Valid Criticism or Mere Anger?

It’s rather a shame we can’t share some of the e-mails we at BiblioBuffet receive. Some are absolutely wonderful, others . . .  less so. The most recent was one of the latter. It was addressed to Pete Croatto who, in “The Athletic Supporter,” reviews sports books. Not much controversy there, right?

You’d think so, but Pete’s current column combined a book review with the story of its author, Paul Shirley. Shirley had been a ESPN.com columnist when he made a couple of controversial comments on sites other than ESPN about the Haiti relief effort and the Haitian people soon after the  massive earthquake in 2010. The fertilizer hit the fan of course, and Shirley was fired. Pete addressed both issues.

Yes, what Shirley wrote was tasteless, insensitive, and mean, but that he got dismissed for it should give every professional writer serious pause. The man was fired for doing his job.

Shirley, who’s not playing pro ball right now, had the misfortune of being a dissenting voice on an issue that united the world. Maybe he didn’t express his thoughts in the best way, but it wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t right. It was his opinion, and for ESPN, a journalistic enterprise, to punish him is unconstitutional. . . .

Is it possible for writers to represent a company and be themselves? Shirley already had that question answered for him. He won’t be the last writer who is unable to speak for himself.

Pete’s words hit sore spots with several readers, but it was one reader who furiously responded:

1.  Your right to exercise free speech only guarantees that you can say what you want, not that what you say be rendered immune from critique or other consequences. What you propose is the palin [sic] definition of free speech. Firing him is unconstitutional? You are way, way off.

2.  You presume that in saying something objectively awful, Paul was “doing his job.” Paul doesn’t get to determine whether doing that is his job or not. His employer does. He was employed at will, correct? Its not a gov’t job. Paul being shitcanned doesn’t “chill” the exercise of free speech. It’s more of a place and manner restriction. Paul is totally free to bloviate on his exerable blog and twitter about his nursed grievances against Mark Madsen, Jamaal Tinsley, black players in general, his crappy love life . . . and tiny penis. It wasn’t “misfortune” that he chose to write that crap and then double down with a non-apology apology.  It was Paul’s choice. How about some accountability for that assclown?

3.  It’s dumb for ESPN to fire him? You make this assertion but do not say why.  You want to have the tail wagging the dog. Sorry but in the real world, your private employer can fire you for almost any reason. You seem to be saying that Paul’s “rights” trump the people WHO ARE PAYING HIM. . . . Who cares if its marketing or why they did it. They have the right to.

Pete’s brief but calm response to him only appeared to anger him further so I suggested the exchange be discontinued on the grounds that neither one was going to change the other’s mind. Nicki Leone, however, had a far more eloquent response, and I quote it in full because it clearly defines the original problem and the reason why the firing should raise alarms.

I think your letter-writer is hiding behind technicalities. It’s true that freedom of speech is a constitutional right, and therefore, narrowly interpreted, means simply that you can’t be arrested for expressing your opinions. But a narrow interpretation of freedom of expression is a philosophically lazy position. I’d say that Shirley’s situation is more analogous to that of a whistle-blower. The question is not whether Shirley has a right to say something. But whether ESPN has a right to fire him for saying it. In our current near-laissez-faire capitalist culture, corporations work hard to maintain absolute control over their image, and since thanks to the Internet there is no longer a line between the “public” and “private” life, companies feel entirely justified in firing people over things they say on Facebook, for example.

Our collective response to this has been troubling: we self-censor ourselves in public forums because we know that now these are no longer places for personal freedom of expression. They are de facto public statements for which we will held accountable, and which will have farther-reaching repercussions than might be expected for a simple amusing post of the photo of the night you spent hanging out in a bar with your friends. We have ceded, almost without a fight, the encroachments of corporate interference into our social lives and their right to enact judgments upon us when our personal inclinations run against their perceived corporate interest. In its own way, it is not dissimilar to living in a religious state.  Somehow being a “good citizen” means being a good company man.

But freedom of expression shouldn’t be interpreted narrowly. Its power is in its universality. At the heart of the First Amendment is not a simple guarantee that you won’t be thrown in jail, but a promise to the country that an individual’s opinions will always be honored, and a recognition that in diversity of opinion is strength. And the First Amendment is founded on the assumption that we can judge for ourselves who is and isn’t worth listening to. Any governmental—or corporate—attempt to make those judgments for us violates the fundamental principle of Freedom of Expression.

