Writers and Editors

Plus blogs, links to author interviews, resources for critics and book reviewers. With some periodicals, you may have to register to view the publication online (sometimes for free). They want the demographic information so they know where (and how old) their readers are and thus to whom their (dreamed-of) online advertisers will be able to market their wares. 
• A few interesting author profiles and interviews
• About talk radio
• All the top radio talk shows and podcasts
• Venues for author interviews, book readings, glimpses into literary world (aka podcasts and downloads for bookworms and writers)
• Blog roll -- good book and lit blogs, newsletters
• Book reviews and literary criticism, Venues for
• Fake, not-quite-kosher, sock puppet and poison book reviews and Amazon's response to them
• How and where to get reviews and publicity for a book
• ---how to send review copies (advance reader copies, or ARCs)
• ---reviews that influence library purchases
• ---trade book reviews--and what are they?
• ---paid trade book reviews for self-published books
• ---free reviews and publicity for self-published and indie books
• Literary magazines and journals, including lists of them
• Mysteries--recommended reading sites
• Negative book reviews
• Reviews of audiobooks
• Resources for critics and book reviewers
• Social networking for book lovers (Goodreads and other book discovery communities)
• Venues for book reviews and criticism

SEE ALSO
• How and why to use beta readers (under Agents and book proposals--getting feedback on drafts)
• How to get book blurbs and celebrity endorsements
• Do blurbs help sell books?
• Sensitivity reading and sensitivity readers (reading drafts for offensive content, misrepresentation, or stereotypes, used particularly for YA fiction)
• Arguing about cultural appropriation (creating fiction about groups to which you don't belong)

Here's an article that puts some of this in historical perspective: The Birth of Conservative Delusion (Michael Goldfarb, Salon, 10-20-13). "The long road to Ted Cruz, Fox News, the Tea Party and right-wing insanity has its roots in the events of 1973." "Under Reagan, Republican appointees on the FCC abolished the fairness doctrine, the obligation for broadcasters to air both sides of controversial issues. This led to an explosion of opinionated propagandists on the air waves relentlessly attacking 'liberal' media. It continues to this day, degrading American public discourse." No Fox News here.
---After Hurricane Maria, AM radio makes a comeback in Puerto Rico (Ryan Bell, CJR, 4-23-18) “After the hurricane, Puerto Rico’s journalism industry was left in disarray. To cope with the lack of power and poor communication channels on the island, journalists pooled resources and formed reporting collaboratives....Contrary to predictions and global trends in the industry, radio proved itself in this circumstance to be vital...."AM radio emerged even stronger. Young people in the under-35 demographic are listening to radio news for the first time in their lives. Radios are at the center of a culture shift. Neighbors sit together drinking coffee and listening to the news.”
---Read Alix Spiegel's Transom Manifesto (Transom, 11-12-14), or “A Practical Guide to Different Radio Techniques” a.k.a. “Dorky Radio Dork Shares With Other Dorky Radio Dorks Information That Most Sane People Would Not Have The Remotest Interest In.” She talks about how the position of the narrator relative to the content is key to the effectiveness of storytelling on radio programs such as This American Life (which she co-founded), Radiolab, and hard news.
Wherever you are, in the United States, you may find this handy: Radio Locator https://radio-locator.com/. Plug in a city name, zip code, call letters, or various other variables and locate all the radio stations nearby --maybe to click on and listen to while traveling.

OR GO TO • Really good (intelligent) radio and TV talk shows and podcasts

A podcast is a radio broadcast on the Internet, which you can save and listen to when you want. It's called streaming when you listen through a website, but you can also download it (save it to your smartphone, tablet, or computer) and listen without being on the Internet.
For iPhones and iPads, use the Apple Podcasts app that comes on most Apple devices.
For Android phones and tablets, get the free Stitcher app or RadioPublic from Google Play. Here's Digital Trends on How to download and listen to podcasts on Android or iOS, which includes links to Overcast ($5), Pocket Casts ($4), and Google Play Music.

• Duotrope (large subscription-based online database of literary markets, $5 a month or $50 a year) You can track your submissions, receive market updates, find deadlines for contest submissions, etc.
• Submittable Another submissions portal literary journals use.
• Chill Subs, a search tool for literary magazines, presses, contests, residencies, and other opportunities.

• How to submit to literary journals (Rudri Patel, Writers.com, 7-6-21)
• Clifford Garstang's ranked listing of publications that publish fiction
---Garstang's ranked listing of publications that publish poetry
---Garstang's ranked listing of publications that publish nonfiction
• NewPages.com . Browse the literary magazines listed in NewPages to find short stories and longer fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, essays, literary criticism, book reviews, author interviews, art and photography. The magazine editor's description for each sponsored literary magazine gives you an overview of editorial styles—what writers they have published and what they are looking for (with contact information, subscription rates, submission guidelines, and more).
• The Practicing Writer (Erika Dreifus's newsletter) Curating fee-free (AND paying) calls and competitions—plus other resources—for writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. See also
---13 Questions to Ask Before Submitting to a Literary Journal (Erika Dreifus, LitHub, 6-27-16)
---Where to Publish Your Work (resources for publishing short fiction, poetry, essays, and/or book reviews)
• 56 Literary Journals that Pay their Authors (Emily Harstone, Authors Publish, 3-11-24)

• Balancing Your Submission Budget for Literary Journals (John Sibley Williams, on Jane Friedman's blog, 1-8-19) How to minimize and manage your spending on submission fees (use Paypal), maximize your profit, and identify a strategy that works for you.
• Erika Krouse’s Ranking of 500-ish Literary Magazines for Short Fiction
• Lit Mag Resources You Can’t Do Without (Jenn Scheck-Kahn on Jane Friedman's blog, 12-19-18) Jenn is founder of Journal of the Month. "Literary magazines, also called literary journals or lit mags, are devoted to short-form creative writing. What distinguishes them is what they publish (a single genre or a mix of genres), how often they publish (annually, biannually, quarterly, monthly), and their medium of publication (print only, online only, combination of print and online)." Jenn writes about identifying the best lit mags for your writing, finding magazines open for submissions, tracking submissions, and evaluating responses.
• Should Literary Journals Charge Writers Just to Read Their Work? (Joy Lanzendorfer, The Atlantic, 10-25-15) Publications are increasingly charging fees to consider submissions—a practice that’s bad for the writing community at every level.

• How the Literary Journal Landscape Is and Isn’t Changing (Andrea A. Firth's Q&A with Becky Tuch on Jane Friedman's blog, 4-26-22) The publisher of the Lit Mag News Roundup discusses current trends, editor pet peeves, diversity, how to handle rejection, and more. See also Tuch's Lit Mag News Roundup The latest news in lit mag publishing.
• Poets & Writers guide to literary magazines. Connect your poems, stories, essays, and reviews to the right audiences by researching over eight hundred literary magazines in our database. Here, you’ll find editorial policies, submission guidelines, contact information—everything you need to direct your work to the publications most amenable to your vision.
• BookFox Ranking of the 100 Best Literary Magazines (John Fox ranks literary magazines by how often their short stories have appeared in the Best American Short Stories.
• 18 Literary Journals with Fast Response Times (Emily Harstone, Authors Publish)
• Bookfox Ranking of Literary Nonfiction Markets John Fox uses the Best American Essays series to rank magazines, literary journals, newspapers and other literary nonfiction markets by how often their essays are cited in the anthology.
• Wikipedia's list of literary magazines and journals (periodicals devoted to short fiction, poems, essays, creative nonfiction, book reviews and similar literary endeavors which have published each year for ten years or more)
• Erika Krouse’s Ranking of 500-ish Literary Magazines for Short Fiction
---Creative Nonfiction Literary Magazines (Erika Krouse)
• Calls for Submissions (Published to Death) Literary journals and publishers put out calls for submissions when they are seeking new material.
• Chill Subs (Join for free.) There are 3000+ literary magazines in their database. Find the information you need to submit your writing.

• The Little Magazine in Contemporary America edited by Ian Morris and Joanne Diaz (University of Chicago Press). An anthology of interviews and essays about litmags since "the end of the ascendancy of print periodicals," by 23 editors whose magazines have flourished over the past 35 years. "...a fascinating set of responses to the two great changes in writing and reading since 1980. The first is the internet, which has given a new face to the drive of letters toward action-for-change, enabling immediate distribution of readers’ insights in answer to the work of artists—and in answer to postings by other web readers. A little magazine today can speak to audiences who never read the magazine itself; they can gather around the magazine’s comment sites for warmth, argument, and validation. The second great change in the world of letters during the past 35 years is the transformative effect of creative nonfiction as a cross-genre mode. For it has encouraged heady mixtures and a renewal of rhetorical poise in the art of many fine poets and prose writers, breathing delight into the work of making it new."--from a review by Mary Kinzie, Northwestern University
• Opportunities for Historically Underrepresented Authors (Authors Publish, April 2023)
• Lit Mag Submissions 101: How, When, and Where to Send Your Work (Lincoln Michel, Authors Guild) How literary magazines read submissions; the 1% rule; why submissions are rejected; preparing your manuscript (send best work, good formatting, cover letter, submitting in tiers, dealing with rejection, resubmitting after rejection, etc.
• Why You Should Keep Submitting After a Rejection Letter (Ashley Jones, Brevity, 5-10-19)
• 2018 Literary Magazine Rankings: Clifford Garstang's annual ratings of literary magazines in terms of Pushcart Prizes awarded for poetry, for fiction, and for nonfiction..
• Faster Times list (Lincoln Michel's list of literary magazines that regularly publish fiction)

• Pushcart Prize ranking of literary magazines (fiction) Clifford Garstang's lists at Perpetual Folly, ranked according to number of Pushcart Prizes and mentions. Here are the rankings for nonfiction and for poetry.
• PEN/O'Henry index of literary magazines
• Bookfox's list of literary journals (ranked according to how many stories or mentions they've had in Best American Short Stories (BASS).
• Literary Markets ranked by award anthologies (Mark Watkins' list, which includes such magazines as The New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly)
• Top 50 Literary Magazines (Every Writer) See also its complete list.
• Selby's List 2.0 (The Venerable List of Experimental Poetry/Art Magazines, curated by Jon Henson
• The Best Literary Magazines & Journals (AbeBooks.com)
• Literary Magazines, one section of 100 Essential Sites for Voracious Readers (Masters in English)
• Canadian literary magazines (Wikipedia's list)
• VIDA (Women in Literary Arts provide counts, demonstrating how much men are favored over women in the literary world). See, for example, Lie by Omission: The Rallying Few, The Rallying Masses. "The Paris Review’s numbers, previously among the worst in our VIDA Count, have metamorphosed from deep, male-dominated lopsidedness into a picture more closely resembling gender parity."
• 5 Paying Literary Magazines to Submit to in January 2023 (S. Kalekar, Authors Publish, Jan.2023)

The best talks shows are not only good places to hear about what's going on in the world, and why, but also a great way to hear authors talk about their books and other writings. And these are fantastic shows to listen to while while you're doing physical and mechanical work -- like checking website links! Let me know which intelligent talk shows that are available online are missing here. Here is a list of the NPR partners , all the public radio stations that help make podcasts of their shows available. Sometimes you have to go to the originating station for a program to find the program's podcasts. Here's Listen Notes (an excellent podcast search engine). And here, in alphabetical order, all the really good shows I know of:

• A Beautiful World (Minnesota Public Radio), a news program that features inspirational stories and positive a news program that features inspirational stories and positive trends from around the world, inspired by "Solutions Journalism," which seeks to illuminate and report stories not only about the world's problems and challenges, but also about achievements and solutions.
• AfterWords (C-Span's Book TV) -- authors of the latest nonfiction books interviewed by journalists, public policy makers, and legislators (both current guests and archives)
• All Songs Considered (ASC)
• All Things Considered (Robert Siegel, Michele Norris and Melissa Block present a daily mix of news, interviews, and features--NPR and WNYC)
• American History TV (C-Span3)
---Oral Histories
---The Civil War
---History Bookshelf
• American Public Radio programs
• American RadioWorks hour-long documentary from American Public Radio, with in-depth reporting on public affairs, social and cultural subjects and the 20th century experience)
• The Animal House (WAMU, weekly discussion explores the latest in animal science, pet behavior, and wildlife conservation)
• As It Happens (long-running CBC interview show, with Carol Off and Jeff Douglas, with humor on the side)
• Ask Me Another Puzzles, word games and trivia played in front of a live audience (NPR and WNYC)
• A Way With Words (lively language show, with Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett; be sure to browse the newsletter archives)
• BackStory (the American History Guys bring historical perspective to the events happening around us today). See the BackStory archives

• BBC programs (British Broadcasting Corporation
---BBC News
---BBC podcasts
---BBC Radio 4 programmes, such as A Point of View
---BBC radio programs (alphabetical listing)
---BBC World Service
• Becoming Wise: The book and the podcast (Krista Tippett, podcast). Read her blog essay Rules for discussing the meaning of it all.
• Ben Franklin's World (a podcast about early American history). Podcast archives.
• The Big Interview (Dan Rather, AXS.tv) See Dan Rather on Trump, Nixon, and why he never worked in network news again (Kyle Pope, CJR, 7-9-18)
• The Big Listen (WAMU and NPR) There are tens of thousands of podcasts out there. So how do you know what to listen to? On The Big Listen — THE broadcast about podcasts from WAMU and NPR — host Lauren Ober introduces you to podcasts you've you might not have ever heard of, and gives you the inside scoop on shows you already love. Helps you curate your playlist.
• The Big Read (Financial Times podcast) Longform stories that explore and explain key themes in world news, science, and business, and discussions with FT reporters.
• BlogTalkRadio. Read, for example, Authors, Consider Blog Talk Radio! (Molly Greene). Read about shows featuring books.

• Bob Edwards (and Bob Edwards Weekend)
• Bookable (Amanda Stern, in conversation with established authors and emerging talent)
• Booknotes.org (C-Span's amazing archive of Brian Lamb's 800 interviews with nonfiction authors, 1989-2004, many with streaming video, all with transcripts -- searchable alphabetically or by category)
• Booktalk Nation (Authors Guild's project to build a nationwide community of authors, readers, and independent booksellers). Nationwide phone-in and live online video events are intended to supplement book tours and other efforts promoting new books. Press release:Next Up: Video.
• Book TV (C-SPAN2, booktv.org, top nonfiction authors and books). Listen live online  (who's being interviewed now) and Video Library. The site is full of transcripts that may be helpful in research, or just to satisfy your curiosity (more quickly than listening)  Current Book TV schedule
• The Bowery Boys (podcast about New York City history). Big archives .
• The Brian Lehrer Show (WNYC Radio's daily two-hour talk news program, covering politics and life. on which Brian Lehrer synthesizes the major issues of the day and provides a conduit for analysis between his interviewees)
• Bullseye with Jesse Thorn (Maximum Fun) Features interviews with brilliant creators, culture picks from favorite critics and irreverent original comedy (formerly The Sound of Young America).

