4 ms·

AP to end its weekly book reviews

83 points by thm 1y ago

smelendez 1y ago
It's surprising to me that AP customer newspapers don't want book reviews to pad out their Sunday papers. Bookstores are opening more than closing in the US, and people love library apps like Libby, so you'd think they'd want reviews too. But I guess it's possible people are getting as many book recommendations as they can use from social media and TikTok and aren't interested in more detailed reviews. It doesn't surprise me that people aren't seeking out book reviews on the AP website or app—I don't think AP is particularly associated with reviews, maybe deliberately because they've historically been read in local papers that don't emphasize the AP sourcing, so people wanting reviews from a national source probably go to NYT, WaPo, WSJ, the New Yorker, etc. first.
- nattaylor 1y ago
  My read is that no customers will leave since they are much more interested in news coverage -- and this helps the AP focus more on news. This is a tangent, but I wonder if they feel that they are just creating LLM training data and that few readers (even of Sunday papers) will actually read their reviews.
- trenchpilgrim 1y ago
  My top two sources for finding new books are NPR's annual book list (which is structured around discovery) and friends' recommendations. Especially going to a bookstore with a few friends, browsing, and physically pointing out books to each other. "Hey, have you read this series I liked?" kinda stuff
- xhkkffbf 1y ago
  The book market is yuge and filled with many niches. There used to be more broad market offerings but the market isn't as interested lately. So it's really impossible to cover without writing 100+ reviews a week. And the AP (and their customers) can't afford that many. There's soooo much fragmentation.
scoofy 1y ago
I honestly don't know how to feel about changes like this, but I feel like they are important. Whether they are good or bad? I'm not sure. In a sense, information is massively cheap now. You could get dozens of reviews on goodreads or any other site for a book. No, those reviews are likely not vetted, or written by credentialed individuals, but they are a solid heuristic. The decline of the professional art critic is lamentable, but it also doesn't really seem like it should be a job in the first place. I write a blog about golf, and I've examined the aesthetic underpinnings of golf course design pretty seriously: theory of reviews, axioms of frameworks and their affects on reviews, and the epistemological concerns we should have with what reviewers actually say. In the end, I think the "named critic's opinion" is far and away the best way to do aesthetic reviews, as long as there are a significant number of named critics. I think this is applicable to every art form. Social media has made this possible, but very few websites have actually make the matching of causal critic to a larger audience. For critical reviews to be useful, connecting large swaths of people to the nerds with correlating opinions in that art form would be a huge value add... while it's definitely doable with machine learning, nobody seems to want to recommend critics, they only recommend content. It's a bummer. If the decline of professional "named critics who are nerds in their favorite genres" continues, if there is no rise of casual named critics, I do think we lose something real from a functional perspective in these areas. I only hope someone can create a platform that efficiently connects interested parties in finding a casual critic who shares their aesthetic tastes. ----- My writing on aesthetic theory of reviews (about golf course architecture): * A look at a functional perspective of aesthetic reviews, Howard Moskowitz, and collaborative filtering: https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/golf-course-rankings-are-mostly-useless https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/golf-course-rankings-a... * A look at review framework axioms: https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/from-doak-to-digest-golf-rankings https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/from-doak-to-digest-go... * I'll be publishing my essay on epistemological concerns this week.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  Why does there have to be a critic? What's wrong with a recommendation feed of content you may like?
  - 1y ago
neilv 1y ago
Aren't most book reviews effectively marketing for the book? Are the book publishers not willing to fund the AP reviews, or the AP doesn't want to be in that business? Also, I have read some NY book reviews that seem to double as marketing for the guest reviewer's own book or brand. If we go full MBA on this, all these parties could be paying to play. Is some journalistic ethics wall between business and editorial leaving money on the table?
- throwup238 1y ago
  In most cases yes, but the Associated Press makes its money mostly through members fees that scale based on circulation size and in return the members get to syndicate AP content so the incentives are better aligned towards editorial integrity. The AP has strict guidelines against allowing outside organizations to influence their reporting (FWIW). Publishers and PR firms can send advanced copies but they can’t pay for one of AP’s independent critics for a submarine article.
  - TheJoeMan 1y ago
    So by extension, the members don't desire syndicated free reviews from AP but would rather sell those reviews? That would mean this article from AP is saying is that there is low demand for editorially integrous book reviews and not book reviews in general.
    - throwup238 1y ago
      The major news orgs like NYT, WaPo, etc usually have their own critics and they syndicate their content to smaller papers so they’re usually competing with the AP. The smaller papers don't have their own critics at all but most syndicate from the bigger papers and the ones that specialize more in non-factual content like Tribune Content Agency and Creators Syndicate. I think this is just AP cutting the red headed step child because they don’t produce much other opinion content, instead focusing on analysis and factual reporting, so everyone goes to another source that has more depth in their book reviews.
- 1y ago
lupusreal 1y ago
Interactive chat sessions about your literary interests with a good LLM will produce much better book suggestions than reading book reviews in newspapers. It's not even close, because unless your interests are as simple as "whatever book publishers want to sell this week", the newspaper book reviewer just happening to cover a book up your alley is about as common as a planetary alignment. I asked ChatGPT for 20th century space operas with literary merit or lasting recognition. It suggested Nova by Samuel Delany. Great book. How many newspaper book reviews would I have to read before I got suggestions for books in that category? I'd probably die waiting.
gorgoiler 1y ago
Not to sound too pollyannaesque but if you want some good news then (1) Mat Kaplan and The Planetary Society have just started publishing their monthly book reviews on the main stream; and (2) Armando Iannucci (The Day Today, Brasseye, The Thick of It, Veep) and Helen Lewis have also just started doing mini reviews too on their Strong Message Here podcast. https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/book-club-andy-weir https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/book-club-andy-wei... https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ls28zb https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ls28zb It’s not much, but it’s always nice to follow edges in the taste-graph from nodes I trust to nodes that are new to me.
- oniony 1y ago
  It's a bit annoying having to listen to book reviews. Do you know of any good written resources?
jacob019 1y ago
Is it just me or have all mainstream news agencies suffered a significant loss in quality in recent years? It all seems lazy, opinionated, more like social media and less like old school journalism, less trustworthy... and now they're cutting book reviews?! Maybe I'm just getting older.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  Journalism was always bad, it just seemed better in the past because people had less to compare it to, less ability to check things out themselves, etc. As for "Old School Journalism", was that the sort that helped George Bush start the Iraq War? Or the sort that started the Spanish-American War? If there was ever a golden age of journalists when people spat straight facts without interjecting their bias, I genuinely have no clue when it was. You can find an archive of thousands of PBS News Hour episodes online, I've watched dozens of episodes from the 80s and 90s. This show has a tone and air of respectability, a thoughtful show for high brow people who like to consider the facts. But that's really just the surface aesthetic. Besides modern news shows being flagrantly tacky, the meat of what they do is the same; repeat some basic 'facts' about the story, many of which will be proven wrong in later years, then have some people selected through mysterious processes come on to talk about how the viewer should feel. In retrospect very little of it was ever accurate and stories which seemed important then aren't in retrospect.
- vlz 1y ago
  Well, not to be too obvious, but people do not pay for news anymore, they expect news to be free on Google or social media. Hence firing of journalists, loss of quality everywhere. Less money, less quality.
- phendrenad2 1y ago
  You're right. It's the collapse of web advertising, I think. News websites can't make money from ads adjacent to articles, so now the article is the ad.
ThinkBeat 1y ago
Coming soon to AP: Fresh book reviews every week sponsored by and made possibly by OpenAI.

