Gail Gauthier had an interesting post on friday about why blog reviewing matters. Her point was that bloggers are not stuck reviewing only brand new titles and can review books months after publication. Here's a bit:

At the beginning of December, Anthony McGowan said that his book Hellbent "has sunk without a trace in the US." It had been published here only three months earlier. A book's season can be cruelly short.

Blog reviews aren't going to make any difference as far as finding a book review space in the big journals or getting them an award is concerned. They can, though, find them readers, which is at least as important if not more so. Blog reviews put titles and names out there. Blog reviews create name recognition. Blog reviews bring books to the attention of readers who had never heard of them, but they also remind readers of books they'd been meaning to read but had forgotten about.

I've written about this sort of thing here before (scroll down to the part about author John Green) and really I have little hope of getting books reviewed at Bookslut or Eclectica anywhere near the pub date. In both places I write themed group reviews so while there might be one book that is close to pub date, most of the others are not. I was actually just starting to worry about this yet again when I read Gail's piece and it took some of the worry off. As it happens, I'm working on my April column right now (February is off to Jessa, March is nonfiction and I have only one more book to add there and April is fantasy), and I was planning to add a review of the fantasy anthology Salon Fantastique. This was released for adults last fall, but I think it's great for teens as well. Then I got Neil Gaiman's new YA anthology, M is for Magic and I was thinking that would work well in the fantasy column also. (This is one I requested.) Then out of the blue Penguin sent me Fair Folk - I haven't read any of it yet, but when you look at the lineup (Patrician McKillip, Jane Yolen, Midori Snyder, Megan Lindstrom, Tanith Lee, Kim Newman and Craig Gardner Shaw), well, you know the odds are good that it's going to rock.

But I don't have room for three anthologies in this column - not if I want to give them more than a paragraph each for a review. (The column includes Unshapely Things, (which was another surprise arrival - more on that later), Spirits That Walk in Shadow (out since last October!), Tantalize and Tripping to Somewhere (out since last September!) already, with two more books requested.) And then I read over at Small Beer that Interfictions is off to the printer and ARCs will be going out soon. Gavin wanted to send me an ARC of this one, so I know it will be on the way and that is now FOUR fantasy anthologies.

No way these titles are going to fit in the April column.

So, since May is all about "boys coming of age" and June is my "super duper girls hit the beach with these books" column, that means the anthologies are pushed back to July. (Pushing romance to August, family drama to September and on and on.) Lest you think I'm forgetting Eclectica, well the April issue is a picture book round-up (I do this twice a year) and Adventure books (like The New Policeman and The Flight of the Silver Turtle) and July is "ripping good mysteries" and a whole piece on stories that take place in mysterious houses (would you believe I have four books for this piece already and one more on the way?). I might push the mysterious houses piece back to October though - just cause it seems to belong in October - and the put sports books in July (one football, one hockey, one baseball so far...more to come.)

Anyway, yeah - themes don't lend themselves to catching books the minute they come out. There isn't much I can do about it - this is the system both editors have asked that I work in and I like it anyway, but I do worry when I see everyone else mentioning a certain book that I know I'm not going to get around to for months. (An Abundance of Katherines was an example of this.) The thing is though that I am an avid reader, always have been, and I rarely read a book the minute it comes out. There are some authors I really want to get in hardcover because I know I will reread them for years (Neil Gaiman is an example of this), but most of the time I'm happy to wait until birthday or Christmas and I am always looking for books that are a few years old.

I just finished reading Gerald Durrell's A Zoo in My Luggage and that came out originally in 1960 so clearly new and shiny is not what I'm most attracted to.

So I'm taking Gail's post to heart and I'm not going to worry about this anymore. And as a plus, if I add an anthology column to the summer than I could put in Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys which features essays from Cecil Castellucci, Bennett Madison and David Levithan. It's not a YA book (nor is it fantasy), but I'm hoping it will work for teen audiences because heaven knows they could use it. And I think it would be fine with the fantasy anthologies - think of how many different authors young readers could be exposed to in this kind of column! (I get way too excited about this kind of planning.)

It's all about trying to give readers great book ideas they might not have heard of elsewhere. And I'm thinking now, for sure, that just because the book is a few months old doesn't matter so much anymore....at least not on the internet where book reviews can live forever.