Aren't most book reviews effectively marketing for the book?
Are the book publishers not willing to fund the AP reviews, or the AP doesn't want to be in that business?
Also, I have read some NY book reviews that seem to double as marketing for the guest reviewer's own book or brand. If we go full MBA on this, all these parties could be paying to play. Is some journalistic ethics wall between business and editorial leaving money on the table?
smelendez · 59m ago
It's surprising to me that AP customer newspapers don't want book reviews to pad out their Sunday papers. Bookstores are opening more than closing in the US, and people love library apps like Libby, so you'd think they'd want reviews too. But I guess it's possible people are getting as many book recommendations as they can use from social media and TikTok and aren't interested in more detailed reviews.
It doesn't surprise me that people aren't seeking out book reviews on the AP website or app—I don't think AP is particularly associated with reviews, maybe deliberately because they've historically been read in local papers that don't emphasize the AP sourcing, so people wanting reviews from a national source probably go to NYT, WaPo, WSJ, the New Yorker, etc. first.
nattaylor · 52m ago
My read is that no customers will leave since they are much more interested in news coverage -- and this helps the AP focus more on news.
This is a tangent, but I wonder if they feel that they are just creating LLM training data and that few readers (even of Sunday papers) will actually read their reviews.
trenchpilgrim · 37m ago
My top two sources for finding new books are NPR's annual book list (which is structured around discovery) and friends' recommendations. Especially going to a bookstore with a few friends, browsing, and physically pointing out books to each other. "Hey, have you read this series I liked?" kinda stuff
xhkkffbf · 24m ago
The book market is yuge and filled with many niches. There used to be more broad market offerings but the market isn't as interested lately. So it's really impossible to cover without writing 100+ reviews a week. And the AP (and their customers) can't afford that many.
There's soooo much fragmentation.
scoofy · 57m ago
I honestly don't know how to feel about changes like this, but I feel like they are important. Whether they are good or bad? I'm not sure.
In a sense, information is massively cheap now. You could get dozens of reviews on goodreads or any other site for a book. No, those reviews are likely not vetted, or written by credentialed individuals, but they are a solid heuristic. The decline of the professional art critic is lamentable, but it also doesn't really seem like it should be a job in the first place.
I write a blog about golf, and I've examined the aesthetic underpinnings of golf course design pretty seriously: theory of reviews, axioms of frameworks and their affects on reviews, and the epistemological concerns we should have with what reviewers actually say. In the end, I think the "named critic's opinion" is far and away the best way to do aesthetic reviews, as long as there are a significant number of named critics. I think this is applicable to every art form.
Social media has made this possible, but very few websites have actually make the matching of causal critic to a larger audience. For critical reviews to be useful, connecting large swaths of people to the nerds with correlating opinions in that art form would be a huge value add... while it's definitely doable with machine learning, nobody seems to want to recommend critics, they only recommend content. It's a bummer.
If the decline of professional "named critics who are nerds in their favorite genres" continues, if there is no rise of casual named critics, I do think we lose something real from a functional perspective in these areas. I only hope someone can create a platform that efficiently connects interested parties in finding a casual critic who shares their aesthetic tastes.
-----
My writing on aesthetic theory of reviews (about golf course architecture):
* I'll be publishing my essay on epistemological concerns this week.
mlsu · 15m ago
As far as book reviews, professional is professional. I have never, ever read anything on Goodreads that compares at all to something in the London Review of Books for example. They just aren't even in the same category. People who read and review books for a living simply are better at it. They have more context than casuals, they are better writers, they have the education to fully understand a work and place it in context etc. Professionals.
As insular and snobbish as publishing may be, publishers developed taste over hundreds of years. Goodreads, by contrast, is is social media.
physicsguy · 51s ago
I like LRB a lot but it's usually less book review and more 'commentary of the whole field, written by someone who knows it well, and then a paragraph or two in three pages about the contents of this new book on the topic'
scoofy · 4m ago
There isn’t really enough here that illustrates your aesthetic theory to allow me to respond well.
If you are suggesting that some critics have “better opinions” then I’d basically reject that conception outright. Here I would reference Howard Moscowitz’s theory and practical engineering of tastes to suit different audiences.
If you’re suggesting a trained reviewer can better connect and convey the artist benefit of a work to those who would appreciate those aspects, then I completely agree, but it’s just that we are talking about one specific audience being served that is not easily served, not audiences in general.
If you’re talking about the pleasantness and prose of the written reviews themselves, we end up in a meta-discussion of the aesthetics of review writing.
charcircuit · 34m ago
Why does there have to be a critic? What's wrong with a recommendation feed of content you may like?
scoofy · 27m ago
I mean the theory behind it is that they are effectively the same thing, it's just that the critic will have more explanatory power. The whole point is that you don't know what you don't know.
Most of this is based in movie reviews, since that is where I think critical reviews shine the most. Even if there is an algo that has perfect, zero variance with the consumer, there is still a genre/style/mood distinction that you will change from night to night. The algo is effectively a black box in terms of these extremely subtle mood variations, but a critic with zero opinion variance will -- ideally -- have a blurb about why the film is good, which should correspond to the ideal viewing setting and mood that the film ought to be consumed in.
warkdarrior · 28m ago
> The decline of the professional art critic is lamentable, but it also doesn't really seem like it should be a job in the first place.