83 points by thm 1y ago

It's surprising to me that AP customer newspapers don't want book reviews to pad out their Sunday papers. Bookstores are opening more than closing in the US, and people love library apps like Libby, so you'd think they'd want reviews too. But I guess it's possible people are getting as many book recommendations as they can use from social media and TikTok and aren't interested in more detailed reviews. It doesn't surprise me that people aren't seeking out book reviews on the AP website or app—I don't think AP is particularly associated with reviews, maybe deliberately because they've historically been read in local papers that don't emphasize the AP sourcing, so people wanting reviews from a national source probably go to NYT, WaPo, WSJ, the New Yorker, etc. first.

nattaylor 1y ago
My read is that no customers will leave since they are much more interested in news coverage -- and this helps the AP focus more on news. This is a tangent, but I wonder if they feel that they are just creating LLM training data and that few readers (even of Sunday papers) will actually read their reviews.
trenchpilgrim 1y ago
My top two sources for finding new books are NPR's annual book list (which is structured around discovery) and friends' recommendations. Especially going to a bookstore with a few friends, browsing, and physically pointing out books to each other. "Hey, have you read this series I liked?" kinda stuff
xhkkffbf 1y ago
The book market is yuge and filled with many niches. There used to be more broad market offerings but the market isn't as interested lately. So it's really impossible to cover without writing 100+ reviews a week. And the AP (and their customers) can't afford that many. There's soooo much fragmentation.

scoofy 1y ago

I honestly don't know how to feel about changes like this, but I feel like they are important. Whether they are good or bad? I'm not sure. In a sense, information is massively cheap now. You could get dozens of reviews on goodreads or any other site for a book. No, those reviews are likely not vetted, or written by credentialed individuals, but they are a solid heuristic. The decline of the professional art critic is lamentable, but it also doesn't really seem like it should be a job in the first place. I write a blog about golf, and I've examined the aesthetic underpinnings of golf course design pretty seriously: theory of reviews, axioms of frameworks and their affects on reviews, and the epistemological concerns we should have with what reviewers actually say. In the end, I think the "named critic's opinion" is far and away the best way to do aesthetic reviews, as long as there are a significant number of named critics. I think this is applicable to every art form. Social media has made this possible, but very few websites have actually make the matching of causal critic to a larger audience. For critical reviews to be useful, connecting large swaths of people to the nerds with correlating opinions in that art form would be a huge value add... while it's definitely doable with machine learning, nobody seems to want to recommend critics, they only recommend content. It's a bummer. If the decline of professional "named critics who are nerds in their favorite genres" continues, if there is no rise of casual named critics, I do think we lose something real from a functional perspective in these areas. I only hope someone can create a platform that efficiently connects interested parties in finding a casual critic who shares their aesthetic tastes. ----- My writing on aesthetic theory of reviews (about golf course architecture): * A look at a functional perspective of aesthetic reviews, Howard Moskowitz, and collaborative filtering: https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/golf-course-rankings-are-mostly-useless https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/golf-course-rankings-a... * A look at review framework axioms: https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/from-doak-to-digest-golf-rankings https://golfcoursewiki.substack.com/p/from-doak-to-digest-go... * I'll be publishing my essay on epistemological concerns this week.

