Macavity-winner Daniel Friedman Talks about Book Reviews: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

MISS EDNA: Susan Elia MacNeal (or, as I call her, Miss Susan) is a bit under the weather, so she asked me to fill in for one of her days on Jungle Red Writers. I’m an honorary member, after all! (See my red sweater, red adult beverage, and red nail polish—Jungle Red! And I remember the term from The Women, darlings.)

            

I’m not a mystery writer like the Reds, but I am a long time mystery and thriller fan. I remember reading my first Agatha Christie novel at around age twelve — so that’s about seventy some-odd years of reading mysteries! (Miss Edna is not embarrassed to admit her age — if you looked this good at eighty-two, you wouldn’t either.)

            
And I’m delighted to introduce today’s guest, Daniel Friedman. Dan is the author of Don’t Ever Get Old, a title Miss Edna certainly relates to. It was nominated for the Edgar, Thriller, and Anthony, and won the Macavity award for Best First Novel. (It won against my darling daughter-in-law's Mr. Churchill's Secretary — but we won't get into that

now.) It was also optioned for film by the producers of the "Sherlock Holmes" movies. (Dan, I hope you will remember Miss Edna when you are a Big Hollywood Star.)

Darlings, I must say, I’m reading Don't Ever Get Old now, and absolutely love it. First, Dan — bless him because he’s so young — has managed to capture perfectly the voice of an 80-something, with all of our aches and pains and memories. And he's funny — I bust out laughing at least five times just during the first few pages., and continue to laugh my way through.

And now, Miss Edna is thrilled to introduce Dan Friedman, author of the Macavity-award winning DON’T EVER GET OLD,  to talk about book reviews. 

           

DANIEL FRIEDMAN: Over the summer, there was a minor Twitter controversy over the Los Angeles Review of Books' policy to not publish negative reviews of first novels.  Since then, the popularwebsite Buzzfeed has hired an editor to helm a new books section that will not run any bad reviews at all.  As such "no

haters" editorial policies become more commonplace, there has been a lot of discussion among bookish types about bad reviews and whether we need them.

There's a pretty good argument against many bad book reviews: Knowing what's good is inherently more useful than knowing what's bad, because you can act on a recommendation, but not a pan.  Telling someone they should read a book is inherently more useful than telling someone they should not read a book. 

Publications have limited space or resources to devote to book reviews. Readers have limited attention to devote to them.  And publishers publish far more books than any reader can ever possibly consume, or even be aware of. 

Publishers Weekly reviews 7000 books per year, and the NYT book review, one of the last standalone book-sections still in print, manages to review only about 300 of them.  There are hundreds of books every year that get starred reviews in places like PW and and are completely ignored by mainstream publications like the NYTBR or Buzzfeed.  No good review. No bad review. No review at all.  With space and attention at such a premium, printing a bad review of a bad book, in many cases, means that the publication won't have room to run a review of a good book.  

Nobody proposes a film review site with no bad reviews because there are only about three new wide-release films a week, and publications can just review everything that's playing.  Not all of the films will be good, so some reviews must be bad.  On the other hand, if there are 300 new books out this week, and you are only running five reviews, it's a reasonable editorial priority to tell readers about the best five, rather than running a takedown on one that fails.

On the other hand, among those 7000 books are some more privileged than others; bought with giant advances and backed by enormous marketing campaigns.  When a book is commanding a huge amount of reader interest and is dominating the bestseller lists and the conversation, reviewing publications can't ignore it if they want to remain relevant.  And they shouldn't always have to say nice things about books like that, because books like that aren't always good.

It may be true that haters gonna hate, but it's also true that suckers gonna suck, and the people who benefit the most when the haters are silenced tend to be the people who suck, or the makers of sucky things.  If people hate you, they probably hate you for a reason, and if you don't hate anything, it's probably because you don't care very much. Positivity may garner better social-

networking amplification than negativity, and, therefore, more pageviews.  Saying nice things about products will never offend an advertiser.  But there are a lot of emperors with no clothes in the publishing business, and somebody has to stand up and warn people that Dan Brown is overly fond of airing his junk out.  If you will speak no ill of big books, then you can't effectively speak up for the underdogs.  A culture of positivity reinforces the status quo, and if a well-funded marketing message isn't loudly contradicted by an outlet with authority, it tends to be accepted.  

It's entirely possible for even a fairly voracious reader to exclusively read the biggest franchise authors, and this is exactly what many readers do.  James Patterson has created a network of co-authors that allows him to churn out as much branded content as the market can consume, and, as a result, a significant percentage of mystery/thriller readers read nothing but James Patterson. 

These readers feel they have no reason to look beyond what they're already reading; they might like another book, but they already know they like James Patterson is, so reading something else that they might not like involves a risk.  Before anyone can persuade those readers to explore the larger literary world that Buzzfeed is so positive about, somebody first has to convince them to stop reading ten James Patterson books a year.  Somebody has to persuade them that reading nothing but James Patterson is a bad decision.  The rave review's exhortation to "read this" contains, as a necessary corollary:  "not that."

Bad reviews should certainly be employed judiciously.  There's no reason to use the critical platform to do what Tom Lutz of the Los Angeles Review of Books described as wasting "scant time and resources killing a book that is in the process of dying a natural death."  But there's no point in forging a +2 enchanted sword if you're unwilling to use it, on occasion, to slay a dragon.

Thank you, Dan! And thank you, darlings, for indulging a senior citizen's first "blog post."

What do you think about negative book reviews, especially for debut authors? Are you a reviewer? Have you been reviewed? Will you be checking out the Los Angeles Review of Books's and Buzzfeed's new positive reviews? 

(With all due respect to Dan, Miss Edna must agree with the the Los Angeles Review of Books. And also Issac Fitzgerald, the new book reviews editor of Buzzfeed, who quoted Thumper from Bambi: "If you can't say nuthin', nice, then don't say nuthin' at all." I only tweet about books I love. No time for anything else, darlings. "Too blessed to be stressed" is my motto and I live by it. That's just me.)

Dan’s web site is here.

Follow Dan on Twitter here.

Friend him on Facebook here.

Daniel Friedman’s next novel, DON'T EVER LOOK BACK, will be released in 2014.

And you can follow Miss Edna, who often tweets about mysteries and thrillers here.



(Hatchet image from Randy Robertson via Flickr.)

(Dictated by Miss Edna and typed and entered by Miss Susan.)