• Car Talk, Tom & Ray Magliozzi acting silly in Boston and answering questions about car problems (NPR)
• CBC Radio podcasts (CA). Featured podcasts: The Current, Day 6, As It Happens, Atlantic Voice, Back Story, B.C. Almanac, North by Northwest, BC: The Early Edition, Because News, Calgary: The Eye Opener, Campus -- and that's just page 1.
• Charlie Rose Searchable by person, topic, or year. Categories include All, Politics, World, Entertainment, and Tech. See also the ten Collections (shows, by category, with such categories as Actors on Shakespeare, The Brain Series, The Humor Section, Nobel Laureates, The Rise of Isis, Furry Friends).
• Chicago Public Radio (produces "This American Life," "Eight Forty-Eight," "Odyssey," "Schadenfreude," "Performance Space," among others)
• Code Switch (NPR) News from the frontiers of race, ethnicity and culture. Code Switch podcasts

• The Colbert Report (Feel the news along with Stephen Colbert, America's ballsiest pundit, with highlights and full episodes of The Colbert Report, from The Daily Show or Comedy Central)
• The Conversation (BBC Word Service; download the podcasts) Every week the host interviews women from two different countries about something they have in common. See, for example, My Family's Hidden History, in which women from Singapore and India talk about how they discovered their family history (their families fled Pakistan during the Partition). H/T Vera Rosenbluth
• C-SPAN
---C-Span Radio online (listen online if your radio doesn't pick up the broadcast). Here is the radio schedule.
---C-SPAN podcasts (The Weekly, Lectures in History, Washington Today, Q&A, Newsmakers, The Communicators, Landmark Cases, After Words, American in Turmoil, etc.
---C-SPAN TV, live (listen online)
---C-SPAN2 (live, online)
---C-SPAN3
---C-SPAN Video Library
---C-Span In-Depth Interviews (three-hour interviews)
---C-Span Series A-Z (America and the Courts, American History TV, American Presidents, etc., on through The Supreme Court, Toqueville, Washington Journal, and The White House)

• The Current (investigative radio news, Canadian Broadcasting Corp.)

• Day 6 (CBC) with Brent Banbury (lively weekend news magazine show)
• Democracy Now
• The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (TV). Emmy-award-winning news parody, with edgy humor and interviews, such as this one with the Spice Girls, dripping with sarcasm.
• Diane Rehm show (the current podcast)
• The old, daily Diane Rehm shows (archive of past programs -- daily weekday show featuring smart conversation and civil dialogue on top news stories and new ideas)
• The Dinner Party Downloud (an hour-long celebration of culture, food, and conversation with hosts Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam designed to help you dazzle your friends at this weekend's get-together)

• Embedded Hosted by Kelly McEvers, Embedded takes a story from the news and goes deep. What does it feel like for a father in El Salvador to lie to his daughter about the bodies he saw in the street that day? What does it feel like for a nurse from rural Indiana to shoot up a powerful prescription opioid?

• Food Sleuth Radio (PRX, Melinda Hemmelgarn, registered dietitian and investigative nutritionist) "Helping people think beyond their plates"
• Forum with Michael Krasny. KQED's live call-in program presents wide-ranging discussions of local, state, national and international issues, as well as in-depth interviews.
• The Frame (KPCC). Movies, music, TV, arts and entertainment, straight from Southern California. Hosted by John Horn
• Freakonomics Radio (co-produced by Marketplace™ and WNYC -- Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner use the tools of economics to explore real-world behavior). Listen to, for example (and read about) Ten Ideas to Make Politics Less Rotten.
• ****Fresh Air® with Terry Gross, excellent interviews by a gifted and beloved interviewer, often with novelists or musicians. One of my favorite episodes: The History Of American Imperialism, From Bloody Conquest To Bird Poop (Dave Davies interviewing historian Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, who shares surprising stories of U.S. territorial expansion, including how the desire for bird guano compelled the seizure of remote islands. His book is How to Hide an Empire.

• Gadget Lab Podcasts (Wired)
• The Genealogy Radio Show (Lorna Moloney, Raidió Corca Baiscinn)
• Global Talk Radio (Tune In, many different programs)

• Here & Now (WBUR) live midday news program with Robin Young and Jeremy Hobson. (Click here for Past Shows.
• Hidden Brain (NPR, podcasts) Using science and storytelling, Hidden Brain's host Shankar Vedantam reveals the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, the biases that shape our choices, and the triggers that direct the course of our relationships.
• House Calls with Dr. Vivek Murthy, a podcast hosted by the 21st U.S. Surgeon General. How to navigate the messiness and uncertainties of life to find meaning and joy. By sharing openly what’s on our minds and in our hearts, we can find strength and healing through connection. Because conversations can be healing. Finding chosen family. What can nature teach us about connection?
• Hourly News Summary Five minutes of NPR news, updated hourly.
• How Sound: The Backstory to Great Radio Storytelling (podcasts, produced by PRX.org and Transom.org) A bi-weekly podcast on radio storytelling produced by Rob Rosenthal for the Public Radio Exchange. From fieldwork and recording techniques to narrative and ethics, HowSound explores the ins-and-outs of radio storytelling. Archive of HowSound podcasts.
• How to Do Everything (half advice show, half survival guide--how to find a date, how to find water in the desert, etc.)
• HumaNature (real stories where humans and our habitat meet, produced and distributed by Wyoming Public Media)

• In-Depth (video of monthly C-span program, 3 hours on the works of a single author, with Q&A from audience). See Archive of past episodes.
• Indivisible (WNYC) Indivisible is public radio’s national conversation about America in a time of change (Trump's presidency).
• In Our Time (A to Z archives, BBC, Melvyn Bragg and guests discussing the history of ideas)
• Intelligence Squared (IQ2US.org), a U.S. radio forum for live debate and intelligent discussion (NY Times: "pointed political debate minus all the shouting) See IQ2 blog and IQ2, Past Debates
• Interfaith Voices
(Maureen Fiedler brings fascinating guests and discussions to this religious news magazine, interesting even to the faithless -- conversations on a variety of topics, "promoting interfaith understanding through dialogue") Archive of past shows. "Does not preach or proselytize, and is not affiliated with any religious organization." Compelling shows
• In the Author's Voice (WSIU)

• Invisibilia (Latin for invisible things), Lulu Miller, Hanna Rosin, and Alix Spiegel co-host this popular NPR program about the invisible forces that control human behavior – ideas, beliefs, assumptions and thoughts. "Invisibilia interweaves narrative storytelling with scientific research that will ultimately make you see your own life differently."
• It's Been a Minute with Sam Sanders (NPR podcast, conversations about what's going on in the world, with deep dives on Tuesday with artists, writers, journalists, etc., and Fridays a recap of the week's news, culture etc.)

• Justice. What's the right thing to do? Nearly one thousand students pack Harvard’s historic Sanders Theatre to hear Michael Sandel talk about justice, equality, democracy, and citizenship. Now you can take the same journey in moral reflection. Great TV. Click on the episode guide.
• Kind World, an online experiment at WBUR in Boston, celebrated the effect random acts of kindness can have on others.
• ****The Kojo Nnamdi Show (WAMU --live two-hour magazine program highlights news, political issues, and social trends of the day. Special regular segments, archived: Tech Tuesday, with The Computer Guys and Friday, The Politics Hour .

• Latino USA (NPR), the radio journal of news and culture, is the only national, English-language radio program produced from a Latino perspective.
• LGBTQ&A (Jeffrey Masters, host, for The Advocate) A weekly interview podcast that gets beyond transition and coming out stories in order to get to know each person's defining moments, their accomplishments, and how they got to where they are today.
• Longform Podcast

• Marketplace (American Public Media -- daily, presents news on business, economics, and money)
• Modern West (a monthly digest of news and cultural stories from the Mountain West, from Wyoming Public Radio)

• Morning Edition (NPR). ‎Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep provide news, analysis, commentary, and coverage of arts and sports. Stories are told through conversation as well as full reports.) Here's an archive of stories.
• The Moth Radio Hour Compelling storytelling by professional and amateur storytellers. Great listening for long drives.

• National Public Radio programs guide
---NPR podcasting directory
---alphabetical by title
---by topic (for example, segments on gardeningon
---by provider (radio station)
• New America Now (hour-long news and culture audio magazine for and from California's ethnic communities, New American Media)
• The New Yorker podcasts
---The New Yorker Radio Hour, a weekly program presented by the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, and produced by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. (This is Episode 7, The Mayor and the Mormon Church, and David Angell). At about minute 25, Roger Angell -- pronounced Angel -- talks to David Remnick about the relationship between editors and writers, and about his writing of This Old Man. See All Episodes (on WNYC).
---Fiction podcast (monthly reading and conversation with the New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman)
---Politics and More Podcast (a weekly discussion, hosted by The New Yorker’s executive editor, Dorothy Wickenden)
---The Writer’s Voice: Fiction from the Magazine (New Yorker fiction writers read their stories)
---The best recent New Yorker podcasts

• 99% Invisible (a tiny radio show about design, architecture & the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world, designed by Roman Mars, one of Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in 2013. Anchor show for Radiotopia

• Old time Radio (archives of old radio shows, Archive.org). Browse by collection, title, subject, keywords, date, or creator.
• On Being (with Krista Tippett -- conversations about the big questions at the center of human life--the human side of news and issues)
• 1A (podcast from NPR and WAMU) Hosted by Joshua Johnson, inspired by the First Amendment, 1A champions America's right to speak freely. News with those who make the news, great guests and topical debate. Weekday conversation framed in ways to make you think, share and engage. From NPR and WAMU. Taking over Diane Rehm's time slot, weekdays 10 to noon.
• Only a Game (WBUR, NPR) Sports, NPR style, once a week. Archive.
• ****On Point (Tom Ashbrook)
• On the Media. WNYC’s weekly investigation into how the media shapes our world view. Veteran journalists Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield give you the tools to survive the media maelstrom. See podcast archive. For example, Print Is Back Again (3-11-16) A special hour on publishing--from Amazon’s flirtation with brick-and-mortar bookstores to wholesale suppliers shilling books by the foot as decorative objects.

• Out on the Wire (Jessica Abel, an index to all the stories mentioned in her book Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio

• Participation Nation . Archived stories focus on the ways we work together, the similarities among us, the good deeds that people do. "Tell us your stories, in 100 words or less, of good deeds, constructive actions, etc." Last story dated 2012 but you can still listen
• PBS News Hour podcasts (full show, segments, Politics Monday, Shields and Brooks, Science, Art Beat, Brief But Spectacular, Health, Making Sen$e, Supreme Court, World.
• PBS TV online (WETA), streaming and PBS WEB video
• Planet Money (the economy explained, NPR). Listen online or to the podcast, or read the transcript. Excellent explanations, including several long stories done for This American Life.
• A Prairie Home Companion, no longer with Garrison Keillor (American Public Media) A "loveable cornball dose of middle America" with news and views and music from Lake Wobegon, the little town where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average"). Some News from Lake Wobegon monologues, Guy Noir, and other treasures.. Do read The Garrison Keillor You Never Knew (Cara Buckley, NY Times, 6-16-16), a story about the man and the show -- how it came to be, why it succeeded, and why it might be on its way out.
• Public Radio Exchange (PRX) playlists

• Q (CBC with Shad). Here's a How Marc Maron squeezes honest conversations out of people Maron and Shad discuss the roots of the wildly popular podcast, WTF with Marc Maron, and how Maron has managed to have frank, illuminating conversations with everyone from Mel Brooks to Mick Jagger.

• Radio Diaries. From teenagers to octogenarians, prisoners to prison guards, bra saleswomen to lighthouse keepers. The extraordinary stories of ordinary people. Started with a Kickstarter funding campaign. Part of Radiotopia, PRX.
• Radio Garden (live). Click on the globe, go anyplace in the world, and listen to what's being streamed around the world. Confused? Listen to/or read Radio Garden Lets You Tune into a World of Global Broadcasts (Deepak Singh, Goats and Soda, NPR/WAMU, 12-16-16)
• ***RadioLab . You can listen to great storytelling online as either hour-long episodes or "shorts" (podcasts). Here are some interesting (sometimes "heart-swelling") programs, which you can download or listen to online. Once in a while this comes on while I'm driving and I think I'm listening to This American Life. Found this episode on Lost and Found especially interesting. Produced by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich
• Radio Netherlands Worldwide (in English)
• Reply All (PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman, hosts, for Gimlet) A podcast of stories about how people shape the internet, and how the internet shapes people.
• ****Reveal (Al Letson and journalists from the Center for Investigative Reporting) Journalists speaking truth to power.

• Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine (another Maximum podcast). Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband Justin dig through the annals of medical history to uncover all the odd, weird, wrong, dumb and just gross ways we've tried to fix people over the years. Hear Sawbones archives (on podbay.fm)

• ****Science Friday (Ira Flatow -- great listening if you have even a remote interest in science--"Brain fun, for curious people"). This is one of those shows you listen to as you run errands on Saturday and spend half an hour sitting in a parking lot because you get caught up in a story and want to hear the ending. The good news is, if you can't wait that long, you can listen to it later at home.
• Science VS (Gimlet) takes on fads, trends, and the opinionated mob to find out what’s fact, what’s not, and what’s somewhere in between.
• Selected Shorts (WNYC, short fiction read by the stars of stage and screen, recorded live)
• Serial (from the creators of This American Life, an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a true story over a whole season (and now several seasons). "Serial's first 12 episodes were dedicated to investigating the 1999 murder of 18-year-old high school student Hae Min Lee. Her body was discovered in Leakin Park in Baltimore, Maryland. A few weeks later, her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Masud Syed, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder."~Digital Spyhttps://www.stitcher.com/show/sound-judgment
• Sound Judgment Elaine Appleton Grant's podcast on podcast hosting.
• Sound Medicine (WFYI and Indiana University School of Medicine) explores new medical research, evaluates the latest health trends, and dispels common medical myths. Special features include oncologist Dr. Larry Cripe’s Grace Notes essays and Dr. Rich Frankel’s Patient Listening stories.
• Soundprint (radio stories ranging from hard investigative to the evocative experiential documentary)
• Snap Judgment (a themed, weekly NPR storytelling show, compelling personal stories - mixing tall tales with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio)
• ****The Splendid Table (the show for people who love to eat, with Lynne Rossetto Kasper). Click here for recipes.
• Stanford Out Loud. Podcasts of Stanford Magazine stories: Stanford Prison Experiment, the death and probable murder of Jane Stanford, and Outbreak: How a band of student volunteers and a campus physician with a carnation in his lapel helped confine the tragedy of the 1903 typhoid epidemic.
• StarDate (Sandy Wood, runs on more than 300 radio stations--very brief broadcasts/podcasts about astronomy and the universe)
• State of the Re:Union (a series that set out to explore how a particular American city or town creates community, the ways people transcend challenging circumstances and the vital cultural narratives that give an area its uniqueness)
• The State We're In (TSWI, first-person stories from around the world about how we treat each other). This weekly radio program from Radio Netherlands Worldwide, which explored human rights, wrongs, and what we do about them, has stopped producing shows. Many of the programs were still online last time we checked, including The Last Show--Our Favorites! (27 Oct 2012).
• Still Buffering (real-life sisters Sydnee McElroy (Sawbones) and Rileigh Smirl as they help bridge the gap between the teenagers of yesterday and today, with "Maximum Fun" podcasts. Archives.
• S-Town (podcast from Serial and This American Life) John despises his Alabama town and decides to do something about it. He asks a reporter to investigate the son of a wealthy family who’s allegedly been bragging that he got away with murder.
• Storycorps (podcasts)

