To Richard Cleland, Federal Trade Commission:
As I’m sure you’re aware, a lot of book bloggers have reacted strongly to the inclusion of book blogging in the “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising” which have recently been released by the FTC. They, like me, are wondering how it will apply to the work we do. We are also somewhat frustrated at your apparent lack of understanding regarding how book reviewing and book blogging works. It is these latter concerns — with which I mostly agree — that has prompted this letter.
As I understand the guides, the FTC is concerned about the consumer’s perceptions of individual reviews of “products”. I can understand this concern, especially when it comes to utilitarian products.
When I am reading “reviews” (though as one book blogger, Mother Reader, observed, “how does how one ‘review’ a bookshelf or swingset or tungsten rings?”) of clothing, shoes, strollers, computers, cameras, or cars, I want to know how well they work. I want to know which brand or item is going to give me the most for my money. It’s reasonable that such things are “reviewed” on the basis of their form and function, because their value comes from how well they perform those functions. Reviews of those products need to be clear about any bias which might have come into the review, because being biased or dishonest about the performance of a product will diminish the value of those products in the hands of consumers. In short, it makes sense to regulate and oversee reviews of these kinds of commercial products: they have a definite utilitarian value which can be easily compared.
But books are different. Sure, they can be perceived as a product: they are physical in ways that, say, movies are not. There are publishers and authors who benefit from their production and sale. However, this is not what book reviewers are reviewing. You will not read a review of a book that says, in essence: “This book is about 6 by 8 inches, with 288 pages. There’s a nice smell about it, and the pages turn excellently. It also makes a great doorstop.” There is usually no (or very little) mention of the physical or utilitarian aspect of the actual book. There is also almost never any mention of which “brand” of book — be it Bloomsbury, or LittleBrown, or HarperCollins — is better than the other.
Rather, what we are reviewing are the ideas, the outpourings of a person’s imagination, in the book’s story. And for that, we often want bias. When it comes to books — or movies, music or art — biases (of some sorts anyway) can be helpful. It can mean that you’ve read a lot of other books (some of which you got for free, some of which you bought on your own, some of which you checked out from the local library), that you’re familiar with the author, that you understand what the publisher is trying to accomplish. This will enable you to be more sympathetic (and thus give potential readers a chance to learn something new) or more critical (and thus warn potential readers away when a book is really just more of this or more of that, and not as good).
Ultimately, a book review involves a question of taste. We book reviewers are reacting to the book in ways that a stroller reviewer doesn’t react to a stroller. Sure, you can look at the “construction” of a book — Are all the words spelled right? Does the sentence structure make sense? Is it cleverly or beautifully assembled? — but, ultimately, what a review really boils down to is the reviewer’s taste in stories. And taste cannot be regulated or influenced by free products.
Ask yourself what the consumers of book reviews–which include book bloggers themselves–are looking for. As readers of books, we actively search out not only multiple opinions on each and every book (if we’re so inclined), and we look for opinions of people whose taste (which we have determined over time) closely matches our own. It doesn’t matter if the review they find is in The Washington Post, the Wichita Eagle, Bookslut, or on an individual’s blog. Generally speaking, all readers want to know is whether they will have a positive experience with the story the book contains. So, we find people with like-tastes and read and come to trust (or, in some cases, distrust) their reviews, searching out (or avoiding) the books they recommend. It doesn’t matter if they got the book for free from Random House, or through a blog book tour, or because an author emailed them out of the blue; what matters is how they reacted to the story, and how we as consumers of book reviews are able to measure their taste against ours. As commenter Nicole said on this post in response to a comment about the bias inherent in blogs, “There is no tradition of ‘unbiased’ blogs, and any reader would know, going into a blog, that it is just a biased person giving an opinion. Sounds like the consumer has all the knowledge he needs.”
Although the print media has a reputation for being “unbiased” in their reviews, in all actuality they are not any more unbiased than individual bloggers. In my role as book editor for Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, I receive books — many unsolicited — from publishers for review in the journal. I consciously seek out reviewers who are knowledgeable about and are involved in the issues surrounding the topic of any given book, which increases the likelihood of their giving a “biased” review. This happens in ways both “positive”–in that they see the author has agreed with the reviewer’s own or work or has added something to the discussion which the reviewer thinks to be valuable–and “negative”–when the reviewer sees the author approaching a topic or area of study in a manner they think is ignorant, irresponsible, or counter-productive. I do not think this bias hurts the journal, and I do not think getting a free book biases a reviewer in favor of the book, whether that book comes from me, as an editor, or directly from the publisher. In fact, I think that if we actively discourage people from reviewing — or receiving — books they have a vested interest in, there would be far fewer reviews — and far worse ones.
After all this, I do know that it’s not really bias itself which you’re attempting to regulate. In terms of the regulations, it doesn’t matter if a particular blogger likes John Grisham or John Green. What does matter is if that blogger got the books directly from Grisham’s or Green’s publishers (or agents or publicists) instead of walking to the bookstore and buying a copy. But I’m here to say 1) that the variety of biases available throughout the book blogger world makes for a better and broader marketplace for those books (to say nothing of the “marketplace of ideas” which that variety contributes to), and 2) that the practice of obtaining getting free books needn’t affect that variety — on the contrary, it probably expands it. The reviewer who likes John Green will like his work whether or not the book was free. Same goes for the reviewer who dislikes his work. Because, unlike cameras or cars or strollers, books don’t have a set physical value. Sure, a book may sell for $19.95, and the publisher, author, and agent each get a cut. But, honestly, that’s not the real value of a book.
The real value to all readers of books is the ideas, and the experience of reading stories which contain those ideas. I’d like to think that the consumers of our blogs — our fellow readers — understand that concept. It’s not the possession of the physical book that ultimately determines what I think of it, it’s the reading experience. And, honestly, can one put a monetary value on or regulate an experience?
Sincerely,
Melissa Fox
This past Thursday, J. D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher in the Rye, passed away. As I was watching people’s reactions on Twitter, I realized something: I’ve never read Catcher in the Rye. Somehow, for some reason (actually many reasons, some of which I can actually recall but won’t go into here), I managed to completely miss this book.
Which is why Amanda, Heather and Jackie at Farmlanebooks put our heads together (metaphorically, of course), and came up with an idea to have a Catcher in the Rye read-a-long. It’s going to be pretty easy-going. We’re planning on starting Sunday, February 14th and wrapping up around the end of the month. I’ll make sure there are posts after February 14th where you can leave your spoiler comments, questions, and discussion points.
The Book Nut 