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Thursday, May 15, 2008

The Reviews Will Only Be Half as Bad

posted by on May 15 at 12:00 PM

Critical Mass brings news that Publishers Weekly has cut the pay rate for their reviewers by exactly 50%. They sent out this e-mail:

Dear Reviewer,

We are under constraints to reduce our expenses and must reduce the fee we pay to reviewers. Any reviews assigned after June 15 will be billed at $25 per review. However, you will be credited as a contributor in issues where your reviews appear. Please know that we value the work you do for us. Your astute reading and writing are what make our magazine so valuable in the industry and we regret this necessary action. All of us here are also experiencing change but we expect that we will continue to be the gold standard in book reviewing.

This is depressing. A number of publications cut their books sections entirely in the last year or so. Now, even the publications devoted strictly to books are drastically cutting their finances. Granted, Publishers Weekly has never been a general-interest publication (it’s more of an industry rag) and their reviews have often been very, very bad. But this is a really troubling sign.

RSS icon Comments

1

First they came for the movie reviewers, then they came for the book reviewers...

Posted by PopTart | May 15, 2008 12:33 PM
2

Jeez, my girlfriend writes reviews for a small-town biweekly and gets more than this. How long does it take to read a book and write up a review? Divide 25 by the amount of hours and you don't even get minimum wage. They're really banking on people giving a shit about having a review published in their publication. Is it really that prestigious?

Posted by JC | May 15, 2008 12:52 PM
3

As criticism, PW reviews are grossly overvalued even at $25. But as commercial items, they get a hell of a lot of play. Most Amazon pages have the PW review on them (usually twice, which is irritating).

Posted by Fnarf | May 15, 2008 2:02 PM
4

What fnarf said. I wonder how much the upper management of PW makes, and are they getting raises this year? And how much does PW earn simply from each posting on Amazon alone?

Posted by lori | May 16, 2008 6:02 AM

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