• The Story (with Dick Gordon -- first-person stories from real people, not experts, to help us understand what's happening in the world). Special features:
The Story Salon -- e.g., The Tribesman Who Friended Me on Facebook (partner, Salon Magazine); Following the Oil (stories about oil & the environment following the BP Oil leak 2010); Good Water (stories about the ways we use, waste, and pollute water); Messages from [Little] Mogadishu (Abdi Iftin reporting on his new life as a Somali refugee); Stories of Haiti, and more.
• Studio 360 (Kurt Anderson's smart guide to what’s happening in pop culture and the arts -- and the people who are creating and shaping our culture)

• The Takeaway (John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee host this national morning news program that invites listeners to be part of the American conversation)
• Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso, a weekly podcast of intimate, long-form interviews with the people shaping our culture today: filmmakers, comedians, activists, politicians, authors, actors.
• Talk of the Nation (NPR). Alas: After 21 Years, NPR Is Ending ‘Talk of the Nation’ (Brian Stelter, NY Times Media & Advertising, 3-19-13). The Friday version of “Talk of the Nation” — “Science Friday with Ira Flatow” — will still be distributed.
• TED ED: Lessons Worth Sharing (free educational website for teachers and learners, using engaging videos to create customized lesson)
• TED Radio Hour (based on riveting TEDTalks from the world's most remarkable minds)
• TED Talks: Ideas Worth Spreading. Excellent speakers on fascinating topics, free to the world, on video, often or usually with transcripts. Browse themes and categories here.
• Third Coast International

• ****This American Life (WBEZ, Ira Glass, host) Great storytelling, each week on a different theme. Want to pitch a story? See four sample pitches (for stories that made it onto the show). Listen to archived radio shows (podcasts, apps, or radio). Explore the radio archive by date or by contributor, among other choices. Listen on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Radio Public, Pandora, or Pocket Casts.
• To the Best of Our Knowledge (ttbook) (Wisconsin Public Radio)
• To the Point (Warren Olney, host; news on hot-button issues, great listening)
• Too Much Information (Benjamen Walker, WFMU)
• Transom Podcasts archive (Transom is a showcase & workshop for New Public Radio). Listen for example to Andrew Forsthoefel's delightful Walking Across America .
• Truth Be Told (KQED) What if we could get better at handling racially charged situations by breaking down our past encounters?
• The Two-Way (Breaking news from NPR, image and text). See Last 'Two-Way' Post Isn't Our Last Story: A Look Back, And How To Find Us Now (Camila Domonoske, The Two-Way, 6-5-18) Work not stopping, but re-locating, to NPR News, orNational or or NPRWorld.

• University of the Air (Wisconsin Public Radio). Listen to podcasts in UOA archives.
• Un(re)solved (Frontline podcast) Introducing an investigative podcast series and part of a multiplatform project from FRONTLINE. For example, what prompted the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate over 150 unsolved civil rights era killings? And what does justice look like for the families of the victims?
• Voices of the First World War (BBC Radio 4) Dan Snow brings together the sound archive collections of the Imperial War Museums and the BBC for the first time to tell the story of World War I through the voices of those who were there.

• ****Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! Peter Sagal and Carl Kasell host the weekly NPR news quiz panel show alongside some of the best and brightest news and entertainment personalities.
• WAMU-FM (this is a station, not a program--the local station at American University, in the D.C. area, which produces great programs, many of which are broadcast nationally. Its slogans: "Radio without all the noise" and "The mind is our medium.")
• WITS (a live public radio show that brings world-class comedians, actors, and musicians to the stage of the Fitzgerald Theater, where host John Moe gives them and the audience the time of their lives)
• WNYC (all shows) Your destination for all things public radio.
• World Business Report (BBC)
• World Religions 101 (Interfaith Radio)
• WTF with Marc Aaron. In Episode 190 (a premium podcast--not free), Todd Hanson, one of the original writers for the Onion, tells a powerful story about depression.

• The Writer's Almanac (Garrison Keillor brings poetry to the people!). See The Comfort of Consistency (Alec Glassford, The Stanford Storytelling Project, 6-6-14) "...if you embed your narratives with consistent idiosyncrasies—a song to open, a proverb to end, a constant tempo—you will create tiny traditions for your audience to hold on to, little anchors that tie their hearts to your stories."
• wsRadio.com (index of all wsRadio.com shows, targeted to very specific audiences)
• You Must Remember This (podcast about the secret and/or forgotten history of Hollywood in its first century) See searchable archive.

MORE PODCAST FAVORITES:
• The 50 Best Podcasts of 2018 (Laura Jane Standley and Eric McQuade, The Atlantic, 12-23-18)
• The 10 Best Podcasts of 2018 (Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 12-5-18) Political scandals, true crime, and Y2K.
• 27 Podcasts You Need to Start Listening to in 2018 (Scott Bryan, Tim Lane, Julia Furlan, Buzzfeed, 2-2-18) Follow-up to 27 Podcasts You Should Listen To In 2017.
• The Best Podcasts For Book Lovers (Book Scrolling, 10-9-17)
• The Best New Social Thriller Is a Podcast (New York Times review of "Adventures in New America."
• Spotlight on New York Times podcasts
• Post Reports (daily podcast from The Washington Post)
• Top ranking podcasts in news and politics (Podbay.fm)
• Promote Your Writing by Getting Interviewed & Featured on Podcasts (American Society of Journalists and Authors, $20 to public)

• BookCrossing "A modern-day message in a bottle." A popular book sharing site, with some paid features, including book tagging: You register a book, get a Bookcrossing ID, use that to physically tag a book, and release it into the wild (e.g., leave it in a coffee shop or on the subway). The person who finds the book you set free can register it, so you can follow where it travels.
• Bookish (NetGalley, publisher-owned) Discover books you might like: giveaways, recommendations, exclusive author content, etc.
• Bookly An app to help you keep track of all your books.
• BookMooch (Give books away. Get books you want.)
• Book Movement (book giveaways, reading guides, reviews, a community)
• Book Sloth, a mobile app to connect young adult readers for community and recommendations.
• Bookstagram, the highly successful bookish wing of the Instagram app, where you can get book recommendations.
• Booqsi, a “community-focused, Amazon-free alternative to Goodreads,”
• Bookperk. HarperCollins' site offers perks for "insiders."
• Comic Book Resources (a community and resource for comic book lovers)
• Copper, an "author-centric book discovery app that is designed to connect readers with writers"
• GoodReads (a popular site (purchased by Amazon in 2013) for rating and commenting on books,for keeping track of what you read, and would like to read--or forming a book club, answering trivia, or collecting your favorite quotations--plus some giveaways). See Penny Sansevieri's How To Maximize Goodreads Giveaways and Using Goodreads to market your book.

• inReads (WETA, DC's public television affiliated, launched inRead 6-22-11, in Beta). Lets users converse about books, read reviews and get recommendations. Read (PW account here.
• Kobo's Reading Life. Explore. Unlock. Share.
• Libib, a home library management app, available in a free standard version and a pro (paid) version, which you use to organize all your media: books, movies, video games and music. "If you already have an extensive library of books on Goodreads, but you’d just like to have them better organized, you have the option to export your Goodreads library to a .csv file, which can then be uploaded to Libib." ~Emily Stochl, Book Riot
• ***LibraryThing A cataloging and social networking site (almost a book club) for book lovers, which helps you create a library-quality catalog of books: books you own, books you've read, books you'd like to read, books you've lent ... whatever grouping you'd like. Since everyone catalogs online, they also catalog together. Enter what you're reading, or your whole library--and connect with people who read what you read. User-powered book ratings, reviews,and recommendations.
• Nook Friends (Barnes & Noble site for Nook readers)
• Open Road Integrated Media markets e-books of older titles.
• Overbooked. Timely information about fiction, all genres, and readable nonfiction, plus Overbooked Scoops (curated by Ann Chambers Theis). This site seems wobbly right now.
• PaperBack Swap (a paperback book sharing service and community)
• Reviews of these and other niche social networking sites (Kevin Palmer, Social Media Answers)
• Revish (a book rating community)
• Scribd (pronounced "skribbed") may be the largest book club in the world--on many topics.

• Shelfari (another popular site for rating and commenting on books -- a community-powered virtual bookshelf, to display your favorite books and connect to people who love to read what you love to read)
• *** Shepherd ("Discover the best books") For example, see For Authors. Authors pick their 5 favorite books around a topic, theme, or mood they are passionate about, along with why they recommend each of those books.
• The Storygraph "Because life's too short for a book you're not in the mood for." A platform to help track your reading and choose your next book based on your mood and your favorite topics. Interface easier than that on Goodreads.'$4.99

• Tertulia, a new app, is trying a different approach, by measuring and distilling the online chatter about books to point readers to the ones that are driving discussions. Tertulia aspires to be the book equivalent of Netflix for movies and Spotify for music, write Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth A. Harris in A New Way to Choose Your Next Book (NY Times, 6-7-22)
• Wattpad (an eBook community). Fiction-oriented. Read stories. Vote for your favorites. Create a library.
• What Alternatives Are There to Goodreads? (Emily Stochl, Book Riot, 1-20-21)

