Wasn't It Just A Couple Of Years Ago That Everyone Was Looking Down At Blogs? That's All Over.

A New-Media Read On Books At Huffington Post in the Los Angeles Times is thought-provoking in so very many ways. I will mention just one:

"Hertz argued that authors, their editors and publicists should all be pushing their books on blogs, engaging their readers in direct conversations and opening their publicity campaigns months earlier than they have in the past."

Presumably she means in their own blogs, which would obviously be about marketing and thus on the up and up as far as the FTC is concerned.

I'm fine with that plan, since that is exactly the kind of blog I have here. But there's something about the L.A. Times article that made traditional reviews seem very...quaint. Though we in publishing liked to make reviews about selling by quoting any possible bit that could make us look good, in reality that's not what their function is. It would be a shame if criticism/analysis can't co-exist with marketing.

Link from artsJournal.com.