Shirley’s case is a little more nuanced, because he is a reporter for a news organization, which by definition holds itself to certain standards of neutrality and objectivity. ESPN would never, for example, decline to report on an NFL team just because the team owner or manager cussed out the organization on THEIR Facebook page. They exist to report, not to judge. And in the case of Shirley, it sounds like ESPN is on even shakier ground because he was hired as an opinion writer—he was a blogger, with a specific abrasive style which the powers that be certainly knew about when they first offered him a contract. So unless that contract stated “thou shalt not give thy opinions upon any subject but basketball,” they didn’t have grounds to fire him. He wasn’t giving false information, he was giving his opinion. He was doing his job.

I think ESPN displayed a corporate cowardice in firing Shirley. They should have relied on the universal caveat I’m sure is printed somewhere on their site—that the views and opinions expressed by the writers do not necessarily reflect those of the organization. That is all they needed to say.

This country is on a disturbing road. Our constitutional liberties, which have defined the freedom America stands for, are under relentless if fairly quiet attack. I am not going to get into a political discussion, but the issues brought up here by Pete, by the letter writers, and by Nicki highlight what should be of concern to everyone. Certainly, Pete has the right to express his views. BiblioBuffet is not going to tone them down, or nor will the editorial team suggest that he stick to a straightforward review of a book and an author/commentator he cares about. Is the issue worth talking about? It’s up to you and me and Pete and ESPN. But it is not one BiblioBuffet is going to sweep under the rug.

Grrr

Two things have happened in the last week that got my “grrr” factor going. The first was an e-mail from someone we will call “Mr. Unhappy.” And why was he unhappy? Because of a review that we ran. Oddly, it wasn’t even his book. The book, which will for the purposes of this column remain unnamed, got a fairly good review, but he was part of its subject matter. He didn’t like being part of it but when dysfunction runs in a family—and many families have this problem—and someone writes about it the likelihood is that members are going to be included.

Mr. Unhappy demanded that the review be taken down and an apology issued. Otherwise, he said, he would have no choice but to contact a lawyer. What Mr. Unhappy seems to have not realized is that what a family member says about another family member is an internal problem. When reviewers at BiblioBuffet review a book they talk about the book and its contents. They do not vet it for legal reasons—that’s a publisher’s responsiblility. They simply share their opinion as to whether the book is successful at what it is attemtping to do and whether it is worth reading. An opinion. Which they are entitled to have.

Mr. Unhappy’s claim that he has files of paperwork which dispute the author’s story is of no relevance to us. Mr. Unhappy’s belief that we should bow to his demands is ludicrous.  Mr. Unhappy’s belief that we will is . . . not correct.  

I hate bullies. I especially hate ignorant bullies who use silly threats to get their way. BiblioBuffet will never violate any legal standards nor will we violate our strong ethical ones. But we are an opinion site. The reviewers and editors of BiblioBuffet work to provide honest, forthright, and excellent reviews of books worth reading. If one of those books causes hurt to another that is something that needs to be addressed with the author and/or publisher. Not a review site.

The result? Mr.Unhappy is probably due to remain unhappy.  

* * *

The second incident that upped my “grrr” factor involved payment. Contribtors are paid on a monthly basis. I use my credit union’s services to send checks out. Yesterday, I received an e-mail from one contributor who had not yet received his check. An inquiry showed the check had been cashed, though not by him, so I contacted my credit union this morning. They credited my account and promptly began an investigation.

The contributor had, in the meantime, gone into the bank that had cashed the check—he also banks at a credit union, not a bank and certainly not this bank—and talked to the manager:

He kept saying, “Well it was a mistake” and I said, “Listen!  The check was in a sealed envelope addressed to me. It was sent to me and made out to me. Anyone opening the envelope is already breaking the law. And then depositing it?” 

 And why was he making excuses for the person who did it?

And in a subsequent e-mail:

I’m steaming and it’s not just the weather.

Every check coming in has to be surveyed, and if it’s not made out to the depositor, there has to be a valid signature. This “manager” was trying to act as if one of his clerks wasn’t responsible.

