This post about how many conflicts of interest are in the average newspaper's book review section is very interesting if you're a reader of book reviews.

In one case, seeking a local reviewer for "Father of the Rain" by Lilly King, a local author, Lamy said she had to go through five would-be reviewers before she found a local scribe who did not know King.

The same thing occurred for the book, "What Darwin Got Wrong" by Jerry Foder. Lamy wanted to find an evolutionary biologist to review it, but most of the ones she contacted also knew that author.

"It is hard to find because there are not that many in that field," she said.

It's hard, if not impossible, to run a book section in Seattle and not meet the writers you write about. Disclosures are often necessary, and you've also got to be willing to be the asshole and piss off local writers who have sort of tricked themselves into thinking they're friendly with you and that you'll only write positive things from now on. (If you're lucky, you'll get a tense e-mail saying that your negative review was "basically fair." If you're unlucky, you get an anonymous hate-troll who'll follow you around for three or four months on everything you post.)

There are a few literary websites that I read on a regular basis whose reviews I do not trust at all. Blogs written by authors or aspiring literary writers are often questionable. I've read rave reviews by authors who I know to be good friends with their review subject. They never mention the relationship. You generally have to make the same assumptions while reading blogs that you make while reading Amazon customer reviews: If it smells fishy, there's a personal relationship. It's almost quaint, in this economic climate, that newspapers struggle to find an unbiased source. But it's also necessary: If this litblog back-scratching climate continues, literature will completely disappear up its own asshole.

(Via Sarah Weinman on Twitter.)