• Barbara Kingsolver on the 'Urban-Rural Antipathy' Ripping America Apart (Ezra Klein Interviews BK, 7-21-23. Listen or read transcript) The Pulitzer Prize-winning author talks about writing "the great Appalachian novel." Interesting on several counts.
• Author Judy Blume is finally ready to tell her own story in new documentary (NPR, 4-20-23)
• Walter Mosley Thinks America Is Getting Dumber (David Marchese, NY Times, 2-6-23)
• The Spectacular Life of Octavia Butler (E. Alex Jung, Vulture, 11-21-22) The girl who grew up in Pasadena, took the bus, loved her mom, and wrote herself into the world. The first time she remembered someone calling her “ugly” was in the first grade — bullying that continued through her adolescence. “I wanted to disappear,” she said. “Instead, I grew six feet tall.”
• The Last, Painful Days of Anthony Bourdain (Kim Severson, NY Times, 9-27-22) A new, unauthorized biography reveals intimate, often raw, details of the TV star’s life, including his tumultuous relationship with the Italian actor Asia Argento. And it’s drawing criticism from many of his friends and family. See also New Documentary Seeks to Understand Anthony Bourdain and His Death (Christina Morales, NY Times, 7-16-21) “Roadrunner” takes an intimate look at Mr. Bourdain’s career and his struggles, using archival footage and interviews from members of his inner circle.lf.
• Hollywood life lessons (Marie Rowe, TEDxLeamingtonSpa, 1-14-18, 15 min. video) When Marie Rowe was learning Pitman’s shorthand at school in England, she had no idea that one day it would open doors into the Hollywood film industry. But her journey was a circuitous one where she rejected the traditional roles expected of her and instead chose paths that led to the development of her character arc.
• Ian McEwan: A Writer's Life (YouTube, CBS Sunday Morning) Seth Doan talks with author Ian McEwan about the power of the printed word. "My mother went with her sister, with the baby, and gave it away to the strangers who'd replied to the ad, and sixty years later that baby turned up in our lives. That story I knew I had to write."  His new book, Lessons, features the secret that his mother kept from him until her death: that she'd given his brother away for adoption.
• John Irving: A writer's life (YouTube. CBS Sunday Morning) How revolutionary it was to create a trans character so many decades ago (in 1978). His daughter Eva Everett Irving (actor, filmmaker) grew up as the youngest of three sons and came out as trans in 2015. "It's such a blessing to be able to have that kind of relationship with my dad, to know that he was writing about trans people in 1978." Moby Dick showed Irving how to foreshadow an ending.
• Liberals, Radicals, and the Making of a Literary Masterpiece (Keith Gessen, New Yorker, 9-5-22) Ivan Turgenev achieved greatness with a novel detested by almost everyone he cared about. "These years, in the eighteen-forties, were difficult ones, Turgenev later recalled; censors would leave writers’ proofs marked up with red ink, “as if bloodied.” The start of Nicholas I’s reign, in 1825, had been met by a failed uprising of Army officers who came to be known as the Decembrists; its ending, three decades later, was accompanied by the humiliating Russian defeat in the Crimean War. The intervening years were a period of intense repression and censorship. The generation that came of age with Turgenev was aware of Russian backwardness and subjugation, but did not know what to do about it, or even, under conditions of police surveillance, how to talk about it."
• All of the Monsters (In Which I Accuse James Purdy of Throwing My Four-Year-Old Child Down Two Flights of Stairs Using His Powers of Telekinesis)(Matthew Stadler, Los Angeles Review of Books,12-3-22) With comments from interviews and material from and about Michael Snyder's huge biography James Purdy: Life of a Contrarian Writer.
• Diane Williams Will Never Be Dutiful (Merve Emre, New Yorker, 10-10-21) Williams can write startling things about sex, relationships, and family. But her real project is to test the limits of fiction itself. (P.S. I read the headline as "will never be beautiful," and clicked on the story because she looked pretty beautiful to me, and I wondered how they got that so wrong. Happily, it's an interesting interview.)
• Jill Lepore: A Historian’s History (Maia R. Silber, Harvard Crimson, 3-6-14) Her work as an academic, a professor, and a magazine writer (at the New Yorker) is to bring alive documents of the past; speaking with her is like encountering a living book. 'In minute details and minor characters, Lepore finds the hidden angles of history—though she’s careful to qualify that “microhistories” should be used to “interpret larger historical structures.” For historical writing to be both compelling and worthwhile, it must combine “thick narratives” with “pregnant principles,” she writes in “Writing for History.” The trick is "weaving together the characters and chronology of the past with a focused and evidenced argument." (H/T Lynne Lamberg)
• bell hooks: Moving from Pain to Power (bell hooks, Marci Blackman, and Darnell Moore in a discussion at the New School on confronting loss and moving from pain to power, video, 1hr25m) Topic: Mapping Desire, Archaeologies of Change. bell hooks is a supergreat speaker, human, funny, perceptive, wise. Lots more videos of her talks online, including An Open Dialogue on Transgressive Sexual Practice (with Marci Blackman and Sam Delaney), Are You Still a Slave? Liberating the Black Female Body (at Eugene Lang College), talking about her book Killing Rage: Ending Racism , A Conversation with bell hooks).
• Donna Seaman's interview with Erik Larson (Creative Nonfiction, Issue 45, Summer 2012). In this invaluable interview Erik describes his somewhat circuitous path to becoming one of the world's most successful authors of narrative nonfiction, with excellent practical advice, about research and about the value of a well-kept chronology.
• White Like Me (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., New Yorker, 6-17-96) Anatole Broyard wanted to be a writer, not a black writer. So he chose to live a lie rather than be trapped by the truth.
• Toni Morrison on language, evil and 'the white gaze' Author Toni Morrison in conversation with her longtime friend and colleague Claudia Brodsky, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton University.
• The Man Who Mastered Minor Writing (Max Norman, New Yorker, 12-12-22) In both life and work, Evan S. Connell rejected the tidiness of narrative. He focussed, instead, on the details we’d rather ignore. But that may, in fact, be a working definition of what we sometimes call a minor writer, which Connell was in the best sense: a mythographer rather than a mythmaker, an artist and analyst of the telling detail. It’s precisely his independence of mind, the clarity of his roving imagination, that makes Connell worth reading.
• William Faulkner’s Demons (Casey Cep, New Yorker, 11-30-2020) In his own life, the novelist failed to truly acknowledge the evils of slavery and segregation. But he did so with savage thoroughness in his fiction.
• Barbara Ehrenreich Is Not an Optimist, but She Has Hope for the Future (Jia Tolentino, New Yorker, 3-21-2020) A conversation with the author and activist about class, reporting, the coronavirus, and socialism.
• Our Q&A with Rick Bragg Went About as You’d Expect (CJ Lotz, Garden&Gun, 10-27-2020) I'm a sucker for his storytelling style.
• From Mormon survivalist to Cambridge Ph.D. (Amanpour interviews Tara Westover, CNN, 3-5-18)
• Lawrence Block's memoir recalls a colorful writing career (Hillel Italie, AP, ABC, 5-27-21) 'Before “Lawrence Block” became a publishing brand, he was introduced to readers as Anne Campbell Clark, or Chip Harrison, or Jill Emerson, or Sheldon Lord. He wrote erotica and lesbian novels, called himself Dr. Benjamin Morse as he completed “Sexual Surrender in Women,” and, as, John Warren Wells, turned out a bit of field research titled “Tricks of the Trade: A Hooker’s Handbook.”'
• ‘I Really Thought He Was Going to Kill Me and Bury My Body’ (Lila Shapiro, Vulture, 6-19-19) Sherrilyn Kenyon, one of the world’s most successful authors of paranormal romance novels, told a romantic narrative about her life with her husband that took a series of turns so dramatic and morbid they almost could have been lifted from one of her novels. She accused her husband of poisoning her. Was it her wildest fiction yet?
• Novelist John Le Carré Reflects On His Own 'Legacy' Of Spying (Terry Gross, Fresh Air, 9-5-17) Fascinating interview with the master of espionage novels, particularly about growing up with a single parent, his con man father, whose "great passion, which he achieved, was to turn me into a seeming gentleman."
• A Conversation with Cheryl Strayed & Oprah (Mountainfilm 2019) Strayed interviews Oprah, who does a once-over-lightly on key decisions and changes in her life. Mountainfilm is a documentary film festival that showcases nonfiction stories about environmental, cultural, climbing, political and social justice issues that matter.
• Tru Life: How Truman Capote Became a Cautionary Tale of Celebrity Culture (Danny Heitman, Humanities, Summer 2017) 'Capote’s reputation as an off-the-cuff raconteur was, in reality, the result of careful rehearsal. According to Plimpton, he would work up a list of the stories he planned to tell before he visited admirers. “He really worked at entertaining them,” Plimpton said....In accepting an approximation of accuracy as good enough, Capote was already on the slippery slope that ended, perhaps inevitably, in the kind of lapses that now mar In Cold Blood’s reputation....Throughout his work, Capote’s prose itself remains a joy, its precision wrought from an urgency to pay attention before it’s too late.'
• Lonesome Together (Drew Bratcher, Paris Review, 6-1-18) Good profile of Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, and "Sunday Morning Coming Down."
• Gabriel García Márquez’s Road Trip Through Alabama (Caleb Johnson, Paris Review, 2-9-18) Did his road trip from NYC to and through Alabama influence One Hundred Years of Solitude?
• Ten Things I Learned from Ursula K. Le Guin (Karen Joy Fowler, Paris Review, 1-25-18) Examples: 1. "There is no reason a book of ideas can’t also be deeply moving, gorgeously written, and inhabited by people who take rooms in your heart and never move out." And 7. "Speak up for the books, poems, shows, music, and paintings you love even though you sound smarter and more discerning when you can’t be pleased."
• Historian Brenda Wineapple interviews biographer Robert Caro (C-SPAN recorded at 35th Key West Literary Seminar,1-15-17). C-SPAN recorded several interviews at this famed seminar.
• ‘Goodnight Moon’ author was a bisexual rebel who didn’t like kids (Susannah Cahalan, NY Post, 1-7-17) A profile that makes you curious about the biography and the subject!
• A Peek Inside the Mother-Daughter Collaboration That Brought Us the Little House Series (Rebecca Onion, The Vault, Slate's history blog, 4-21-14)
• Playing with Time: A Conversation with Tessa Hadley ( Jane Gayduk interviews Tessa Hadley, Los Angeles Review of Books, 2-6-16) Heartening for late bloomers. She published her first novel when she was 46. She'd written plenty before that.
• McMurtry in Twilight (Center and Main, 10-15-13, with Bill Marvel and others). Larry McMurtry opens up to the students in George Getschow’s Archer City Writers Workshop, a graduate class operated under the auspices of the Frank W. and Sue Mayborn School of Journalism. He considers his beloved novel Lonesome Dove "the “Gone With the Wind” of the West," he tells them. "I think when you boil down the Mailer-Roth-Bellow generation, there’s not much, really, that I wouldn’t call minor. I think Flannery O’Conner has the clearest claim to be more than minor." Wonderful wide-ranging chat about books and film and television. Another take: Larry McMurtry's Dream Job (Mark Horowitz, NY Times, 1997). He once tried to save the Western novel. Then he had to save himself. Now, the author of 'Lonesome Dove' and the new 'Comanche Moon' is out to save his Texas hometown -- by turning it into the world's largest used bookstore.
• The Mysterious Life of David Goodis (Los Angeles Times, 2-11-15). Andrew Nette's review of Goodis: A Life in Black and White by Philippe Garnier and Eddie Muller is a fascinating profile of a preeminent noir writer of the 1940s and 1950s who became marginalized in U.S. but not in France (which was unaware he was writing for working class readers).
• The Joyful, Gossipy and Absurd Private Life of Virginia Woolf (Emma Woolf, Newsweek, 2-13-15). Her volatile, mad, happy and troubled life and her strange and powerful marriage to Leonard Woo
• Wilder Women The mother and daughter behind the Little House stories (Judith Thurman New Yorker, 8-10-09)
• My Life as a Writer (Philip Roth as interviewed by Daniel Sandstrom, for publication in Swedish translation in Svenska Dagbladet and in its original English in the Times Book Review, 3-2-14)
• Literary Fathers: James Jones and Andre Dubus. Interviews about them with their children, Kaylie Jones and Andre Dubus III (Open Road Integrated Media)
• Literary Fathers: John Gardner, Stanley Elkin, Terry Southern, and William Styron. Interviews with Lucy Gardner Johnson, Joel Gardner, Molly Elkin, Nile Southern, and Alexandra Styron (Open Road Integrated Media)
• He Gave ‘the Mundane Its Beautiful Due’ (Hermione Lee's well-written review of Adam Begley's biography and Updike's short story collection amounts to a profile)
• Patton Oswalt (A Barnes & Noble conversation with Kerry Lauerman, 2-3-11, from Salon.com, who has partnered with B&N for many of these interviews)
• A B&N interview with Stacy Schiff (author of Cleopatra)
More to come.

Which should you do at an author reading?  Tell the story from your book or just read from it? A little of both, keep the reading short (something that makes them want to know more, or how it comes out), and allow time for questions.

• Intelligent radio and TV talk shows (a roundup of links to a lot of interesting programs, to listen live or to episodes in the archives)
• How the pros pitch podcasts (Rhymes with Bee, LLC, Attention Economy, 6-4-23) Podcast matchmaker Michelle Glogovac with tips and tricks for pitching yourself as a podcast guest.

• Am Writing podcast (Jessica Lahey's interviews, including this one with Katherine Reynolds Lewis about the economics and time management of freelancing: Your freelance business.  Entertaining, actionable advice on craft, productivity and creativity for writers in all genres.

• Author MBA podcasts (Winning Edits site, conversations about the business of books)
• Authors in Your Pockets (iTune podcasts)
• Authors on Tour (Best of)
• Author Webcasts (Library of Congress presents, free, the "best of the nation's authors, poets and illustrators")

• Barnes & Noble Interviews with Authors (series), includes interviews such as the following (from a great series): David Brooks (a conversation with James Mustiche Barnes & Noble, 3-17-11)
• Barnes & Noble Meet the Author interviews
• The Bat Segundo Show (quirky and thorough long-form interviews with contemporary authors, eccentric thinkers, and other assorted artists).
• BBC Arts & Ideas
• Between the Covers with John J. Miller (National Review)
• The Book Club interviews (Sky Kirkham, Grace Nye, Amy Stevenson and Samuel Finegan) and reviews)
• Book Notes (C-Span Video Library archives)

• Book Q&As with Deborah Kalf (author Q&As and historical factoids about books)
• Books on the Nightstand (illuminating conversation about books and reading)
• Booktalk Nation (real-time chats with authors, brought to your living room--indie bookstores present author talks)
• Book TV's After Words interviews (C-Span archives)<
• Bookworm (Michael Silverblatt, KCRW, does excellent interviews with writers)
• By the Book (New York Times column: Writers on literature and the literary life. See, for example, Q&As with Fran Lebowitz, Hari Kunzru, and Charles Johnson.
• Charlie Rose interviews
• The Classes 25 Famous Writers Teach (Emily Temple, Literary Hug, 9-12-17) They're Not Always What You'd Expect.
• C-Span Video Library
• Diane Rehm arts & culture programs and interviews with authors , Diane Rehm Books & Authors Interviews , but one of my favorites is her Reader Review programs (book clubs on the air)
• Don Swain book and author interviews (Wired for Books, WOUB online, Ohio University)
• Edward Champion's excellent list and descriptions of, and links to, Literary Podcasts

• GoodReads exclusive author interviews
• Great Conversations (four times a year Kentucky Author Forum tapes a candid, uninterrupted hour of conversation for Kentucky's public television.
• The Guardian Books Podcast (more sophisticated than most)
• Interviews with (or about) novelists and short story writers
• Key West Literary Seminar Audio archives (KWLS recordings of presentations and readings by and conversations between some of the world's most influential writers)
• Lewis Burke Frumkes, weekly interviews with authors.
• Library of Congress webcasts of authors (Read.gov--authors, poets, and illustrators discuss their work and how they have used the Library of Congress's extraordinary resources in their work)
• Library of Congress webcasts
• Literary Disco (Writers talk about reading. Hosted by Tod Goldberg, Julia Pistell, and Rider Strong. Listen to over 15,000 radio shows, podcasts and live radio stations for free.)
• Litopia (Litopia Writers' Colony)

• Longform (a weekly conversation with a nonfiction writer about how they got their start, how they work, and how they tell stories--co-produced by Longform and The Atavist)
• New Books Network A consortium of author-interview podcast channels dedicated to raising the level of public discourse. Fill out their form and volunteer "hosts" in various disciplines can contact you to do an in-depth interview. NBN allows multiple interviews for the same book if enough interviewers are interested."Anyone can listen to the podcasts, and although the books are mainly scholarly, there's no hard and fast requirement as to exactly how academic. History is a strong area (the founder is a historian). (H/T author Karla Huebner)
• New Yorker fiction (a monthly reading and conversation with the New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman)
• New York Review of Books podcasts
• New York Times Book Review podcasts
• NPR Books podcasts
• NPR Books author interviews
• NPR Author Interview podcasts
• The Open Notebook (fascinating interviews with science writers about the stories behind the stories -- especially on the writing process)

• Paris Review Author Index (a page for each of the more than 5,000 authors and artists featured in Paris Review
• Paris Review interviews (authors discuss their life and writing in revealing conversations in The Paris Review's Writers at Work interview series--transcripts)
The Paris Review Interviews
---The Art of Biography
---The Art of Fiction
---The Art of Nonfiction
---The Art of Poetry
---The Art of Publishing
---The Art of Theater
---The Art of Screenwriting
• Paris Review interviews with fiction writers (transcripts)
• Paris Review 'The Daily' (the blog)
• PEN America multimedia archives
• PEN America panels
• Politics & Prose Author Event Recordings on Demand (Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington DC holds awesome author events, recordings of which you can listen to online, free--or download the mp3s and listen while you exercise)

• Powell's Books blog (with many author interviews and talks)
• Powell's Books Interviews
• Public Books An American magazine of ideas, art, scholarship, which publishes accessible reviews written by academics and public intellectuals, writing that is erudite without being esoteric and brings scholarly depth to discussions of contemporary ideas, culture, and politics. Sections of essays, interviews, and podcasts organized and findable by sections (e.g., anthropology & religion, capitalism, children's & Ya literature, climate change, global black history, literature in translation, lives & history, poetry, speculative fiction, sports) and by series (e.g., the big picture, crisis cities, an engineer reads a novel, and B-sides, or great books that time forgot).
• Q&A (archives of C-SPAN's excellent series of Sunday evening interviews with people, often authors, who are making things happen in politics, the media, education, and science & technology in hour-long conversations about their lives and their work.) You can watch the program in real time or later and eventually there's a transcript to read online.
• Reading, Technology and…Still With Us? Attention Span (Kojo Nnandi radio show, 4-22-14) Maryanne Wolf, Jamie Locke, and Maureen Corrigan discuss how technology is changing our reading brains and how we might strike a balance between types of reading at different ages. New research says skimming short items online may actually be changing our brain’s ability to digest dense, long-form writing.
• Rorotoko (archives of author interviews)

• Salon.com author interviews
• Selected Shorts ( PRI’s award-winning series of short fiction read by the stars of stage and screen)
• Signature, making well-read sense of the world (a Penguin-Random House newsletter, formerly Biographile). Get their free Memoir Writing Guide (PDF).
• The Stitcher List of Top Shows (What the World Is Listening To Now) Discover the best of news, entertainment, comedy, sports and talk radio on demand with Stitcher Radio.
• Videos, NY Times archives, 2017
• WordMothers (interviews with women)
• Writers on Writing (archive of New York Times series, listed by authors' names)
• Writers on Writing, a weekly radio program on the art and business of writing, produced and hosted by author Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, with co-hosts Marrie Stone and Nicole Nelson.
• Write Minded An inspiring weekly podcast hosted by Brooke Warner of She Writes and Grant Faulkner of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). Each theme-focused episode of Write-minded features an interview with a writer, author, or publishing industry professional.