And he didn’t even apologize!

What if this was a scam, say, someone trying a check with a small amount first–?

Yes, things are being handled but it’s a mistake to mess with me, especially with something about which I am so protective. Mistakes are one thing; deliberate indifference is another. About the former I am very polite. I ask only that the mistake be corrected. About the latter . . . not so much. Threats, even less so.

BiblioBuffet is a labor of love. No less labor than love, and everyone who writes for it carries a passion and intensity for the site. No one messes with it. No one.

Advantage: Point

In tennis, there is a term called “advantage.” This happens when the two players have reached a kind of point stalemate called “deuce,” which requires that one of them win two consecutive points in order to win the game. The player who wins the next point after deuce is said to have the advantage. If that player wins the next point the game is hers. If not, the score returns to deuce. This will repeat itself until one player is able to score two points in a row and take the game.

In publishing, the line between vanity houses and trade houses has until quite recently been firmly anchored. In my opinion, as far as books are concerned, it’s still firm. Most self-published and vanity-published titles are godawful things. The rule of thumb is that somewhere around 95% of all manuscripts submitted to trade publishers are un-publishable. (Unsolicited manuscripts are the stuff of which nightmares are made as anyone who has ever worked with them knows painfully well.) Of that remaining five percent, most of those are rejected for various reasons, leaving a mere one percent or so of all manuscripts in the “pubishable” arena.

But with the technological advances in printing those formerly un-publishable manuscripts are now being printed. I’ve mentioned before that nearly three times the number of “non-traditional” books as “traditional” books are being issued but regardless of their classification they are all looking for publicity. That often includes book reviews.

BiblioBuffet is accustomed to receiving press releases, both print and electronic, e-mail requests, and books for our consideration. Some come from authors, but most are from publicists or publishing houses. It doesn’t matter to us. But what does matter is who publishes the book. Even before we opened our virtual doors, we had set a policy in place that precluded consideration of self-published and vanity-published books. In my previous work as books editor for a local newspaper I dealt with vanity-published books as well as with the slush pile in my earlier work as executive assistant for a local publisher. When the concept for BiblioBuffet started to metamorphose into a real site our submission page, one of the first written, was firmly grounded in those experiences. There are far too many excellent books produced by viable commercial and university presses that we’d never be able to get to so why add to that with books that were unlikely to be worthy of anyone’s reading? The answer was obvious. We excluded them from the get-go. It simply wasn’t worth our time to plow through what were sure to be haystacks of books seeking those very few golden needles.

So when I received a large box filled with books recently from Vantage Press I was astounded. Vantage Press is an old-time vanity house, having been around since long before technology made vanity publishing easy and inexpensive. To their credit, they have never been less than honest about their pay-to-play model, and their products are good-looking and durable. But given our policy, I had to politely e-mail the publicist and let her know that due to the nature of their model and our policies that we could not, unfortunately, consider any of their books for review. I wish her luck in her marketing efforts, and I sincerely meant it. And I assumed that was the end of that.

To my surprise she wrote back a couple of days later. Normally this is not a good thing since it is the point at which, in the past, the answer to me reflects an unhappy person with an urge to snark. But not in this case. She was kind and thoughtful, and had obviously read our policies and understood the reasons for them. And then she went on to point out that this old-time vanity house would, in spring 2011, be opening a new “traditional” branch called Vantage Point, one that intended to be a commercial publisher with all the bells and whistles (editorial gatekeepers, author advances, royalties, bookstore distribution, publicity and marketing) of any other commercial press, and that would compete in the public marketplace. They would offer eight books in their first season, she said, and would BiblioBuffet be willing to consider them for review.

The answer is yes. Yes, we will because it matters not that part of their enterprise is a vanity house. (A number of commercial publishers now offer vanity arms, and the two are kept, so to speak, at arm’s length.) It only matters that Vantage Point is going to have a regular trade division staffed with people from the commercial world.

Frankly, no one is more surprised than I. It will certainly be interesting to see how this works out. And who knows . . .  maybe we’ll find some darn fine books.

