Print is Dead: Books in Our Digital Age

Former publishing executive and book review editor Pat Holt has a great essay this week as part of her “Holt Uncensored” e-mail newsletter. Entitled “Book Critics: Are we driving readers away?,” Holt looks at the recent phenomenon not only of shrinking book review sections in American papers but, almost more significantly, the large number of mainly self-serving essays and think-pieces (not to mention petitions) that have recently appeared in order to rally support for book reviewers and book review sections. Instead of blindly jumping on the “We have to save book reviews!” bandwagon, Holt takes an intelligent and thoughtful look at the situation, stating that “maybe it’s time for those of us who have worked as critics for a living to evaluate what’s happened to our profession — and why we may be driving readers away. In the last 25 years, just about everything about the print experience has changed — except the way critics review books.”

Instead of the usual facile arguments that the proponents of books and book reviews usually trot out in the “print is dead” debate, Holt argues that the status quo isn’t worth saving. Her whole point is that the world has changed; we have become more and more adept at finding information and content online, and now the literary world has to also change. “Our audience zips around the Internet with tremendous agility and speed, and what do we give them?” asks Holt. “Stodgy, dull, laborious and indulgent reviews.” Holt also realizes that the reduction of book reviews is only the tip of the iceberg, and that the loss of interest in book reviews is an early signal that a loss of interest in books themselves could be around the corner. But even that hasn’t been enough to create change. “Not only have we gotten stuffy, dreary and plodding, but our panic is showing — we know traditional print media is in trouble and try too hard to get readers back,” writes Holt. “We’ve substituted opinion for criticism. We’ve pronounced books good or bad rather than shown readers why.”

So even the book reviews that remain are no longer doing what book reviews used to do so well: connecting readers with books. Instead, readers have gone elsewhere, and are now connecting with reading material online. Without the aid of major newspapers or literary critics, consumers are finding new reading material from either recommendation websites or software on commerce sites, social networking sites, or even just by keeping in touch with people online who share with them ideas for books (now that e-mail has the ability to connect everyone on Earth, “word of mouth” has turned into “world of mouth”). So while the NBCC crowd is interested solely in protecting its turf (and their jobs), Holt’s essay is the first one I’ve seen asking for the industry as a whole to take a long hard look at itself.

Holt Uncensored: Book Critics: Are we driving readers away?