• The Best Podcasts for Writers (Ø??beat ℙ???, 7-14-19)
• The Agony Column (Rick Kleffel's 2015 archive of reviews, especially of genre fiction)
• 10 Podcasts Every MBA Student Needs to Listen To (Stephan Maldonado, Firsthand, 11-4-19)

• Where to Get Self-Published Book Reviews (SPR)
• Novelist Barbara Longley on Authors Guild forum: "I've never purchased a book review. I have used NetGalley and Booksprout, sites where individuals can sign up to review books of their choosing, and that has worked out very well for me. You pay to put your book up on NetGalley, but membership for readers is free. NetGalley is expensive, unless you happen to belong to a writing organization like SFWA, which has worked out a group deal for their members. If you want more than 25 reviews, you pay Booksprout as well, but Booksprout is really inexpensive, and you can get up to 25 reviews for free through them. You can also do a giveaway through Goodreads, which is also a good way to garner reviews. You also pay to do a giveaway on Goodreads."
• Book Reviews for Self-Published Authors: A Primer (Joel Friedlander, The Book Designer, 10-30-17)
• How to Jumpstart Book Reviews for Self-Published Books (David Wogahn on The Book Designer, 1-15-18), by the author of The Book Reviewer Yellow Pages (a directory of 200 book bloggers, 40 blog tour organizers and 32 book review businesses specializing in indie-published books)
• Book review blogs (Reedsy's curated list -- filter for genre and for "self-published")
• The Indie Review (Simon Royle's lists and links toplaces where indie books are reviewed, and Latest Indie Book Reviews from Around the Web
• How to get your self-pubbed or e-book reviewed by bloggers (Stephanie Lawton 8-18-11)
• Authors Unbound (providing indie authors who epublish with events at which they share their work and connect with fans)
• Indie Reader (a site that features and reviews books of indie authors)
• Blue Ink Review is an example of a pay-for-your-review site. It pays reviewers $75 for a review and charges the self-published author $395 for a review (as of November 2012), or $495 for "fast track" (review to be completed in 4-5 weeks).
• Kirkus Indie Kirkus Reviews has a set-up similar to Blue Ink Review, and reviews on Kirkus may be negative (that is, frank).
• BookLife (PW's site for self-published authors)
• [City] Book Review A hub through which to submit your book (90 days before publication) for reviews in San Francisco Book Review, Seattle Book Review, Manhattan Book Review, Tulsa Book Review, and Kids’ BookBuzz. "If you send us a book for general submission that is more than 90 days past its on-sale date, we won’t even enter it into our database. If your book is past 90 days of its release date, please consider our Sponsored Review program."
• Darcie Chan started word-of-mouth on her quiet novel, The Mill River Recluse (not a vampire novel or any other sensational genre), by getting the book featured on promotional sites for low-priced ebooks. After lowering the price to 99 cents and being featured (for free) on Ereader News , her sales jumped in two days to 600,000.
• Sites that promote low-priced eBooks (typically for a fee) include
~ Ereader News (tips, tricks, and bargain books for your Kindle)
~Pixel of Ink (free & bargain Kindle books),
~Kindle Nation Daily (free books + Kindle tips + news, commentary)
~ The Frugal eReader (frugal finds under nine for the Kindle)
~Bargain eBook Hunter (briefy traps free Kindle books)
• C. Patrick Schulze, in How to Get Your Self-Published Novel Reviewed, lists lots of places where indie books are reviewed (This Business of Writing 4-16-10).
• The Best Reviews Money Can Buy (or, Book Reviewers for Hire Meet a Demand for Online Raves, by David Streitfeld, NY Times, 8-25-12--note 300+ comments)
• 10 places to find reviewers for your self-published book (Denise Enck, Empty Mirror, 3-6-14)
• Where to find online book reviewers (Sandra Beckwith, Build Book Buzz). Includes tips on where to find reviewers for self-published books.
• Review Outlets (Poets&Writers Book Review Outlets database is an excellent platform for authors—from self-published independents to household names—to research and discover a spectrum of book review options)
• Masterclass: How To Get Reviews – with Mark Dawson (Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula, SPF-106) Listen to podcast and/or download the transcript.

Most professional trade reviewers require that you send your book in at least three months before publication, and often prefer four or five months’ lead time.

• The Essential First Step for New Authors: Book Reviews, Not Sales (David Wogahn, on Jane Friedman's blog, 1-30-18) "You need third-party confirmation to attract readers. You need (positive) independent assessment to convince readers to spend money and time—money AND time."

• What’s behind a recent rise in books coverage? (Sam Eichner, CJR, 12-3-18) Why is it that mainstream publications are writing more about books? Book coverage is up for the NY Times,The Atlantic, and New York, but at the Times books were covered by the business desk, the culture desk, and the Book Review. "Now, it is centralized under the stewardship of editor Pamela Paul, who attributes the change, in great part, to the growing number of online Times readers.

     “In a digital world, where people aren’t encountering these distinct sections of the paper in discrete parts of this physical newspaper, it becomes very confusing,” editor Pamela Paul says. “You would basically have three separate departments covering books totally independently and yet, in the eyes of most readers, in a single space....In the past, when a book came into the Book Review, the question we would ask is, ‘Does this book deserve to be reviewed? Should we review this?’” Paul says. “Now the question is, ‘Does this book merit coverage? And if so, what does that look like?’” BuzzFeed News Books Editor Arianna Rebolini says. “As far as the online world, of course, you’re not limited, but time is. And are you going to put your time into something that’s not going to share well?” Worth reading if you want to figure out how to promote your books.
• Four Strategies to Gain Early Reviews (and Build Buzz!) (Intisar Khanani, Authors Guild, YouTube video of webinar 9-25-19) Early reviews for an upcoming release serve a number of purposes, from giving your book “street cred”, to building buzz, to helping readers identify if it’s the right read for them. But gaining early reviews can be challenging for both debut and established authors. Here are four strategies.

• How to Get Book Reviews: The Ultimate Manifesto (Jordan Archangel Ink) How to get Amazon and other book reviews, how to get blogs to review your book, how to get video reviews, which book review services to use (or not), endorsements, and what not to do.
• What’s even better than a reader review? (Sandra Beckwith, Build Book Buzz, 3-17-15). Literary reviews (reviews by trusted pros at media sources) still carry more weight than reader reviews. 
• A Short and Sweet Beginner’s Guide to Securing Amazon Reviews (Penny Sansevieri on Jane Friedman's blog, 7-11-19) Reviews on Amazon can help your book turn up more often in customer searches. So you want reviews—great reviews—but they need to be authentic. Here's how to get them, by the author of 5-Minute Book Marketing for Authors: Easy and effective ways to market your book every single day!
• How offering an advance reader copy can bring in reviews (The Fussy Librarian, 5-22-23)
• How To Get Book Reviews as an Unknown Author (Joanna Penna, Creative Penn, 7-29-17) For novelists.
• Seven Drop Dead Simple Ways Authors Can Grow Their Audience in 20 Minutes or less (Nate Hoffelder, The Digital Reader, 5-21-18)

"#1. Reach out to readers, and ask them to post a review....Amazon.com is always the best place for your fan to post a review because a review will be reposted to all of Amazon's sites, but it might also be deleted for no good reason. Amazon also requires that reviewers spend at least $50 a year on the site, which not everyone does. That's why you might want to ask fans to post their reviews on GoodReads."

#5: Update your book listings on GoodReads."

• Masterclass: How To Get Reviews – with Mark Dawson (Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula, SPF-106) Listen to podcast and/or read or download the transcript.
• How to Get Reviews For Your Book (Without Begging, Bribing or Resorting to Subterfuge) (Kimberley Grabas, Your Writer Platform, 2-9-14). Thanks for good links, Kimberley!
• How and why to get trade book reviews--and what are they?
• Why I Do Review Swaps – And Why You Should Too (Patrick Hodges, Phoenix Publishing & Book Promotion, 7-3-19) You make an agreement with another author that you will read and post a review of one of their published works, and they will do the same for you. You can either send them a free copy, arrange for them to obtain a free copy, or you can do a “verified purchase” swap where you both agree to pay whatever paltry sum it costs to download the books you are swapping.

HOW TO SEND REVIEW COPIES

• Advance Review Copies: Galley Books vs. ARCs and Why You Should Care (Kate Sullivan, TCK Publishing) Professional reviewers like Publishers Weekly and Kirkus need a lot of lead time to get your book into the hands of the right reviewer, then let that person read it, digest it, and write a pithy 350-word review. But while you have to send out review copies around four months before your book’s launch date, that doesn’t mean your book has to be totally done. Even massive traditional publishers don’t send out finalized copies of their books that far in advance. Instead, they send either galleys or ARCs for review.
• What is DRC and How to Make it Work for You (Indie Reader, 6-21) NetGalley and Edelweiss are similar. Both offer Digital Review Copies (DRCs) to reviewers. Unlike Edelweiss, NetGalley allows independent authors to put their books directly into their catalog without a publisher. Also, inclusion in Netgalley is considerably more expensive, coming in at $349 through IBPA, while Edelweiss is regularly $149 through IndieReader. (Find a one-time special of $119 for Edelweiss through IndieReader.)
• NetGalley vs. Edelweiss (We Write at Dawn, 8-11-20)
---NetGalley vs. Edelweiss Update Jun3 2020  Not easy to get accepted!
• What Is an Advance Reader Copy (ARC)? Definitions and Examples (Allena Tapia, The Balance, 7-3-20) An ARC is a pre-published, almost-complete version of a new book that is circulated to people who read it before print, such as professional reviewers and book bloggers. Advance copies allow them to read the book before its publication date so their reviews can coincide with the book's debut.

Also known as a galley, the ARC is generally a paperback [or digital] edition that isn't complete, lacking a final proofread or final cover design. However, most of the finished content is in place.
---Edelweiss (Above the Treeline) Answers to FAQs about digital review copies
---NetGalley Use NetGalley for free to request, read, and recommend digital review copies before they are published.
---Booksprout (free up to 25 copies) Get more reviews on sites like Amazon, Bookbub, and Goodreads with your Booksprout account.
---Book Funnel
---Book Sirens
---Hidden Gem
---Libro.fm Educators, librarians, booksellers, media/reviewers, and influencers can join Libro's Audiobook Listening Copy (ALC) program for complimentary audiobooks.
• NetGalley VS BookSirens: Which Is Better For Indie Authors? (raenajrood) A useful exchange of information. For example, NetGalley is expensive. How to watch out for mere freeloader-readers. Many reviewers do not upload their reviews to Amazon, though that's why you sent them an ARC. "Most of the reviewers on BookSirens transferred their reviews to Amazon, probably because BookSirens sends out an email to remind them!" etc.
• Q & A #1 | Advance Reader Copies and How to Get Them (Louise dg, The Page Walker, 2-4-19)
• Sneak Peeks: The Power of Early Reader Programs (Emily Condlin, Author News, Penguin Random House) One of the biggest changes in early reader programs is the addition of electronic galleys. By using electronic rather than hard-copy galleys, authors and publishers can provide advance copies instantly to reviewers, making the most of the limited amount of time before a book is published, and increasing the potential for reviews.
• A New Strategy for Digital ARCs? (Elizabeth Bluemle, ShelfTalker, PW, 3-10-20) Access to digital ARCs is extremely helpful to booksellers, via Edelweiss and NetGalley, and lately I’ve been wondering: is it the smartest strategy for publishers to remove them from these sources the moment a book hits bookstore shelves? I understand the likely reasoning behind the decision to remove titles on pub date: publishers don’t want to lose potential sales of a book once it’s available for purchase. But wouldn’t it be possible to keep digital ARCs live on curated sources like Edelweiss for a few weeks after the pub date?

• Net Galley NetGalley was developed as an alternative to the production of paper galleys. It has become a key marketing and publicity platform for publishers and authors, offering electronic galleys to "professional readers" such as bloggers, book reviewers, booksellers, educators, journalists, and librarians. But it is not the only source of ARCs.
• NetGalley Book Review Program: A Case Study (David Kudler, interesting article on The Book Designer, 7-20-16) NetGalley is a book review service that connects book publishers, reviewers, media, librarians, booksellers, bloggers and educators. For this author, it was a good way to check out the cover, the way the book was pitched (it was more for middle grade than YA, and not as "action-packed" as copy suggested), and so on. Done early for a wide audience, it was a good way to get a lot of reviews.

• NetGalley vs. Edelweiss (We Write at Dawn) Behind the scenes, a novel reader's (blogger's?) experience being approved or rejected for reviewing specific books.
• Where to Get Advance Reader Copies (ARCs) (Alison in Bookland) Useful instructions for fans."To ‘earn’ an ARC, you must be a ‘professional’ reviewer with a platform of some sort. Thanks to the ease of technology, anyone can be a ‘professional’ reviewer with a platform."
• How to Self-Publish an ARC (Advance Review Copy) (AuthorLearningCenter) For self-published authors looking for reviews by fans. See also Where to Find ARC Readers
• Absent Live Events, Publishers Keep Creators and Librarians Connected (Marlaina Cockcroft, School Library Journal, 12-23-2020) Traditional publishers have pivoted with COVID-19, reaching librarians via webinars, virtual conferences and other virtual events (which have been reaching new teachers and librarians who can’t afford the time off or the travel costs of attending a conference in person"),providing access to electronic ARCs through Netgalley instead of mailing physical ARCs (advance reader copies), downloadable kits, teacher guides. Simon & Schuster offered an “ALA in a Box” promotion, where librarians could choose e-galleys or a select number of physical galleys.
• What Works and What Doesn't: Net Galley (Katie French Books) A negative experience from a writer who gave out 200 free books and got only a few reviews, not all favorable. Her advice: Be selective in who you send books to.
• Why I Prefer Edelweiss to NetGalley (Vicki, blogger, 12-21-17)
• Advance Readers: The Top Platforms to help you find and manage your Advanced Readers (Mastery Quadrant)
• NetGalley Hits Pay Dirt (Jim Milliot, PW, 7-19-10)
• To E-galley or P-galley: That Is the Question (Publishing Trends, 7-1-11)
• Book Funnel (useful for delivering Advance Review Copies (ARCs) in an e-format best suited to the reviewer's or early reader's needs.
• How to Reach Book Reviewers via NetGalley (Ben Cameron, ALLi, 1-11-14) Publishers (not reviewers) pay to use NetGalley, which is more useful for genre fiction than for nonfiction. And you get honest reviews, which can be good or bad. "Your book needs to be well written, edited, formatted and have a strong cover." Plus, it has to be good to get good reviews; it can't just be pretty.

