Review Space

John Freeman over at Critical Mass makes a good point about shrinking review space.

At 700 words, if that, most reviews have room for a paragraph, maybe two, for putting a book in its proper context. And here is why the shrinking of book pages is so damaging to cultural memory. When book pages get smaller -- and word counts are reduced -- each book is reviewed as if it were a stand alone event in an author's history.

However, I can't agree with Freeman when he says this:

In the end, to be fair to critics, when you have 600 words and a whopping $150 paycheck at the end of the day, there is a limit to how much background reading you can do. So here's the question: how much preparation do you do before you sit down to read the book at hand?

So just because you don't have enough space to properly introduce a book under review you should curtail your background reading? No way. It's still important to be aware of for when you're reading the book. And context-type points can be valuable inthe body of a review as well as in the introduction.

And about that $150 paycheck: who cares? How much you're going to get paid for a review shouldn't come into consideration at all. Money for reviews is nice, but its far from the reason I do it.

Comments

[Brendan Wolfe]

It's not why I do it, either. But that doesn't mean that money isn't a consideration when I freelance. LIfe is short. I'd rather pour my time & effort into a project that pays well, and publications should understand that the more they pay, the better writers and writing they can expect. If freelancers don't adopt this attitude (at least to some extent), they will always be writing for nothing.