One of the things to come out of Roger Sutton's recent post on bloggers who review books over at Read Roger was a lot of other posts that all discussed the same subject. In the comments at Roger's site and others I saw some of the same things asked about and mentioned over and over. People are curious about why bloggers review, where they get their books from, how they resist being favorably prejudiced about authors they know via blogging, why author interviews are conducted (apparently in any format) and just what is the difference between professional and amatuer reviewers. I was going to ignore it all but then I got to thinking that if people cared enough to ask this stuff all over the place then clearly there was a lot of confusion or concern out there. These are not questions I have ever thought to ask really, but I'm game to consider them now. First up is one that has in fact bothered me every time it appears (whether in relation to kid lit or adult lit):
Just who is a professional book reviewer?
Before you jump to the obvious, understand that I'm not seeking to compare the editor of the London Review of Books to a kid with a My Space page. I get that there is a difference in the extreme. But I'm wondering about the enormous grey area in the middle where most reviewing takes place. Roger mentions the term professional in his blog more than once in relation to The Horn Book and I've seen it in many others as well - almost always by print reviewers. But no one ever says what it takes to be a professional book reviewer. It's not obvious - like getting a medical degree and completing residency or passing a state bar exam. There's no single clear cut path. So here are my questions on this subject and maybe you can all help me figure this out. (I also asked Roger about it at his blog and hope he gives some insight as well.)
Professional reviewers are not required to have a specific academic degree - or any specific graduate degree. Many bloggers have degrees in literature, creative writing, library sciences, etc. It seems that on a purely academic basis, there can be no distinction between the print professionals and the bloggers.
There is no required residency or internship to be a professional reviewer. Everyone seems to get there (wherever "there" really is) through a network of jobs reviewing from the ground up. I was hired by Booklist after being noticed at Bookslut and Booklist is one of the gold standard periodicals when it comes to reviewing. Many reviewers start out as freelancers, which means they don't make a living at reviewing - they do it on the side. Are they considered professional the day their reviews appear but amateur the next day when they blog about a book? How many times a week do you need to freelance to be professional and on what level do you need to be read? Local paper - regional - national? And do your years of reviewing online count?
If you look at the idea of making a living from reviewing in order to be professional that brings the pool down to a very small group. (And shrinking all the time in the wake of what's happening in Atlanta.) And it also doesn't seem correct to me. As I said above, newspapers run reviews from freelancers all the time (and always have) and they are not making a living at reviewing but clearly their editors consider them professional enough to review for them. (Gwenda, Ed and Jenny D. to name just a few bloggers who do this.) At what point do you make enough money to be deemed a professional? (If in fact that's the criteria.) And what about Kirkus and Booklist that have a lot of presige in the publishing world but pay a very tiny amount to their reviewers . Are you still an amateur unless you attain editorial status at such publications?
You can also consider the literary journals. They have a lot of very well thought out, complex and critical book reviews but they also sell to very small numbers. Are you a professional reviewer if you are printed in the Missouri Review because it is affiliated with a college, even though it is not that widely read? And yet are you an amateur if you review for Strange Horizons that is very popular but online and not academically associated? And when you throw in some place like Strange Horizons then you get into a genre discussion. Is a fulltime reviewer with little science fiction background who writes for the NYTBR more professional and thus more qualified on the subject than Niall Harrison at Strange Horizons?
Do you see how complicated this all gets?
And then there is the whole issue of writers who freelance as reviewers. Just yesterday I linked to a Jenny Diski review in the Guardian. Now Jenny is a writer, first and foremost - but she does contribute reviews fairly often. Does this make her a professional reviewer? And how many reviews must a writer contribute to become a professional reviewer/writer? (And when you consider Jenny also blogs, well, the mind does start to spin.)
So here I sit as Reviews Editor for an online literary magazine, a columnist, reviewer and features writer for an insanely popular online literary site, a published author (essayist) (and yes, that's published in print if you're wondering), a reviewer for Booklist (where I have had more than one starred review, although I credit the amazing books for that and not my reviews) and a blogger who reviews at her personal site.
You tell me - what am I? (And the follow-up to that question would be - 'What are you?')
April 20
2007
08:14 AM
It doesn't matter whether you're a professional or amateur. The most important thing is if readers of your reviews, via print or online, like what you have to say about books. For every person who questions your motives (free ARCs, shilling for publishers, marketing pawn, whatever), someone else will either discover a book they love or not bother with a waste of paper based on your opinion. And isn't that really the point of writing reviews?
Personally, I find it a waste of time to worry about labels based on non-issues raised by skeptics.