BOOK REVIEW OUTLETS
• Book Review Outlets (Poets&Writers) Find review sites for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction only.
• NewPages Guide to Review Sources
• The Review Review (Becky Tuch's guide to literary magazines and journals)

• 10 places to find reviewers for your self-published book (Denise Enck, Empty Mirror, 3-6-14)
• List of book reviewers Terry Ehret reprints the list of places to submit books for review, from Sixteen Rivers Press--geared to literary and poetry books.
• People trust peer reviews (Sandra Beckwith, Builld Book Buzz, 3-7-18)
• Where to find online book reviewers (Sandra Beckwith, Build Book Buzz). Includes tips on where to find reviewers for self-published books.
• Review Outlets (Poets&Writers Book Review Outlets database is an excellent platform for authors—from self-published independents to household names—to research and discover a spectrum of book review options)
• The Book Reviewer Yellow Pages A directory of 200 book bloggers, 40 blog tour organizers, 32 book review businesses. Specializing in self-published books. (I have no idea how up-to-date or helpful this is--if you find out, please tell me!)

• Six degrees of reputation: The use and abuse of online review and recommendation systems (Shay David and Trevor Pinch, First Monday, July 2006) Will online reviewing go beyond gaming the system and become stable, reliable?
• How To Get Amazon’s Top Customer Reviewers to Review Your Book (Joanna Penn Creative Penn 9-16-12). Amazon has a page listing its top reviewers
• The Laws of the (Amazon) Jungle—Eight Rules Authors Need to Know to Stay Safe (Anne R. Allen)
• Places mentioned by authors in an informal discussion:

Book Sprout (basic service free, mixed results for one author);

Bookstagram tours, for which search hashtags on Instagram that fit with what you're looking for (for example #nonfictionreview, #bookblogger, #ebooks)

One writer recommends Storygram Tours--ask for specifics on what genres and kinds of books they promote--no self-published books)

New York Journal of Books (https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/) accepts self-published books.

BOOK REVIEW BLOGS
• The Book Blogger List
• Best Book Review Blogs of 2022 (curated by Reedsy)
• How to run your own blog tour (with giveaways) and is it really worth it (Pavarti K. Tyler, Novel Publicity & Co.)
• 4 Things You Should Know About Book Review Blogs (Joanna Penn, The Creative Penn, 12-21-16). Applies mostly to genre fiction and fiction fans.
• Top 100 book review blogs (Feedspot)
• The Book Blogger List

[Back to Top]

PAID REVIEWS
• Are Paid Book Reviews Worth It? (Jane Friedman, 2-8-16). "The majority of authors will not sufficiently benefit from paid book reviews, and should invest their time and money elsewhere." Paid reviews are a stepping-stone, not a way to sell books. Generate reader reviews to get sales. A thoughtful piece by a knowledgeable advisor, worth reading.
• Watchdog: Is A Kirkus Review Worth The Price? (Giacomo Giammatteo,Alliance Of Independent Authors, 6-13-14). Brings credibility to a self-published author, but does it bring sales?
• How to get paid paid trade book reviews for self-published books

[Back to Top]

• The Book Industry Trade Journals and Why They’re So Important (Margaret Kingsbury, Cave Henricks Communications, 3-23-16) If you publish a book, chances are that your very first media review will not come from a top tier media outlet like The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal, but rather a publishing trade journal like Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, or Booklist. If you’re publishing through a traditional method, the publicist will send copies of the galley or advance reading copies (ARCs) four to six months before publication. Reviews will typically land a few months before the book goes on sale. See also GalleyCat and Shelf Awareness.
• A glimpse at the life of the "Best-Read Man in America," Michael Dirda (Eugene L. Meyer, Bethesda Magazine, 1-17-22) A good Q&A about a long-time literary critic for the Washington Post.
• Book Report: How four magazines you’ve probably never read help determine what books you buy. (Adelle Waldman, Slate, 9-12-03) Again, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, and Booklist.
• Trade book reviews: Behind the scenes with a professional reviewer (Rose Fox on BuildBookBuzz, 2-19-2020) Submitting your book to a trade publication is free, and the payoff can be huge, so there’s no reason not to do it. But expect a long wait. You won’t know in advance who the reviewer will be. In fact, you might not ever know. For example, reviews at Publishers Weekly and Kirkus are anonymous. Those at Library Journal, School Library Journal, Booklist, and Foreword are bylined. Two trade publications allow indie authors to pay to have their books reviewed (which might or might not end in a positive review): PW’s BookLife Reviews and Kirkus’s Kirkus Indie. These are run along the same lines, with similar policies on anonymity.&nbsp

For book purchases by public libraries, send review copies to:
• Library Journal
• School Library Journal (for high school libraries)
• Kirkus (larger libraries use for more in-depth reviews + Kirkus's quirky comments)

• Kirkus Indie is a "pay-to-play" venue for self-published books. It doesn't guarantee a positive review.
• Booklist (American Library Association; their reviews are not as timely as LJ and Kirkus)
• New York Times Book Review (the "best of the best"), for in-depth reviews, special issues, & end of the year "best" lists
• Horn Book (KidLit) reviews children's and young adult books
• Publishers Weekly (PW) (short, not deep reviews, but to appear in PW puts you on bookstores' radar) Galley Tracker is PW's reviews submission system. Note: Self-published/indie authors must submit books for review through BookLife, not Galley Tracker.
• Midwest Review (reviews both traditionally and self-published books)
• Foreword Reviews (also helps booksellers and librarians discover great books from indie presses)

For what it's worth: One author advised another (in an Authors Guild discussion) "This is going to be labor intensive. Libraries go to great lengths to avoid spam, and there is no way to send out a mass email that won't be ignored. I have had good results with a retail approach, which involves going into each library's website and filling out their purchase suggestion form. But it is a lot of work. Here is A directory of public libraries in the United States (Library Technology)  This might also be helpful for authors promoting their talks to local libraries.

For purchases by academic libraries, send review copies to:
• Kirkus  Heavily used in academic libraries, probably because Choice (most important for academic libraries) is so selective about what it reviews.
• New York Times Book Review
• ARLIS/NA (Art Libraries Society of North America). The latest in art publishing, with art books reviewed by art information professionals. See About page. Published bimonthly.
• Choice reviews books and electronic resources appropriate for libraries that serve undergraduate students, including those at community colleges. Selectively reviews graduate level materials of value for advanced undergraduates or honor students. With a searchable archive of almost 200,000 reviews, Choice helps librarians in 2,400 academic libraries deliver stronger resources. Selection policy: Reviews all academic, trade, association, and government publishers. Choice gives special attention to university presses because readers are particularly interested in their output and because university press publications represent a high level of scholarship. They also review well-documented trade publications, and give serious consideration to the works of and to small and alternative presses [but not self-pubbed books].
• Review editors for academic journals (e.g., Journal of Neuroscience)

• Foreword Reviews (also helps booksellers and librarians discover great books from indie presses)

• One academic librarian said, in not so many words, "All we buy are ebooks," so submitting your book to the library ebook distributors (with vetting by librarians) is another way in to academic libraries.

For book purchases by school libraries, send review copies to:
• Library Journal
• School Library Journal (for high school libraries)
• Horn Book (for reviews of children's and young adult books)

H/T to Marie Monteagudo for help with this section.

To explain: Book reviewers in traditional publications such as the NY Times typically get paid for each book review they write, and are expected to provide honest reviews. The problem is, only a small percentage of books get reviewed, and the space allotted to book reviews is even smaller now than it used to be. With the "paid review," the author or indie publisher pays the publication to assign a book review, which is especially helpful for self-published books, which are only rarely reviewed in traditional publications. In short, Tom Clancy does not pay major papers to review his novels, but reviews of self-published books are so rare that some publications allow self-published authors to pay to get review attention. Paying to get a review generally does not guarantee that the review will be positive. And paid trade reviews are only worth it if you're actively promoting your book via professionally designed marketing materials (to libraries & bookstores) and have the time & wherewithal to do so, says retired librarian Marie Monteagudo.

 • The Indie Author's Guide to Paid Reviews (Daniel Lefferts and Alex Daniel, PW, 3-10-17) "The biggest benefit of purchasing a book review through a service is that indie authors know exactly what they're getting. Review word counts, turnaround time, and any additional features—links on the review site, options for posting the review to bookselling sites, etc.—are all built into the package. Paying for reviews, in other words, removes a lot of the guesswork that comes with pitching book bloggers. On the other hand, most review services don’t guarantee positive reviews. It’s a factor worth considering before shelling out the hundreds of dollars that some review services charge." Services described: IndieReader, Kirkus Indie Reviews, Self-Publishing Review, and BlueInk Review.

One option is to get recognized paid reviews

• Are Paid Book Reviews Worth It? (Jane Friedman, 2-2-24) Before discussing the pros and cons of paying for reviews, she defines the three types of trade review
--- Trade book reviews are reviews in trade publications, those read by booksellers, librarians, and others who work inside the industry (as opposed to readers/consumers), some of which have paid review programs for self-published books--e.g., Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews.
---Non-trade book reviews are online publications that specialize in providing reviews of self-published work for the general reader (e.g., Indie Reader, Blue Ink Review, Self-Publishing Review)
---Reader (non-professional) reviews (at Amazon, especially). Paid Amazon reviews are considered unethical (but it's smart to give review copies of your book to people who are willing to post an Amazon review after they read it).

     Do read her discussion of when and why (or why not) authors of self-published books should pay for a trade review. "The majority of authors will not sufficiently benefit from paid book reviews, and should invest their time and money elsewhere."

• If your publisher isn't sending ARCs (advance reader copies) to Kirkus, PW, LJ, etc., retired librarian Marie Monteagudo recommends sending review copies to recognized paid reviews: to Midwest Book Review ($50 for a guaranteed review, though not guaranteed to be positive) and to Kirkus if budget allows ($500.) Send to PW as well: the free option first, and if they don't pick it up, they have BookLife ($399) and if you get on their mailing list, there are contests with a lesser fee. A "free" review option for (some) libraries to notice your book is to submit it to the IAP (Indie Author Project). "If your e-book is accepted it's met the approval of librarians and may win a contest, along with receiving royalties." "You'll need to actively promote your book, add it to your Amazon listing, and don't rely on the review source to do that for you." Kirkus says you can call them to get ideas on how to promote their review.

• Purchased Kirkus and Publishers Weekly reviews do not appear alongside the "regular" (unpaid for) Kirkus reviews on sources used by bookstores and libraries, but in a separate section. But their reviews are "concise and well-written" and you can quote them in your own marketing materials.

• Paid Reviews – Good? Bad? Meh? (Passive Guy, Passive Voice, 10-15-20) Does very low pay for paid reviews affect the quality of the reviews?
• PW BookLife (Publishers Weekly's bow to self-published books)
• Trade book reviews: Behind the scenes with a professional reviewer (Rose Fox, Build Book Buzz, 2-19-20) General info on trade reviews, with special tips for self-published authors: Paying for a guaranteed review from a reputable service is an alternative. It removes a lot of the uncertainty and waiting from this process. You don’t need to worry about being rejected, and there’s a guaranteed time frame for receiving your review:BookLife Reviews, BlueInk, and Clarion Review have turnaround times of four to six weeks, and Kirkus Indie starts at seven to nine weeks. In some cases, you can pay an additional expediting fee to get your review even sooner.
• Paying for a professional book review? Here’s how to avoid getting ripped off (Patti Thorn, BuildBookBuzz, 6-15-22)
• How to get around the “we don’t review self-published books” roadblock (Sandra Beckwith, BuildBookBuzz, 8-17-19) You need (and she explains how to get) a well-written book that looks and reads like anything coming from a traditional publisher; a publishing company name that disguises the fact that you’re self-published; and bookstore and library distribution. "It's common knowledge that Lulu, BookBaby, Xlibris, and "Independently published" (that's what Amazon is now using instead of its defunct CreateSpace), among others, mean the book is self-published." Among other points made, a review in Publishers Weekly’s (PW's) [paid] review program for self-published authors, BookLife, lets you tout the fact that your book was reviewed by the best-known publication in the book publishing industry. See also Beckwith's Should you buy a review from Kirkus? (11-12-13)
• The Indie Author's Guide to Paid Reviews (Daniel Lefferts and Alex Daniel, PW, 3-10-17)
• Watchdog: Is a Kirkus Review Worth The Price? (Watchdog Giacomo Giammatteo, Alliance of Independent Authors, or ALLi, 6-13-14) An objective appraisal of Kirkus, the paid review service used by some indie authors who hope it will add credibility to their self-published books. Does it also bring sales? He writes further on the question here: Watchdog: Is Kirkus Selling Dreams – or Do They Deliver? (Giacomo Giammatteo, Alliance of Independent Authors, or ALLi, 7-11-14)
• Get a Book Review (The Prairies Book Review) A book review service. New to me in May 2024.

• Anecdotal Evidence (Patrick Kurp's blog about the intersection of books and life)
• Arts & Letters Daily (excellent web portal linking to ideas, criticism, debate, news stories, book news, essays and opinions, owned by The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• ArtsJournal Blogs (most recent posts)
• Asylum (John Self's Shelves)
• Baroque in Hackney (poetry)
• Books Briefing (check out back issues of The Atlantic's excellent e-letter about books, and subscribe to the e-letter)
• Book Dwarf (Megan Sullivan, head buyer at Harvard Book Store, thoughtfully reviews books) Come fall into a book hole!
• Bookslut (Jessa Crispin's wonderful blog) Tweeting @thebookslut. Reviews, feature stories, interviews, and other book-related content). Bookslut on crime writers. See also An Interview with Jessa Crispin and Jessa Crispin: 'We're not allowed to say the Paris Review is boring' (Michelle Dean, The Guardian, 5-9-16) The editor of Bookslut, which shut down last week, talks to the Guardian about the current state of American literature and its attendant frustrations. "“Big publishers have stopped doing intellectually ambitious nonfiction,” she explained. “And so those writers are now on academic presses.”
• Book Square (dissecting the publishing industry with love and skepticism)
• Bookworm (Michael Silverblatt, host, KCRW, podcasts) Intellectual, accessible, and provocative literary conversations.
• A Commonplace Blog (D.G. Myers, whose credits include the much-discussed blog article The most overrated novel ever (Beloved by Toni Morrison)
• Complete Review links to literary blogs
• Constant Reader (a Goodreads forum for friendly discussion of classics, literary fiction, nonfiction, poetry and short stories, plus movies and art)'
• The Creative Penn (Joanna Penn's blog, for readers who want to make writing a job)
• Critical Mass (The National Book Critics Circle, or NBCC -- conversations about literature and literary criticism) Has an excellent blog roll.
• Critics At Large Independent reviews of television, movies, books, music, theatre, dance, culture, and the arts.
• Dear Reader (Suzanne Beecher's online book club). She's profiled here by Bill Duncan.
• The Guardian Books blog (books in UK and beyond)
• Ju's Reviews (love these short, grumpy reviews by Julia Sandford-Cooke)
• Juxtabook (books, book buying, book selling, book dealing, reading, reviews, libraries, literacy, education, teaching English Literature and all matters bookish)
• Lambda Literary (featuring LGBTQ literature)
• Literary Hub (book excerpts, essays, reviews, etc. -- a rich hub for book lovers)
• The Literary Salon (at The Complete Review)
• Match Book (Nicole Lamy connects readers with book suggestions based on their questions, their tastes, their literary needs and desires. New York Times)
• Maud Newton
• The Millions (an online magazine offering coverage on books, arts, and culture). Purchased by PW: PW Takes Over the Millions (Jim Milliot, PW, 1-3-19)
• New York Public Library blog and its various blog channels
• OnFiction (An Online Magazine on the Psychology of Fiction)
• Page Turner (New Yorker) Criticism, contention, and conversation about books and the writing life. Reviewed by the Daily News.
• The Paris Review Daily
• The Reading Experience (Daniel Green) See, for example, Literary Blogs.
• Publishers Lunch (the publishing industry's daily essential read, free) and if you $subscribe to Publishers Marketplace you can read Publishers Lunch Deluxe
• Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (reviews of romance novels)
• PowellsBooksBlog
• ReadySteady Book for literature
• The Rumpus
• The Shatzkin Files (Mike Shatzkin, Idea Logical Company, a publishing futurist who writes interesting analyses of the shift toward digital publishing and where book publishing is headed) See highlights for readers on this site.
• So Many Books (Stephanie, in Books, Rambling)
• Stump the Bookseller (Loganberry Books' blog tries reconnect people to the books they love but can’t quite remember)
• Three Percent (University of Rochester blog for international literature)
• WorldClassPerformer.com

• Writer's Digest


• Some Choice Book Blogs (Cynthia Crossen, WSJ, 11-13-09)
• The Book Trib (an aggregator of all the best book-related blogs
• 25 Best Literary Criticism Blogs (Mastersdegree.net, a resource for students pursuing a masters degree)
• 31 Bookish, Brainy, Beautiful Blogs for Readers (Tracy O'Neill, NY Public Library)
• The Best Literary Fiction Blogs & Websites (Jane Friedman)
More to come!

