The Power of Print Media

In an age of electronic media, when network television programs such as Oprah or the Today show can create a bestseller overnight, what is the role of print reviews and features in catalyzing book sales? A quick check of the sales rankings on Amazon.com following major reviews in national newspapers such as the New York Times, USA Today or the Wall St. Journal confirms that those publications can have a significant commercial impact. But publicists across the industry say it's next to impossible for a single review or feature to make a bestseller.

"The big difference in media now versus 10 years ago is that to reach a critical mass of readers, listeners or viewers, your book has to have exposure through more channels," says Paul Bogaards, senior v-p and executive publicity director at Knopf. "A lot of it has to do with how people are living their lives and processing information. Where David Ogilvy said [in the 1980s] that it took five or six impressions to create a response in a consumer, these days it might take 10 or 12."

In a media landscape where book coverage has eroded at some metropolitan dailies, major reviews in national papers are more important than ever to book publishers. Though the New York Times Book Review has lost editorial space in the past year, the good news for publishers of commercial books is that USA Today has been making up some of the ground. PW checked in with publicity directors and newspaper editors to take stock of the current situation.

Still the Literary Standard Bearer

No other book review holds as much power to drive literary fiction and serious nonfiction onto national bestseller lists as the New York Times Book Review. As a section in the country's leading Sunday newspaper, it has a circulation of 1.7 million that's bolstered by sales of 50,000—75,000 copies to single-copy subscribers and booksellers.

Though publicity directors say that a bestseller is always made from a web of influences, they agree that an early NYTBR cover review can help a book develop a commercial heartbeat. If a confluence of media has already begun to pump life into a book, a well-timed cover review can give it legs. "It comes down to the framing of review," explains Bogaards. "Cover treatment alone is not enough to drive sales. It has to be a winning presentation." Factors such as the illustration, the number of books featured and the prominence of the reviewer all contribute to the allure of a cover review. "You have a seduction going on," Bogaards adds.

Even when early reviews are mixed, a positive NYTBR review can create a synaptic pop. Based on widespread review coverage, Joe Klein's The Natural: The Misunderstood Presidency of Bill Clinton had been moving up the extended bestseller list after it went on sale March 12. The book received withering early assessments from Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post and Michiko Kakutani in the daily New York Times, and a grumpy response from Margaret Carlson in Time. But the week after William Kennedy's enthusiastic review was featured on the cover of the March 24 issue, along with six eye-catching portraits of the ex-president, the book hit #8 on the Times list. "We attribute the book's position on the list solely to that cover review," says Suzanne Herz, associate publisher and executive director of publicity at Doubleday.

More extraordinary was Francine Prose's April 14 cover review of Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated (Houghton Mifflin). An ebullient rave, it launched the book onto the Times bestseller list at #15, based on sales for the week ending April 27. "That review put the book over the top," says Houghton Mifflin publicity director Lori Glazer, who notes that interviews with Foer had already run in New York magazine and on NPR the week before. "It's really hard to put a literary first novel on the list," observes Putnam senior v-p and publishing director Dan Harvey. "That showed the power of the Times Book Review to call attention to a book's publication."

The commercial effect of a strong NYTBR review can also depend on the number of copies in the market, though publishers say there is no formula for optimal distribution. "We've all worked on books with 8,300 copies in the field when a major review hits that go on to be big bestsellers," says Bridget Marmion, marketing v-p at Houghton Mifflin. "A lot depends on how many books are on retail shelves vs. at the wholesalers. But it's always possible to capitalize on a good review if it's at the beginning of a series of them."

Even when a NYTBR cover review doesn't translate into major sales, it often spurs reviews in other media and focuses the attention of booksellers. When Paulette Jiles's first novel, Enemy Women (Morrow), was featured on the cover of the February 24 issue, John Vernon's positive but prickly review didn't generate bestseller momentum. Still, "there wasn't one major newspaper that missed it after that. We've had about 35 reviews so far," says Debbie Stier, senior publicity director at Morrow. The book was also on the lips of several booksellers at BEA, including Jane Jacobs at Concord Bookship in Concord, Mass., who deems it "as good or better than Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain," and says she expects robust paperback sales.