A Story of Statistics

No matter what your college class was like, I am here to tell you that statistics are not boring. In fact, they can tell quite a story. Here’s this week’s story:

Once upon a time there was a company named Bowker. This company is the keeper of all bibliographic information and does everything from issuing ISBNs to compiling statistics on the industry. Every year Bowker releases information on how things are going in terms of book production. Depending on one’s perspective the information can be good or bad, but regardless of how it is perceived it is essential information that drives all players in it. The annual report for 2009 was released in April, and I thought it might be fun to see how it could impact BiblioBuffet if we chose to let it. Bear in mind this is only a game. First the facts:

Fact 1: In every year, excepting leap years, there are 525,949 minutes.
Fact 2: Bowker has projected that a total of 288,355 traditional titles were released in 2009.
Fact 3: Bowker has projected that a total of 764,448 non-traditional titles were released in 2009.

Now, let’s take a quick detour to define traditional and non-traditional titles. Traditional titles are those that come from commercial publishers including university houses. Non-traditional titles, and I am quoting Bowker here, are “books, marketed almost exclusively on the web, . . . largely on-demand titles produced by reprint houses specializing in public domain works and by presses catering to self-publishers and ‘micro-niche’ publications.” In other words, these are books you are much less likely if at all to see on any bookstore shelf.

Moving on, let’s take the facts we quoted above, whirl them up a bit in the blender, and see what comes out. With 525,949 minutes and 288,355 books per year that  means that in 2009 one “traditional” book was published every two minutes. Around the clock. No meal breaks. No weekends or holidays. No sleep. Every two minutes a new book came out. (Of that number, fiction accounted for 45, 181 books that year meaning a novel was published every 11.6 minutes. And remember, this is just for “traditional” books.)

Non-traditional books by themselves are projected to total 764,448. That’s more than three-quarters of a million of those books in just one year, which means that during every one of those 525,949 minutes 1.5 non-traditional books was published. Again, around the clock.

Is it any wonder that BiblioBuffet has established review guidelines for book submissions that excludes, for the most part, these non-traditional books? Even if the quality was equal to what the commercial/university presses put out—and it’s nowhere near that—it would simply be impossible.

Going on with a bit more math—and don’t worry, I’ve done it all for you—here is what would happen if BiblioBuffet did attempt to review every commercially published book. We would need 10,114 reviewers writing every other week to cover them all. In just one year. Just for “traditional” books.

If we were to consider adding the non-traditional books (for a total of 1,052,803 books)  we would need an unimaginable 40,492 reviewers writing bi-weekly to cover them all.

My head. It hurts.

My point is that while statistics can lie, they can also point up some real truths. It is impossible to know even a respectable percentage of what is out there. We can only pick and choose the books that interest us from the books we know about. It’s limited, but it’s also the best we can do.

Are We Riding Waves of Literature or Are We Drowning in Crap?

An American Editor is one of the blogs I read regularly if not daily. This past week he has been looking at “e-Books and the Downfall of Literature.” Today, he focuses in on the role literature plays in our society. What struck me in particular was this:

When following the traditional publishing route, an author strives for excellence because the author needs to separate his or her work from that of the masses. The competition for gatekeeper recognition that drives an author to strive for excellence doesn’t exist in the direct-from-writer’s-computer-to-Internet-ebook world. I’m not suggesting that the direct-from-writer’s-computer-to-Internet-ebook authors do not strive to do their best, but rather that the pressure to do whatever it takes to be the best no longer exists; that an author more quickly reaches the point of saying his or her work is good enough. . . . Good enough becomes the great leveler. . . . The standard of good enough is not a high enough standard for literature.

He has one comment so far, which I believe brings up a valid point:

It seems that you are pointing out the loss of our culturally accepted “gatekeepers.”

If you really compare “judgment by the few” (cultural gatekeepers) with “judgment by the many” (Internet feedback and such) you see that neither is better or worse, they are just different. . . . Just because we no longer rely so heavily on professional reviewers and publishers, doesn’t mean we are without means of filtering the influx of literature. The difference is that there is a much broader range of authorities to choose from.

What we have truly lost or are losing is a culturally-shared body of work—or, I should say, we have fragmented into micro-communities with localized “cultural literacies.” But we have gained access to a much broader and more diverse body of literature. So, with loss comes gain.

