Over on The Volokh Conspiracy, a fairly active blog some of the bloggers are wondering why book reviewers don't send review copies to bloggers, given their natural and plentiful audience. Tyler Cowen in
Why don't bloggers get many review copies? and David Bernstein in
The publishing industry and blogs (they don't get it yet) both seem confused and befuddled about why publishers won't send free review copies. Yet strangely,
Duffbert seems to have no trouble getting review copies, on his decidely less A-list blog. What does Tom know that they don't know? Why do the publishers send copies to him and not to them?
He knows to ask. C'mon, guys, just make a case with the publishers. Don't expect them to come to you.
Update:
Here's another one. Kevin Drum, of Washington Monthly's Political Animal writes about the same thing in
Book Reviews.
Oh, and I thought of another thing Duffbert knows. He knows to actually write some reviews. Rather than wait for publishers to beg him to do so, he reviews lots of books. On his site and elsewhere, from what I can tell.
So, two ideas for all these bright bloggers: Ask and write. See, wasn't that easy?
Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.