Given its influence, the cover of the Times Book Review has long been the subject of contention in the industry. Many observers claim that the book review relinquished some of its commercial clout by putting an illustration on the cover rather than the text of its lead review. "What could be more powerful than a narrative at the top of the fold? When a review was a selling one, it drew you right in and made more of an impression," claims Knopf's Bogaards.

NYTBR editor Charles McGrath defends the practice, which allows him to feature more than one book at a time. "I've always been unhappy with the notion of the cover as an academy award of literature for a given week," he argues. "There are weeks when lots of books deserve an academy award, and weeks when no book does." However, he admits there "may be yet better ways" to use the front page and that a new format is under discussion, though he says it's highly unlikely that the lead review will return to the cover.

The publication's shorter book reviews also carry significant weight. "In my experience, even a bad review in the Times Book Review can sell 6,000 copies, though it depends on the book," says Russell Perreault, who has observed numerous bestsellers at close range as v-p and director of publicity at Vintage and in his previous position at Oxford University Press. "With serious nonfiction, it often puts you in front of the right audience. People interested in a particular subject will see a review and buy the book to form their own opinion about it." However, the downside of an early negative NYTBR review is that it can squelch reviews at other publications, notes Glazer.

Shrinking Reviews

Of larger concern to publishers is the diminishing editorial space in the NYTBR. The newspaper's shifting economics have clearly made their mark on the book review over the past three years. Where the page count averaged 36 pages per issue in 2000, it dropped to 31 pages in 2001, and again in 2002 to 29 pages. McGrath links the page reduction in 2000 to an initiative to reduce the size of the paper's Weekend and Arts and Leisure sections to preserve space in the news hole. Further cuts in the fourth quarter of 2001 resulted from fewer ads in the book review, he says.

Author interviews and commissioned essays by prominent writers were the first to be eliminated. The weekly "Books in Brief" section also dropped from two pages to one in 2000, with fiction and nonfiction running in alternate weeks instead of side by side in the same issue. When further trimming was required last year, McGrath reduced the quantity and length of the reviews, though he held the line on the two-column roundups devoted to science fiction and mysteries, and the two pages devoted to children's books each month. He acknowledges having "a sense of operating in a somewhat more constrained universe. We're still looking for books that appeal to a literate general audience, but the bar is a little higher."

While the book review has retained its emphasis on serious nonfiction, university and small presses that used to be able to rely on one or two NYTBR reviews each season are among those feeling the squeeze. "It's certainly become more difficult to get books in those pages in the last year," says Erin Hogan, publicity director at the University of Chicago Press. "It's getting harder everywhere," agrees Pam MacColl, publicity director at Beacon Press, a Boston-based small publisher of serious nonfiction. "But I do feel that I'm given fair access at the Times. When there are titles I feel Chip has missed, I go back to him. I've found that he's been willing to change his mind."

McGrath expresses dismay that first novels and story collections have been among the first to lose attention they may deserve. But he maintains that his editors have tried to "distribute the pain equally," so that small presses or paperback originals don't suffer disproportionately. In one bright note, poems now appear every other week, rather than once a month, and include previously unpublished work as well as reprints from forthcoming books.

Despite the cutbacks, McGrath is adamant that "what separates [the Times Book Review] from any other is that even if it weren't bringing in any ads, the management of this paper would support a book review of a certain size. They accept that coverage of books is an essential part of what the New York Times does." He remains optimistic, however, that the book review will expand again.

But beyond an economic upturn that may loosen up a few ad dollars, the other factors that have led to reduced advertising at the NYTBR aren't likely to change. Many publishers are reluctant to spend money on advertising when a team of publicists can garner more influential editorial coverage than their combined salaries spent outright on ads. The consolidation of major publishing imprints over the last 10 years has also reduced the number of active advertisers in the industry. Another complicating factor is that while the Times Book Review didn't have major competition for many years, there's more now.

Second in Selling Power

Reviews in the daily New York Times also pack a commercial punch, say publicists, especially when they appear at the front of the Arts section. They can also be especially important for commercial fiction, which doesn't receive as much attention in the Book Review, says Putnam's Dan Harvey.

