Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 1, January 1993 | Page 13

Reviewers Reviewed

11

"bone pile," but most of these go to charity hospitals, public libraries,
and church thrift shops. In New York, The Strand Bookstore
specializes in selling discarded review copies for half price, and
similar book stores exist in other cities.
How books are selected for reviews in the slick and very slick
magazines remains a mystery. Newsweek, Time, and even Playboy
and The New Yorker all assert that their methods of selecting books
and assigning reviews are codified and carefully scrutinized for
integrity, but an editor for a prominent New York-based magazine
also told me, "I don’t like to review new authors I haven't discovered
myself," and she admitted that sometimes a well-timed lunch or
other "perk" can sway her selections for a given issue. In all the
slicks, books are assigned for review by an editor, but like many daily
papers, some of the slicks have no book editor projjer, but only an Arts
or Entertainment Editor or Staff which includes book reviews in its
purview.
This system works differently in national publications such as
The New York Times Book Review, or in papers and magazines where
all book reviews are assigned to reviewers who are screened for
conflicts of interest, but not always for ability. In a telephone
interview with a New York Times editor, for example, I had to assure
her that I had no connection with the book, author, publisher, or
anyone else who might be connected to the work she was assigning to
me for review. She did not, however, ask me for a writing sample or
copies of my previously published work. I obtained the review
assignment simply by writing and asking for the opportunity.
All review publications are sensitive to "occasional" reviews.
New or even newish writers will also take a back seat to new books by
noted or popular writers. At certain times of the year, Christmas and
Mother’s Day for example, cook books, how-to books, and healthfitness books take priority over novels, histories, and
autobiographies; art and travel books and technical books are
popular at Christmas and Father’s Day. Around Valentine’s day,
books about love and having a healthy sex life are usually found on
review sections’ front pages, and the occult is as popular around
Halloween as American and military history are around Memorial
Day and the Fourth of July. Ethnic and regionally oriented titles also
take precedence when certain holidays and memorials come up on the