I believe both points of view are valid and true. Literary gatekeepers—the editors and publishers—do filter out the fine from the flawed. But they also use other filters to choose manuscripts that have little to do with literature and everything to do with business survival such as the bottom line. If it means publishing forgettable but popular books, they do. And it is unquestionable, at least to me, that some manuscripts worthy of becoming Literature are bypassed not because they don’t meet “gatekeeper standards” but because they won’t sell enough.

On the other hand, I miss newspaper book sections far more in theory than in fact. The New York Times has shown its biases for its own writers and for male authors. The Los Angeles Times  was, frankly, boring in many cases. Its reviewers often seemed more concerned with their own self-knowledge than with the book under review. Losing them is a loss to the literary community. But while the world of literary websites, forums, and blogs offering “judgment by the many” may lack the professionalism and standards that “judgment by the few” possess, they have something rarely seen in those newspaper review sections: enthusiasm. Ground-floor passionate enthusiasm for books and reading that encompasses everyone. Many more books get talked about and become known to readers. They are helping to stimulate reading! And no amount of grousing by the “old guard” is going to change that—even thought their standards are worthy of being emulated.

Aside from the interest the article generated for me, I think it is timely. Last week I talked about why BiblioBuffet has a policy of not reviewing self-published or vanity-published books. It really comes down to two reasons: (1) too many books, not enough time, and (2) needles are really hard to find in haystacks. On rare occasions, however, a self-published book (never a vanity one, in my experience) comes along that is breathtaking. Amazingly, I saw two—a coffee-table cookbooks and a book of historical fiction about Somalian immigrants—this past weekend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. What made me stop was that they were virtually indistinguishable not only from a regular trade book but even from a top-of-the-line publisher like Knopf. I ended up buying one of them there and ordering the second when I got home. These are books I would like to review.

In fact, Nicki and I are currently discussing BiblioBuffet’s current book submission policies. What if anything will happen is unknown. But I see all this change in the publishing industry as creating tidal waves of changes in books. Hopefully, we won’t drown in crap but instead find ourselves riding our literary horizons gently onto the worldwide shores of Literature.

Writers’ Guidelines

All good writers are readers. So why, I sometimes ask myself, don’t those who send us queries read our writers’ guidelines. Many do, but a surprising number of applicants don’t. Or at least their submissions give no such indication. Real life examples of writers who waste their time and ours:

• Writers who assume we are a content site. BiblioBuffet does not publish “content,” defined by me as anything designed to attract website hits for advertisers. Content does fill up otherwise empty space, but provides very little in the way of good literary nutrition.
• Closely related to “content” producers are writers who propose articles on topics unrelated to what BiblioBuffet does publish: beauty, cars, finance, travel, etc. Their modus operandi is to create generic e-mails that they send out to websites without having any idea what the site is about. To their credit, they are generally polite when sent form rejections. 
• Writers who possess less than excellent English skills. Having these doesn’t assure good writing, but it is the starting point for every good writer. If a writer’s first language isn’t English but the writing is powerful and close to what we want we will definitely work with that writer on small grammatical errors. But when a writer tells me she has a Ph.D. in English yet her query letter is no better than a fourth-grade American student would put out, not only are we not going to respond but we are going to put her on our spam list. Along that same line: if a writer claims that Ph.D. and has a website that appears to back that up (excellent English, good writing) but his query is riddled with errors all we can deduce is that he is in the habit of attempting to scam editors into giving him a chance. It won’t work. The writer just made *the* list. And we will never have to worry about either writer clogging our in-boxes again.
• Writers who don’t understand that there is writing and then there is writing. “Writing worth reading” is writing that is worthy of a time commitment from readers. Today, there is so much competition for readers’ attention that the value of that attention has risen. Our writing must give readers such a good return on their “investment” that they choose to spend it with us every week.
• Writers who haven’t read BiblioBuffet but are just looking for outlets are not usually writers who impress us. By reading BiblioBuffet writers learn what types and level of writing we seek. And writers should be honest with themselves: do they want to write what we write about, and if so are they able to write to our standards?
• Writers who don’t read the our guidelines before they query. Anyone who has knows that we do not accept book reviews from guest contributors, that our word count requirement runs between 600 and 6,000 words, that our guest column area carries no deadline, and that we accept darn near any type of writing except poetry as long as it relates to books, reading, or related subjects.  

