ReviewsOfBooks.com: Free site with zillions of links to professional book reviews
Want different book-reviewers’ takes on The Time Traveler’s Wife and other high-profile titles? Then check out ReviewsOfBooks.com. It links to major newspapers and also runs its own reviews.
Alas, the site loads slowly because of the long, graphics-filled pages, but the rich collection of links there could be worth the wait.
What you’ll find: Few reviews of books predate the site’s June 2002 launch. Also, “it’s not possible to include every newly released book on this site. The minimum requirement is that any book has to have three reviews in major online media web sites, and then it’s a completely subjective process as to which books get added to this site.” For reviews of older books, one possibility would be not just Google but also the searchable archives of the New York Times and its Book Review.
Info for book publishers, writers and publicists: Here.
The linking issue: This is a mini version of the Google News issue. On one hand, ReviewOfBooks is a valuable service operating legally, and it does send traffic to book sections. But what to do when advertising, at least for now, is not working as a biz model for those sections or other parts of online newspapers?
Still, ReviewsOfBooks.com serves to raise the profiles of professional reviewers. What’s more, many book bloggers tend to write about publishing trends rather than about individual books, so it’s great to see so many reviews in one place.
May 12th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Interesting that you choose the Niffenegger as your example, since, as far as I know, it’s not yet available as an ebook. Does anyone know different? I want to read it, but when I got my Sony Reader, I decided that I was done with physical books, so I’m just waiting until I can legally buy it. I don’t want to pirate, but, jeeze, I can understand why people do. Time for publishers to smarten up.