(formerly books on tape, but CDs and digital downloads are taking over the market)
I am a huge fan of audio books, which have become something of an art, with the best readers almost acting the parts of various characters. Listening to an audiobook is a different experience from reading the book yourself, and is especially a pleasure with fiction. I typically check my audiobooks out of the local public libraries in Montgomery County, Maryland, which have a pretty good selection--and you can reserve titles, which means waiting in a queue for the very popular titles, but that works for me.
• Audie Winners (2001 on, along right -- recordings awarded best narration etc.--a good list from which to check out recordings from library)
• AudioFile (review magazine/website for those who love audio books, with features on "Golden Voices," the best narrators)
• The Listener (Salon's audiobook review column, featuring Laura Miller)
• Books for Ears (see review archive and reviews of five-star audiobooks and reviews of award-winning audiobooks.
• Reviews of the top ten audiobook websites
• Audible Yahoo Group (consumer discussion group sponsored by Audible.com, but not limited to Audible titles)

• The Author's Bookshelf (Strand Bookstore). A selection of must-reads from a few of the Strand's most beloved authors and artists.

• National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Check out NBCC's blog, Critical Mass, its podcasts, and the archive of NBCC newsletters, 1975 on, full of history and sometimes drama. (Read and/or hear Toni Morrison's speech (March 2015) on accepting the NBCC's Ivan Sandrof award for lifetime achievement. It's a mini-history of NBCC and a tribute to its getting books by black authors out of the black-book ghetto in bookstores.
• Critical Mass (blog of the National Book Critics Circle). Links along the lower right side take you to many of the major book review and author interview outlets in the United States.
• NetGalley "We help readers of influence discover and recommend new books to their audiences. If you are a librarian, bookseller, educator, reviewer, blogger or in the media, get started right now by signing in or joining for free." How It Works and Knowledge Base.
• Has Academia Ruined Literary Criticism? (Merve Emre, New Yorker, 1-23-23) Literature departments seem to provide a haven for studying books, but they may have painted themselves into a corner. If “Cultural Capital” was a sociology of judgment, then “Professing Criticism” is a sociology of criticism, an argument about how, during the twentieth century, the practice evolved from a wide-ranging amateur pursuit, requiring no specialist training or qualifications, into a profession and a discipline housed within the academy. References: Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study by John Guillory as well as his earlier book, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation.
• On Campus: The Battle of the Books (James Atlas, NY Times Magazine archive, 6-5-88) For generations, English majors read the same works: "You started with the Bible, moved briskly through Beowulf and Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton, the 18th-century novel, the Romantics, a few big American books like ''The Scarlet Letter'' and ''Moby-Dick'' - and so on, masterpiece by masterpiece, century by century, until you'd read (or browsed through) the corpus.... For the most part, though, the canon was closed: You were either on the syllabus or off the syllabus." Then one year "Stanford University announced plans to revise the series of Western culture courses it required of freshmen, eliminating the core list of classics and substituting works by ''women, minorities and persons of color,'' and what began as an academic squabble had burgeoned into a full-blown Great Books Debate. Comp. lit. and humanities professors, Afro-American specialists, historians, college administrators and government spokesmen entered the fray." A fascinating long read about what happened to the Literary Canon.
• Print and digital readers like different books, library data suggests (Alison Flood, The Guardian, 5-20-2020) A recent UK library tally of loans shows that eight of the top 10 print books are thrillers, while ebooks include more memoirs and books like Gail Honeyman’s “up lit” novel Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine, the most borrowed ebook from UK libraries last year.

• Derek Sivers: Books I’ve read Each review is a long summary of the book. Invasive (for author) but helpful if you want a full sense of the book.
• Should Critics Aim to Be Open-Minded or to Pass Judgment? (NY Times Book Review, 8-29-17) In Bookends, Thomas Mallon and Liesl Schillinger discuss what the best (and worst) criticism does. "The simplest prescription for better criticism of all kinds — electronic, journalistic, academic — remains: read more; think longer; write less."
• P. D. James on Book Reviews (Betsy Childs Howard, First Things, 11-6-13) In her memoir Time to Be in Earnest, novelist PD James lists these eight excellent pieces of “presumptuous advice for reviewers,” based on her extensive experience writing reviews and being reviewed.
• The Craft of Criticism. In this excellent Q&A series, members of the National Book Critics Circle ask book critics and review editors for their thoughts about contemporary criticism
• How a Critic Opens a Book: A Q&A With Parul Sehgal (Stephen Hiltner, Times Insider, NY Times, 9-27-17) The Times' new book critic talks about her responsibilities to her readers, her reviewing process, and “this fantastic, fractious, quarrelsome thing known as criticism.”
• In October 2014, Penguin Random House Audio "launched an app called Volumes, offering free sample chapters, audiobook recommendations and—for journalists, bloggers, sales reps and booksellers—access to advance copies." See The Fastest-Growing Format in Publishing: Audiobooks (Jennifer Maloney, WSJ, 7-21-16)
• Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing (a National Book Critics Circle award). Past (the most recent) recipients include Charles Finch, Michelle Dean, Carlos Lozada, Alexandra Schwartz, Katherine A. Powers, William Deresiewicz, Kathryn Schulz, Parul Sehgal, Joan Acocella, Ron Charles, and the list goes on.
• Book Spot
• Secrets of the Book Critics (Q&A interview series on Literary Hub) Questions often asked: What classic book would you love to have reviewed when it was first published? What unheralded book from the past year would you like to give a shout-out to? What is the greatest misconception about book critics and criticism?How has book criticism changed in the age of social media? What critic working today do you most enjoy reading?
• Entertainment Weekly‘s David Canfield on Zora Neale Hurston and the Critic as Curator (Literary Hub, Secrets of the Book Critics, 1-17-18). Much of the job of criticism is curation. "The job is nearly as much about asserting the importance of different genres, different voices, and different styles as it is about assessing the quality of a particular work."
• Sam Sacks of The Wall Street Journal (Secrets of the Book Critics, LitHub, 9-27-17) "I think there is a feeling that criticism today just refers to the melee of personal opinions that can be found in print and especially online....critics are responsible for more than naming their likes and dislikes. They are writing in service of a larger idea of literature."
• The New Republic Literary Editor Laura Marsh on the Ecosystem of Different Tastes (LitHub, 10-25-17 "There are a couple of writers I go back to periodically to remind myself of what criticism can do: Terry Castle’s essay on Susan Sontag, right after she died, the essays in Vivian Gornick’s The End of the Novel of Love , and (if I’m allowed) the late Jenny Diski’s writing in the London Review of Books."
• How To Be a Paid Book Reviewer - In Six Easy Steps (Allena Tapia, The Balance, 11-12-17)

• The Critical I: Conversations With Critics and Review Editors (Critical Mass, NBCC, an interesting series of conversations with book review editors and critics, 2007-2009)
• Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think about Art, Pleasure, Beauty, and Truth by A.O. Scott. ( Here's a charming review by Willard Spiegelman: Everyone's a Critic (Wall Street Journal, 2-10-16)
• Complete Review (links to 242 book review sites, in English and in other languages). Also, links to literary blogs and general literary sites.
• Critical Outtakes: Discussions with Writers
• The Next Decade in Book Culture (Critical Mass, NBCC, an interesting series about the state of literary criticism, the critic and the Internet, and so on, 2009-2011)
• A Critic’s Manifesto (Daniel Mendelsohn, Page-Turner blog, On books and the writing life, New Yorker, 8-28-12) He argues in this essay that all criticism is based on this equation: KNOWLEDGE + TASTE = MEANINGFUL JUDGMENT.
• Against Enthusiasm: The epidemic of niceness in online book culture. (Jacob Silverman, Slate Book Review, 8-4-12)
• Ethics in Book Reviewing Survey: The Results ("Critical Mass," National Book Critics Circle, posted 12-11-07). Among issues NBCC members discuss here and elsewhere on their website: the appropriateness of selling one’s review copies, favoritism by reviewers toward particular publishing houses, how honest a reviewer must be in what she or he writes, the propriety of review organs linking up with book sellers, the appropriateness of reviewing a book for which you provided an unpaid blurb, whether someone mentioned in the acknowledgments should be barred from reviewing a book.
• The Ethics of Book Blurbing: What’s OK and What’s Not? A Survey (Janice Harayda, One-Minute Book Reviews, 5-14-13)
• The Graying of 'The New York Review of Books' (Russell Jacoby, Chronicle of Higher Education, 6-2-14)
• LibraryReads archive The top ten books published each month that librarians across the country love. Not a bad place to look for ideas of books to consider reading.

• Reviewers & Critics: The Complete Series (Poets & Writers). Examples:

---Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post (10-9-19) on his reading process, the role of social media in his work, and more.

---Daniel Mendelsohn of the New York Review of Books (8-14-19) discusses whether or not literary criticism can be taught, the value of negative criticism, and more.

---Maureen Corrigan of NPR’s Fresh Air (2-13-19) discusses the unique challenges of reviewing for radio and how she picks the books that make it on the air.
---Sam Sacks of the Wall Street Journal (8-15-18)
---Laila Lalami of the Nation (author and reviewer, 4-11-18) discusses both sides of the writer-critic divide
---Leigh Haber of O, the Oprah Magazine (12-13-17) discusses how she got her start in the literary world, the selection criteria behind Oprah’s Book Club picks, and her favorite books of the year.
---Steph Burt (8-17-16) talks about the path to becoming a poetry critic, working as both a poet and a critic, and how the internet has greatly expanded the conversations surrounding poetry and poetics
---Parul Sehgal of the New York Times Book Review (4-12-17) discusses her path to literary criticism, her passion for international literature, and today’s finest reviewers.
---Pamela Paul of the New York Times Book Review (4-13-16) discusses the ethical and practical challenges of being the head of the last of the stand-alone newspaper book review sections.
---Laurie Hertzel of the Star Tribune discusses Minnesota’s thriving literary community and the importance of reviewing small-press titles.

• The Future of Book Reviews: Critics vs. Amazon Reviewers Top critics Morris Dickstein and Cynthia Ozick debate who are truly the book critics today (hint: Amazon reviewers) and what this means for reviewing. Jane Ciabattari reports. (The Daily Beast
• Amazon reviewers think this masterpiece sucks (Jeanette Demain, Salon, 4-2-10). From "The Grapes of Wrath" to "1984" -- some amateur critics just can't stand the classics
• Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW) (Wikipedia entry) Organized "in 1994 as the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics by a group of over 400 scholars troubled by what they saw as an over reliance on post-modern theory in the academy." Unclear if it is still active.

• Why Jennifer Weiner Is Wrong About the Times Book Review (Christopher Beha, Slate Culture Box, 9-12-13). It doesn’t need to review more popular fiction. Or lit fiction, either. It needs to review holy crap fiction.
• Hatchet Job of the Year Award (The Guardian's annual celebration of bookish snark)
• How to Get Book Reviews: 50+ Resources to Generate Book Reviews (Nonfiction Authors Association)
• BookSneeze: Free Books for Bloggers (Michael Hyatt)
• So, You Want to Review Books? Faithful Bloggers. See also Review a Book for BookSneeze
• Booklook Bloggers

• Pulling Punches: What happened to newspaper book reviewing? (Frank Guan, The Nation, 7-27-22) The New York Times Book Review is the last standalone books coverage section of any newspaper. Staff critic positions on newspapers a dying slot. A review of Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times by Phillipa K. Chong. See also

• AbeBooks Top 20 Literary Top 10 Lists (Beth Carswell, AbeBooks). Themes include beloved animals in fiction, tales of the American frontier, egg books, rock biographies, underground reads, recession reads, books that make me hungry, potato books, most disturbing books of all time, comedic science fiction, books that would make good movies, books in which things end badly, etc.
• Author book talks
• Author book tours
• Author Webcasts (Read.gov), from the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress)