So there it is. Not quite in a nutshell, but well laid out, I think. Treat us right. Don’t try to overstate your credentials. If you don’t fit our requirements now, write more. Get into a critique group that isn’t hesitant to be brutally honest. Make yourself work harder to become better. Don’t think that publication should be easy just because the Internet allows it to be easy. Push! Trust me, the reward will be worth it regardless of where you dream of seeing your writing published. 

Copyright Does Not Mean “Right to Copy”

Earlier this week I had a shock when Google Alert sent me the latest news on our name. An author whose book had been favorably reviewed recently had copied the entire page on which the review was posted and pasted it (including the writer’s bio) into her blog. Minus the formatting, every single part of it was there.

I get it. She was excited. The review was outstanding. It will bring some attention to her book. But her willingness to steal our property in its entirety astonished me. Then it made me mad.

This is not a good thing.

Reviews of books, movies, theatre productions are often used in promotion and marketing. How many times have you seen sentences but more often phrases and words that praise or appear to praise—ellipses can work wonders—the referenced work? A lot. It’s impressive for a publisher to be able to say the New York Times loved the work, but they don’t use the entire review. The reason is copyright. The original article belongs to the publication or writer. It is as much theirs as any physical object they own.

So why then do some authors, most of whom I am sure would never steal material from other writers, feel that using a review is not really intellectual theft? Because it’s a review? Because it’s about their book? Because it’s not “real” writing. (If reviewers could really write, why would they write reviews of others’ material?)

I believe that this kind of thing happens for several reasons. But the most important in my opinion is that reviews are not perceived in the same way as other types of writing. Nonfiction demands (ideally) good research and factual accuracy. Literary fiction requires characters that engage the reader. Commercial fiction is plot-driven. But what are book reviews? Just someone’s opinion? After all, anyone can put up a “review” on Amazon, right?

That makes me cranky. Leaving aside book criticism, which is a highly specialized form of writing about books and difficult to achieve, writing reviews is or perhaps I will say it should be a written art form that demands curiosity, a background in literature, and the ability to explore a book in depth with an eye to its role in its genre and sometimes within its author’s oeuvre. So why is it accorded so little respect? And why is a review not viewed with quite the same perspective as other intellectual property?

I didn’t wait around to answer my own question, which was rhetorical anyway. I promptly sent a stern e-mail to the author (and copied the publisher) stating that our copyright had been violated and requiring that the piece either be removed or edited back to what could be considered “fair use.” The author contacted me within an hour, and was apologetic. She cut it back while providing a link to the full article so this particular problem has been resolved. But the question still remains.

Two of BiblioBuffet’s writers are authors. The rest love writing about books. Just because they write about others’ books rather than write their own does not mean their work is less deserving of respect than the books they are reviewing. Novels, nonfiction, poetry, short stories, essays, op-ed pieces, magazine and newspaper articles all have their place in the world of writing and reading. Not a single part of any of them deserves to be stolen by another writer regardless of the reason—and that includes promotion and marketing. If we at BiblioBuffet enjoy your work and say so, then quote us. (We love that!) But do it within the bounds of copyright law and respect for our work. You worked hard on your book. We work hard on our reviews. It’s a two-way door, and no one wants it slammed in her face.

The Ethics of BiblioBuffet

Even passionate book reviewers can feel overwhelmed with books at times. When I go to the post office and see half a dozen book packages or boxes I get excited. (What book lover wouldn’t?) But opening them is a little different. Not all interest me. Sometimes none do.

Many, of course, go out to BiblioBuffet’s reviewers to await their turn in the reviewer’s spotlight. Right now, there are six books for review on my desk, the oldest of which has been there for, um, a while. Like cats, they are very good at instilling guilt—their equivalent of “I’m starving!” is “I haven’t been read!”.

Reviewing books is a matter of picking and choosing. It has to be. There are too many good books published and too few good reviewers to do enough of them justice. Even if BiblioBuffet had 100 reviewers writing weekly we couldn’t cover even a small fraction of what is published on an annual basis.

Not that we would try. There are a lot of good books in which no one at BiblioBuffet has an interest, or that are inappropriate either because they are in a genre we do not review or because they were self-published or vanity-published.