charcircuit 1y ago
Why does there have to be a critic? What's wrong with a recommendation feed of content you may like?
- 1y ago

neilv 1y ago

Aren't most book reviews effectively marketing for the book? Are the book publishers not willing to fund the AP reviews, or the AP doesn't want to be in that business? Also, I have read some NY book reviews that seem to double as marketing for the guest reviewer's own book or brand. If we go full MBA on this, all these parties could be paying to play. Is some journalistic ethics wall between business and editorial leaving money on the table?

throwup238 1y ago
In most cases yes, but the Associated Press makes its money mostly through members fees that scale based on circulation size and in return the members get to syndicate AP content so the incentives are better aligned towards editorial integrity. The AP has strict guidelines against allowing outside organizations to influence their reporting (FWIW). Publishers and PR firms can send advanced copies but they can’t pay for one of AP’s independent critics for a submarine article.
- TheJoeMan 1y ago
  So by extension, the members don't desire syndicated free reviews from AP but would rather sell those reviews? That would mean this article from AP is saying is that there is low demand for editorially integrous book reviews and not book reviews in general.
  - throwup238 1y ago
    The major news orgs like NYT, WaPo, etc usually have their own critics and they syndicate their content to smaller papers so they’re usually competing with the AP. The smaller papers don't have their own critics at all but most syndicate from the bigger papers and the ones that specialize more in non-factual content like Tribune Content Agency and Creators Syndicate. I think this is just AP cutting the red headed step child because they don’t produce much other opinion content, instead focusing on analysis and factual reporting, so everyone goes to another source that has more depth in their book reviews.
1y ago

lupusreal 1y ago

Interactive chat sessions about your literary interests with a good LLM will produce much better book suggestions than reading book reviews in newspapers. It's not even close, because unless your interests are as simple as "whatever book publishers want to sell this week", the newspaper book reviewer just happening to cover a book up your alley is about as common as a planetary alignment. I asked ChatGPT for 20th century space operas with literary merit or lasting recognition. It suggested Nova by Samuel Delany. Great book. How many newspaper book reviews would I have to read before I got suggestions for books in that category? I'd probably die waiting.

gorgoiler 1y ago

Not to sound too pollyannaesque but if you want some good news then (1) Mat Kaplan and The Planetary Society have just started publishing their monthly book reviews on the main stream; and (2) Armando Iannucci (The Day Today, Brasseye, The Thick of It, Veep) and Helen Lewis have also just started doing mini reviews too on their Strong Message Here podcast. https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/book-club-andy-weir https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/book-club-andy-wei... https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ls28zb https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0ls28zb It’s not much, but it’s always nice to follow edges in the taste-graph from nodes I trust to nodes that are new to me.

oniony 1y ago
It's a bit annoying having to listen to book reviews. Do you know of any good written resources?

jacob019 1y ago

Is it just me or have all mainstream news agencies suffered a significant loss in quality in recent years? It all seems lazy, opinionated, more like social media and less like old school journalism, less trustworthy... and now they're cutting book reviews?! Maybe I'm just getting older.

lupusreal 1y ago
Journalism was always bad, it just seemed better in the past because people had less to compare it to, less ability to check things out themselves, etc. As for "Old School Journalism", was that the sort that helped George Bush start the Iraq War? Or the sort that started the Spanish-American War? If there was ever a golden age of journalists when people spat straight facts without interjecting their bias, I genuinely have no clue when it was. You can find an archive of thousands of PBS News Hour episodes online, I've watched dozens of episodes from the 80s and 90s. This show has a tone and air of respectability, a thoughtful show for high brow people who like to consider the facts. But that's really just the surface aesthetic. Besides modern news shows being flagrantly tacky, the meat of what they do is the same; repeat some basic 'facts' about the story, many of which will be proven wrong in later years, then have some people selected through mysterious processes come on to talk about how the viewer should feel. In retrospect very little of it was ever accurate and stories which seemed important then aren't in retrospect.
vlz 1y ago
Well, not to be too obvious, but people do not pay for news anymore, they expect news to be free on Google or social media. Hence firing of journalists, loss of quality everywhere. Less money, less quality.
phendrenad2 1y ago
You're right. It's the collapse of web advertising, I think. News websites can't make money from ads adjacent to articles, so now the article is the ad.

ThinkBeat 1y ago

Coming soon to AP: Fresh book reviews every week sponsored by and made possibly by OpenAI.