remarks on Amazon as an information source.)
Further, the term “buzz marketing” implies that litbloggers are employed to write uncritical and raving puff pieces about books. But this simply isn’t the case at all. Unless Mr. Freeman can point to a specific example of a litblogger taking money from a publisher and writing sullied euphoria along these lines, his assertion here is groundless. But I suspect that a man who mistakes mirth for marketing is a man who has supped too much on gruel.
[UPDATE: More from Bud Parr, Ron Hogan, Sarah Weinman and Scott McKenzie. And, of course, don't miss Scott and Max's salvos in the original thread.]
Comments
2 Responses to “The Next NBCC Hot Issue: Litbloggers, Boxers or Briefs?”
Leave a Reply
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
Yep.
I’d like to add that if you read a particular blogger for any length of time, youshould have a pretty good idea if he’s hucking crappy books or if he’s authentic. I’d wager that if the former, that blogger is likely to have a very small audience, authenticity being pretty important in this medium. In other words–the more you sell, the smaller your audience, the less chance you’ll see any income off that selling.
Also, I think Freeman and Skoot need to get a better grip on the facts. Freeman’s post makes it sound like this whole Amazon affiliates program is some big secret (obviously not true). And in the comments thread, Skoot makes is clear that she believed bloggers earned money for every click-through–wrong again.
I don’t mind a discussion of this entire thing, and from that perspective I thank CM for bringing it up. But I think any sane discussion of this has to acknowledge the fact that there’s plenty of things to influence a traditional print book reviewer, something CM seems unable to admit.
What the hell–what’s with that blog???
When he said ST “will never profit from a review his section runs,” I right away thought the same thing you said (I bolded the most important bit): “Are not these advertisements, which sustain the publication and pay the salaries of the people who author the review…”
Unless every single bit of income to a publication/business and exactly where that income has gone has all been specifically accounted for, it has all effectively gone into a “pool” of money that probably got spread over all–or at least some of–the employees, either directly or indirectly or both; even the installation of a new water cooler partially paid for from ad revenue could be a sort of “profit” to an employee using the cooler. At least from where I’m sitting all that stuff seems true in general. Maybe a specific publication’s accountants can explain otherwise.
But if people aren’t those specific accountants, how can they know for sure who’s getting paid what for what? I don’t think absolute-sounding assumptions should be made there.