That still leaves a whopping number of worthy books. So when I am faced with that, what happens? First, I e-mail the reviewers to find out who wants what. Sometimes, if I know a book will be of interest to a particular reviewer, I contact that person first. But often the e-mail is a group one, and whoever gets back to me first gets the book, especially if more than one reviewer wants it.

What happens to the books that no one wants?

That was recently the focus of a week-long discussion on Book Balloon, the literary forum to which I belong. Its main question: Why shouldn’t reviewers sell the books they get for free? And why shouldn’t buyers save money by buying  the ARCs (advanced reader copies) that other reviewers are selling on Amazon or eBay, or that they have sold to the Strand Bookstore?

Some members feel it is their right to cheaply priced or pre-publication copies, that is, unfinished, books. Managing Editor Nicki Leone and I are adamant that selling books we receive for review (whether they are reviewed or not) and don’t intend to keep are never to be sold or given to a person or entity who is going to sell them. In fact, one of the few rules we have for contributors is that this is not allowed. How do we enforce it? Well, we can’t. All we can do is be clear about our policy in our Writers’ Guidelines and rely on our contributors’ ethics.

The reason for our stand is two-fold. First, ARCs are unfinished books. They come with a warning that they are not to be quoted from as they are still in progress. They also have a large “Not for Sale” notice on them. These are not meant for the marketplace because the editing and rewriting is still going on. So if you read an ARC you are not seeing what the author and editor intend you to see, and if your opinion of an author’s work—especially if you talk about it on Library Thing, Amazon, in a book club, or elsewhere—is based on the unfinished version that may well do damage to the book, the author, and the publisher. It also cheats the reader of the true experience.

We feel strongly that it does not matter that the publisher prints ARCs specifically to be given away because the publisher does not, in our opinion, relinquish their rights to their disposition of it after it leaves their offices. The book is not designed to be sold in the normal manner of business, thereby benefiting the publisher and author.

Note that I am not talking about a re-sale but the initial sale. When you buy a book, part of the price you pay is returned to the publisher and then onto the author and her agent. A profitable return is what keeps everyone in business, keeps them writing and producing more books for readers to buy. But when the marketplace decides that its “right” to rip off the publisher and author is more important than supporting them it risks wounding, perhaps, over time, fatally, the business that produces the product it wants.

Aside from that, and even more important to Nicki and me, are the ethics involved. The books, finished or unfinished, are not given to us as free merchandise. To use them as such is unethical. There is no way around that, no justification that can override the wrong involved in using the books in a way that brings income to us but not to the publisher and author. Nicki stated it perfectly:

If you are a book reviewer and you benefit financially from anything besides the fee you receive for your writing, then you are being an unethical journalist. No gray area there.

It’s an issue of transparency and accountability. If we make money from something we are reviewing, our legitimacy is compromised. If we in any way financially benefit from something we are reviewing, besides our paychecks for writing the columns, our legitimacy is compromised.

The system in place is such that for all published books—and newly released films, issued DVDs, etc.—the creators of the product get a share of the first sale. It’s how they are paid for making the book. Anything that ends up on the market that bypasses that first sale cheats the author and publisher. It doesn’t matter if publishers “know” that review copies end up on eBay or at the Strand. It doesn’t matter if the book “given” out is an unpaginated advanced reviewer copy, an uncorrected proof, if it is stamped “not for sale” or if it is a finished copy and there is nothing to distinguish it from from one on the shelf at the bookstore. It was provided to reviewers or booksellers for a specific purpose and it is as unethical for them to turn around and sell it as it would be for a DVD store to play their movies and charge a ticket price.

As the founder of BiblioBuffet , it matters very much to me that my credibility as a literary website owner, and as a book reviewer, is spotless. It also matters that BiblioBuffet’s reviewers take their credibility as seriously as I do. It matters that our readers know that what we state about a book is our honest opinion, that no influence has come down, that we hold to standards of journalistic professionalism, and that we continue to hold to those standards after the review is done and finished.

BiblioBuffet takes pride in its commitment to integrity and honesty. We treat not only our writers with respect but you, our readers. Furthermore, we act with the highest regard for those who work with us to get you information on books: the publicists, editors, publishers, and authors. Because when it comes to ethical standards, there isn’t a slippery slope. You are either on one side of the line or you are on the other. BiblioBuffet stands proudly on the ethical side.