Wednesday, April 22, 2009 | By: Patrick

The future of newspapers and book coverage

David Moench recently did a roundtable with newspaper reviewers of science fiction and fantasy.

Here's an excerpt:

For decades, newspapers have provided the public with book coverage in the form of reviews, author interviews, and features. Over time, there has been a steady decrease in this print coverage. And most recently, we have witnessed a frightening decline across the entire newspaper industry coupled with a growing trend toward obtaining news and opinion from digital sources rather than in print.

Are we entering a world where book reviews (not to mention reviewers) are an endangered species? Are authors at risk of losing exposure to general readers? What’s ahead for SF and fantasy, in particular? To look at these questions, Suvudu has brought together five science fiction & fantasy book reviewers from across the USA for a Q&A on this important topic. These reviewers and the newspapers they have reviewed for are:

Mark Graham (Rocky Mountain News)
Jim Hopper (The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Nisi Shawl (The Seattle Times)
Robert Folsom (The Kansas City Star)
Michael Berry (San Francisco Chronicle)

To read the entire article, head on out to Suvudu!

4 commentaires:

Jebus said...

Fantasy and Sci-Fi books? Get out of town!

Such a thing does not exist.

10:48 PM
Jebus said...

Meh, the interwebs stole the start of that sentence, was s'posed to be:

"Actual physical newspapers review Fantasy and Sci-Fi books? Get out of town!

Such a thing does not exist."

10:49 PM
Ryan said...

I thought this was a pretty interesting article - thanks for linking to it, Pat.

9:42 AM
Tracy Falbe said...

I've heard that newspapers have been cutting coverage of books for several years (along with coverage of everything else). This does mean less media exposure for books, but I think lots of readers choose their books by browsing and word of mouth anyway. I became an avid reader, especially of sci fi and fantasy, without ever have read a book review. Since the internet got going, I do read the occasional online review and base a decision on that. Right now I monitor for new titles that might interest me by participating at Goodreads.com. That site and similar sites are very good at letting readers see titles new and old.

8:10 PM

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