Since the daily reviews are syndicated in addition to running in the newspaper's national edition, their influence is widely felt. "A lot of book review editors will call me when one of Michiko Kakutani's reviews runs early," says Knopf v-p Nicholas Latimer, who focuses exclusively on print media. "They tend to use her reviews rather than wait for one they have assigned that may be coming later. People really trust her."

On the advertising front, the daily New York Times may be drawing ad dollars away from the Book Review, in part because it can run ads in a matter of days, allowing publishers to capitalize on a book's momentum. "For a literary title, the Book Review is better, but the lead time requires that ads be turned in long before the issue appears," explains Harvey. The daily paper is also a better advertising venue for major commercial books with the kind of big-budget campaigns that are coordinated with first serial and other major media features, he notes.

Making Up Lost Ground

While the New York Times Book Review has lost editorial space, book features and reviews in USA Today are on the upswing. "Fifteen years ago, there wasn't a lot of competition in the daily review area, but now USA Today is giving [the New York Times] a run for its money. It has no competition on the coverage of trends. And it appears to be attracting a lot of book advertising from major publishers," Bogaards says. Though it tends to skew to the South, Harvey adds, the paper can have "a tremendous effect on retail outlets in major travel hubs."

Publicists are finding that USA Today, which has an average circulation of 2.1 million copies, can be a pivotal venue for commercial fiction. John Grisham's Skipping Christmas got a "tremendous boost" from a weekend review, according to Doubleday's Herz. Practical nonfiction gets more space there, too: the newspaper was the first national newspaper to cover The Healthy Kitchen by Andrew Weil and Rosie Daley (Knopf), giving the book a front page spread in the Life section that helped make it a bestseller, according to Bogaards. "That piece was a crib sheet for TV and radio producers, as well as newspaper editors, who called from all over the country to book the authors," he says, attributing a four-part CNN Headline News feature and numerous satellite tour bookings to the article. The newspaper can also widen the audience for literary fiction: sales tripled for the long-running Book Sense bestseller Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (Knopf) after a USA Today feature ran in March.

Last fall, the national newspaper expanded book coverage in its Life section, adding reviews and features on Tuesdays in addition to Thursdays, and occasional articles on other days. In April, the newspaper also launched a book club that will feature fiction and nonfiction in all formats. It's unique among national newspapers in touting its selections prominently in the newspaper over a six-week period, with the aim of driving online discussion on the USA Today Web site. "The club will not come at the expense of reviews or coverage we give to other books," says Life section deputy editor Dennis Moore, "though it will not necessarily add to the pages in the section." It still remains to be seen which subjects will wind up ceding ground.

So far, the club's effect on sales of its first selection, Empire Falls (Vintage), has been difficult to gauge, since the paperback was chosen the same week that the novel's author, Richard Russo, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. However, industry observers have suggested that the newspaper's endorsement is helping move the book at accounts such as Waldenbooks, where previous prizewinners have not always racked up big sales.

Putting Stock in Readers

Though it reviews fewer titles than the two other national newspapers, the Wall Street Journal can also have a powerful impact on book sales. "The newspaper's readers are educated and affluent, and they buy books," says Vintage's Perreault. Serious works of history, public policy and biography receive the lion's share of attention in the weekly reviews, opening the door to university press books along with those from major houses. Radio producers and other print publications also watch WSJ reviews carefully. "When Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler by Edward J. McCaffery was reviewed last month, it led to a lot of requests for copies and interviews," says University of Chicago's Hogan.

The Journal's Weekend section, which runs every Friday, covers more fiction, as well as quirkier books, such as Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players (Houghton Mifflin) by WSJ writer Stefan Fatsis, which was excerpted last June. That review, combined with a Today show appearance, jumpstarted the book, which became a national bestseller, according to Lori Glazer.

While publicists hold out little hope of significant growth in the editorial space for books at the national papers, those at the major houses still depend on their reach and influence over consumers and other media. Though none contend that they have cracked the nut, they are pursuing their usual strategy of pitching as much coverage as possible, or as FSG's Jeff Seroy puts it, "let a thousand flowers bloom."