Writing Book Review Pitches

"Newspapers have awesomely higher operating costs than the online publishers who are siphoning away their audience and advertising revenues," wrote Alan Mutter in his (presumably unedited) Reflections of a Newsosaur blog posting in February. He questioned the value and need for multiple editings of newspaper articles. That was about the time that the local paper's book reviews editor announced his departure from editing entirely.

Eventually the paper made known that the "Arts" editor would take on books, too. I predicted the two books pages (reduced from a multi-page stand-alone section) will disappear. Indeed, this week only one page of four book reviews appeared. The NY Times bestseller listings, already shrunk to only the top five, showed up on the back page with lists of what's hot in other media.

Authors, the writing is on the wall, and it's in book review editors' blood: don't bother trying for newspaper reviews anymore. Online is where it's at, the NY Times being exceptional. Some papers operate their online services separately from the print version and frequently offer more features on the Internet. Send your pitches there. This means, of course, that your pitch must be crafted as carefully as your opening book hook and/or the query that won you an agent.