What makes the professional role of "art critic" special that it should not be a job? Compare it with other professional roles: lawyer, software engineer, accountant, architect. They all involve understanding historical context and producing a professional opinion.
scoofy · 24m ago
Essentially, the argument is that the critic merely serves as an effectively plain data series of opinion, for which consumers try to find one with low variance with their opinion, but that ultimately there's no accounting for taste.
When aesthetic theories try to argue that there is a "correct opinion," one that would justify a kind of professionalism and training, then there are myriad philosophical problems that fall out the other side. This is effectively the basis for Howard Moskowitz's success in data-first food/flavor design.
It's certainly true that critic education can help map those opinions onto audience opinions (getting references, understanding the historical background, etc), but those frames aren't necessary for enjoyment if the audience following your critiques doesn't also have that information. Many will, which will increase the correlation of opinion.
mvdtnz · 24m ago
Book critic does not belong with architect and accountant, jfc. Come on. Get real.
Are the book publishers not willing to fund the AP reviews, or the AP doesn't want to be in that business?
Also, I have read some NY book reviews that seem to double as marketing for the guest reviewer's own book or brand. If we go full MBA on this, all these parties could be paying to play. Is some journalistic ethics wall between business and editorial leaving money on the table?
It doesn't surprise me that people aren't seeking out book reviews on the AP website or app—I don't think AP is particularly associated with reviews, maybe deliberately because they've historically been read in local papers that don't emphasize the AP sourcing, so people wanting reviews from a national source probably go to NYT, WaPo, WSJ, the New Yorker, etc. first.
This is a tangent, but I wonder if they feel that they are just creating LLM training data and that few readers (even of Sunday papers) will actually read their reviews.
There's soooo much fragmentation.
In a sense, information is massively cheap now. You could get dozens of reviews on goodreads or any other site for a book. No, those reviews are likely not vetted, or written by credentialed individuals, but they are a solid heuristic. The decline of the professional art critic is lamentable, but it also doesn't really seem like it should be a job in the first place.
I write a blog about golf, and I've examined the aesthetic underpinnings of golf course design pretty seriously: theory of reviews, axioms of frameworks and their affects on reviews, and the epistemological concerns we should have with what reviewers actually say. In the end, I think the "named critic's opinion" is far and away the best way to do aesthetic reviews, as long as there are a significant number of named critics. I think this is applicable to every art form.
Social media has made this possible, but very few websites have actually make the matching of causal critic to a larger audience. For critical reviews to be useful, connecting large swaths of people to the nerds with correlating opinions in that art form would be a huge value add... while it's definitely doable with machine learning, nobody seems to want to recommend critics, they only recommend content. It's a bummer.
If the decline of professional "named critics who are nerds in their favorite genres" continues, if there is no rise of casual named critics, I do think we lose something real from a functional perspective in these areas. I only hope someone can create a platform that efficiently connects interested parties in finding a casual critic who shares their aesthetic tastes.
-----
My writing on aesthetic theory of reviews (about golf course architecture):
* A look at a functional perspective of aesthetic reviews, Howard Moskowitz, and collaborative filtering: https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/golf-course-rankings-a...
* A look at review framework axioms: https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/from-doak-to-digest-go...
* I'll be publishing my essay on epistemological concerns this week.
As insular and snobbish as publishing may be, publishers developed taste over hundreds of years. Goodreads, by contrast, is is social media.
If you are suggesting that some critics have “better opinions” then I’d basically reject that conception outright. Here I would reference Howard Moscowitz’s theory and practical engineering of tastes to suit different audiences.
If you’re suggesting a trained reviewer can better connect and convey the artist benefit of a work to those who would appreciate those aspects, then I completely agree, but it’s just that we are talking about one specific audience being served that is not easily served, not audiences in general.
If you’re talking about the pleasantness and prose of the written reviews themselves, we end up in a meta-discussion of the aesthetics of review writing.
Most of this is based in movie reviews, since that is where I think critical reviews shine the most. Even if there is an algo that has perfect, zero variance with the consumer, there is still a genre/style/mood distinction that you will change from night to night. The algo is effectively a black box in terms of these extremely subtle mood variations, but a critic with zero opinion variance will -- ideally -- have a blurb about why the film is good, which should correspond to the ideal viewing setting and mood that the film ought to be consumed in.
What makes the professional role of "art critic" special that it should not be a job? Compare it with other professional roles: lawyer, software engineer, accountant, architect. They all involve understanding historical context and producing a professional opinion.
When aesthetic theories try to argue that there is a "correct opinion," one that would justify a kind of professionalism and training, then there are myriad philosophical problems that fall out the other side. This is effectively the basis for Howard Moskowitz's success in data-first food/flavor design.
It's certainly true that critic education can help map those opinions onto audience opinions (getting references, understanding the historical background, etc), but those frames aren't necessary for enjoyment if the audience following your critiques doesn't also have that information. Many will, which will increase the correlation of opinion.