• Back From the Dead: The State of Book Reviewing by Jane Ciabattari (The Practical Writer Sept-Oct 2011, Poets&Writers)
• Barnes & Noble Review (reviews and essays)
• Beatrice (Ron Hogan's literary website, since 1995 a place where readers can come to discover new writers and great books)
• Best and top book lists
• Bestsellers section of PublishersMarketplace
• Bestseller lists (Book Spot)
• Biblioklept (review and discuss books and interview authors, publishers, and other book-type people)
• BookBrowse "Your guide to exceptional books."
• BOOKish.com. Publishers Make a Plan: A ‘One Stop’ Book Site (Julie Bosman, NY Times, 5-6-11). Three publishers (Simon & Schuster, Penguin, and Hachette), frustrated few book buyers visit their company sites, have created Bookish.com, hoping it will become a destination for readers the way Pitchfork.com is for music lovers and IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Netflix are for films -- where site visitors can read recommendations, reviews, and recommendations from other readers and can buy books from the site or other retailers. (The article doesn't mention Amazon.com. The Bookish staff will select books from 14 or more publishers.
• The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered. Clive James' classic poem about about literary schadenfreude, as posted by Dwight Garner on the NY Times Paper Cuts blog about books.
• Book Page (book reviews, author interviews)
• The Book Publicity Blog (helpful blog -- and check right-hand column for good links to blogs on books, bookstores, media, marketing, publishing, publishing houses, technology, and more)
• Book Reporter
• Book Reviewer Yellow Pages (scroll down for links to book reviewers who review books regularly and accept self-published and small press books)
• Book reviewing panel. C-Span video of 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book panel discussion of the business of book reviews, with panelists Ron Charles, deputy editor of Washington Post Book World, David Montgomery, thriller and mystery Critic for the Daily Beast and Chicago Sun-Times, and authors Rebecca Skloot and Katharine Weber.
• Book Review Podcasts. Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, talks each week to authors, editors, and critics about new books, the literary scene, and current best sellers. The downloadable audio files are in mp3 format.
• Book Reviews: Riles & Rules
• Book TV (C-Span2) All weekend. Every weekend. Watch C-SPAN2 online or sign up for weekly e-mail of their weekend cable schedules (including After Words, Encore Booknotes, In Depth, History, and Public Lives)
• BookTV: Book Fairs and Festivals C-SPAN2's coverage of book fairs and festivals from across the country.
• Books and Beyond and other public events at the Library of Congress (Washington DC)
• Books for book groups
• BookSpot.com (find the best book reviews, book awards, online texts, reading lists, author and publisher information, book stores, book news, book events and more)
• Books That Shaped America (Read.gov) Other resources on this site include Young Readers Center, Classic Books, Letters About Literature, Discover Great Places Through Reading, Booklists, Local/Community Resources.
• Bookstores on Twitter (John Kremer's list)
• The Bookwatch Index (a monthly library newsletter of book reviews generated by the editorial staff of the Midwest Book Review)

• Bookwire (Bowker) The Bookwire app makes it easier for people to discover, evaluate, order, and experience books on the go for consumers, librarians, and booksellers
• But is it well written? . In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post (2-1-13), reader Patrick Ross of Alexandria writes, "I admire The Post for continuing to review books, even after eliminating its stand-alone Book World section. But I do not understand why The Post often encourages reviews of nonfiction books that neglect a critique of the actual writing." Nowhere does one reviewer tell him if a Jared Diamond book "is a good read."
• Calling All Authors (Global Talk Radio)
• The Complete Review (links to major, secondary, and other book review sites--"selectively comprehensive and opinionated")
• Conversational Reading (Veronica Scott Esposito's blog)
• (Mark Athitakis, Critical Mass, blog of the National Book Critics Circle)
---Washington Independent Review of Books
---Los Angeles Review of Books
---Full Stop
---Three Percent
---The Critical Flame
---Open Letters Monthly
---The Quarterly Conversation>

• Crimespace (a place for readers and writers of crime fiction to meet)
• Critical Library (Critical Mass asks critics to name five books that should be found in any reviewer's library, National Book Critics Circle)
• Critical Mass (NBCC's blog)

C-Span Podcasts (After Words, Washington Today, Podcast of the Week, Q and A, The Communicators, etc.)

Curled Up With a Good Book. (LL writes: "highly entrepreneurial e-zine; reviewers work for free and do a good job (on the six reviews I've read so far")

DailyLit. Receive short book installments by email or RSS feed (bite-size chunks of public domain books. Read on any computer or mobile device (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.) (whenever you like). We learned of this from Cool Tools -- any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. (Thanks to Dan Curtis for this tip)

Dear Author (bloggers/reviewers who love romance books and a smattering of other genre and nonfiction books)

Dirda's Reading Room (ongoing discussions of books, including Best Books for Scientists, Genre Books as Works of Art, Wild, Wild Western Literature, What Are Your Favorite 'Best Worst' Works of Fiction and Poetry. Older discussions here.

Does anyone want to be "well-read? by Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times 4-16-11) on changing ideas of "must reads."

The Fallen Status of Books, Hard Times for Hardcovers, by Jack Schaefer (Slate, 9-9-10).

Flashlight Worthy (Peter Steinberg and Eric Mueller provide many and various recommended reading lists on topics of interest to book lovers -- a culling of books with Amazon links)

The Future of Book Reviewing (Karen Long, Critical Mass, NBCC, 6-3-10)

How to Break into Book Reviewing (Gerald Bartell, ASJA's The Word blog 9-5-12)

In Conversation About Diversity In Hollywood, Where Does Sundance Fit In? (Monica Castillo, NPR, 2-4-16) Conversations with several filmmakers and critics of color during the Sundance film festival suggest that while Sundance could never be a silver bullet in fixing Hollywood's diversity problems, it indeed has an important role to play.

• 'I Just Don’t Find American Literature Interesting’: Lit-Blog Pioneer Jessa Crispin Closes Bookslut, Does Not Bite Tongue (Boris Kachka, Vulture, 5-3-16)

• National Library Service for the blind and physically handicapped (NLS, Library of Congress)

• State-by-state reading lists

In Praise of Book Critics (Cynthia Crossen, Dear Book Lover, Wall Street Journal, 11-28-11)

• Book awards: The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time Mystery Writers of America (Mystery Writers of America, Library Thing)
• The 10 Best Mystery Authors of All Time (Emily Martin, Book Riot) Was happy to find a couple unfamiliar names. The first Carlos Ruiz Zafón novel she read is probably the first Zafón novel that most people read: The Shadow of the Wind. "It’s well-written, atmospheric, and a page-turner."
• The Crime Books Top Authors Read Twice Because They’re Just That Good (Crime Reads) Kate White asked fellow authors Harlan Coben, Lisa Unger, Alafair Burke and others about the books they keep revisiting.
• The 101 Best Mystery Books of All Time (Parade)
• Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time (UK Crime Writers' Association, Library Thing)
• The 30 Best Mystery Books of All Time (Reedsy Discovery)
• The 25 Best Mystery Books of All Time (Cynthia White, UpJourney)
• Cozy Mystery List and Cozy Mystery List blog. A helpful way of presenting the lists winners of Malice Domestic's Agatha Awards (gentle mysteries that contain no explicit sex, no profanity, no gratuitous gore, or prolonged torture, or excessive violence--the crime often take place offstage and death comes quickly).
• Sophie Hannah's review guide to Agatha Christie's Poirot novels (Download free, and it's worth it, for her comments; by doing so you sign up for her monthly newsletter.)
•45 Best Cozy Mystery Novels: Essential 2019 Guide to First Book of a Series (Mystery Tribune) The first book in each series, to get you started.
•General Mystery Websites (links to sources for mystery reviews, blogs, true crime, mysteries in film and tv, etc.)

• Mysteries by Location
• Ann Hood's Five Pack (5 favorite modern crime fictions from the UK and Ireland)

• Mystery News (good through 2009, when it ceased publication)
• Mystery Reader
• Mystery Scene magazine
• Stop. You're Killing Me! (a website to die for if you love mysteries)

• 6 Meccas for Mystery Lovers(Murder & Mayhem Staff, 2018) Six indie mystery bookstores across the country.
•Mainely Murders newsletters An independent specialty mystery bookstore devoted exclusively to suspense, crime, and detective fiction. You can not only find a good selection but also trade in certain mysteries in excellent condition)

Articles about mysteries (general):
• The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict by W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden (Harpers, 1948)
• The mystery of mysteries: What really keeps us reading < (Mark Kingwell, Globe & Mail, 5-18-12)
• Why Readers Read Mysteries (James N. Frey)
• The Simple Art of Murder<(Raymond Chandler, 1950)
• The Ghost of Miss Truman, (Jon L. Breen The Weekly Standard) Did Margaret Truman write her own mystery novels or were they ghosted by Donald Bain? An interesting look at celebrity mystery authors who worked with ghostwriters, only occasionally (Peter Duchin, for example) sharing writing credits: Brett Halliday, Leslie Charteris, Ernest Tidyman, William Caunitz, George Sanders, Leigh Brackett, Gypsy Rose Lee, Helen Traubel, Steve Allen, Susan Ford, Elliott Roosevelt, and of course Margaret Truman, whose novels Donald Bain probably wrote.
• What to read in mystery and crime (Otto Penzler, Lit Hub, 3-16-16). Each month Penzler  recommended five works of mystery/crime/suspense fiction, new or old, "a distillation of more than a half-century of avid reading in this most distinguished literary category."<
• Mystery, Suspense, & Thriller Trends, plus 49 Exciting 2020 Titles (Marlene Harris, Library Journal, 3-24-2020) "Mysteries tend to focus on the "whodunit"—crime and punishment. Suspense and thrillers focus on the "whydunit," often exploring the motivations that underlie and lead up to dangerous or nefarious situations.
"Each subgenre provides catharsis for readers. In mysteries, that resolution is the provision of justice; a crime is discovered, the perpetrator is found and punished, and order is restored. In suspense and thrillers, it’s found in the roller-coaster ride of emotion, in which readers experience wild twists and turns and a rush of adrenaline as motives and methods are finally revealed."
• Mystery Readers International (journal). Janet Rudolph, chocoholic, lists mystery readers' reading groups, mystery bookstores, mystery periodicals--and her journal issues focus on topics such as mysteries set in France, legal mysteries, shrinhttps://www.novelsuspects.com/articles/the-most-least-popular-genres-of-mystery-and-suspense/ks and other health professionals in mysteries, animal mysteries, etc.)
• The Most & Least Popular Genres of Mystery and Suspense (Emily Martin, Novel Suspects)

• Book Page (book reviews, author interviews)
• The Book Publicity Blog (helpful blog -- and check right-hand column for good links to blogs on books, bookstores, media, marketing, publishing, publishing houses, technology, and more)
• Book Reporter
• Book Reviewer Yellow Pages (scroll down for links to book reviewers who review books regularly and accept self-published and small press books)
• Book reviewing panel. C-Span video of 2010 Virginia Festival of the Book panel discussion of the business of book reviews, with panelists Ron Charles, deputy editor of Washington Post Book World, David Montgomery, thriller and mystery Critic for the Daily Beast and Chicago Sun-Times, and authors Rebecca Skloot and Katharine Weber.
• Book Review Podcasts. Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the New York Times Book Review, talks each week to authors, editors, and critics about new books, the literary scene, and current best sellers. The downloadable audio files are in mp3 format.
• Book Reviews: Riles & Rules
• Books and Beyond and other public events at the Library of Congress (Washington DC)
• Books Briefing (check out back issues of The Atlantic's excellent e-letter about books, and subscribe to the e-letter)
• Bookslut (Jessica Crispin's wonderful blog)
---Bookslut on crime writers
---An Interview with Jessa Crispin
---Jessica Crispin @thebookslut
• 'I Just Don’t Find American Literature Interesting’: Lit-Blog Pioneer Jessa Crispin Closes Bookslut, Does Not Bite Tongue (Boris Kachka, Vulture, 5-3-16)

Kirkus Reviews rises from ashes, tran$formed:
• The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy (David Streitfeld, NY Times, 8-29-12). An eye-opener about not only Kirkus Reviews but all those glowing reviews for new books on Amazon. (a/k/a Book Reviewers for Hire Meet a Demand for Online Raves)
And here's a little history about Kirkus:
• Nielsen folds Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews (Jim Romenesko, Poynter, 12-10-09)
Kirkus Reviews lives on. Motoko Rich reports that Kirkus Gets A New Owner — From The NBA (NY Times 2-10-10). In December he'd reported that End of Kirkus Reviews Brings Anguish and Relief • (NYTimes, 12-11-09). Starred reviews were rare; negative reviews were not. Here's the link to Kirkus Book Reviews, reincarnated.

Library of Congress resources
• Center for the Book
• Library of Congress Young Readers Center
• Author Webcasts
• Events sponsored by Center for the Book
• National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped
• Books That Shaped America
• Classic Books (read now, free online)

Letters of Note (letters, postcards, notes, faxes, memos that you were never intended to see)

Library Journal
• LJ's most borrowed fiction list
• Library Journal's Most Borrowed (Nonfiction) Books List

Library Thing (catalog your books online, connect with others who read the same books)

Literary Hub Bookshelf, the book review section of the excellent LitHub Daily

The Millions (C. Max Magee's popular online literary, arts, and culture site--good reading lists and comments)

National Book Critics Circle
• NBCC FAQs
• Archive of NBCC newsletters
• Past winners of NBCC awards
• The National Book Critics Circle at 35 (Jack Miles on the 1980s and 1990s)

National Book Festival podcasts from the Library of Congress festival on the National Mall.
• Podcasts from Bookfest 2011 (Terry McMillan, Jessica Harris, Adam Goodheart, David McCullough, Russell Banks)
• Podcasts from Bookfest 2010 (Ken Follett, Jane Smiley, Anchee Min, Judith Viorst, Isabel Allende, Pat Mora, Rae Armantrout)
• Podcasts from Bookfest 2009 (Julia Alvarez, Judy Blume, Michael Connelly, Junot Diaz, Gwen Ifill, John Irving, Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor, Lois Lowry, Rickey Minor, Walter Mosley, James Patterson, George Pelecanos, Jodi Picoult, Jon Scieszka, Nicholas Sparks, David Wroblewski)
• Podcasts from Bookfest 2008 (Louis Bayard, Jan Brett, Geraldine Brooks, Warren Brown, Joseph Bruchac, Marisa de los Santos, Kimberly Dozier, Sharon M. Draper, Arthur Frommer and Pauline Frommer, Philippa Gregory, Walter Isaacson, Brad Meltzer, Cokie Roberts, Peter Robinson, Kay Ryan, Bob Schieffer, Jon Scieszka, Michelle Singletary, R.L. Stine, Dionne Warwick)
• Podcasts from Bookfest 2007 (Terry Pratchett, Maria Celeste Arrarás, Charles Simic, Rosemary Wells, Victoria Rowell, Patricia MacLachlan, Sanjay Gupta, Ken Burns, Megan McDonald, David Baldacci, Holly Black, Carmen Agra Deedy, David Wiesner, Shelia P. Moses)

• Neglected Books (where forgotten books are remembered)
• Neglected Books, readers' recommendations
• Neglected Books links to other sites about neglected books

New Books Network.
Discussions with authors about their new books -- a consortium of podcasts dedicated to raising the level of public discourse by introducing serious authors to serious audiences. Dozens of categories, which include:
• New Books in Biography (Oline Eaton interviewing)
• New Books in History
• New Books in Religion
• New Books in Education
• New Books in Film
• and so on!

100 Essential Sites for Voracious Readers (Masters in English). Categories covered: general literature & publishing, literary magazines, book reviews, literary criticism, and book club blogs.

100 Great American Novels You've (Probably) Never Read (the book) by Karl Bridges. This pricey hardcover book is "a resource for readers of American fiction who’ve read their way through the standard canon of classics. 'One goal of this book,' Bridges writes in his Introduction, 'is to represent a wide time span–one equaling the length of American history.'' The novels listed cover a full 200 years: from Charles Brockden Brown’s Edgar Huntly, or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker(1797) to Charles T. Power’s In the Memory of the Forest (1997). You can find a list of the 100 novels on Neglected Books.

PEN America panels (transcripts)
• A Conversation with Grace Paley, Margaret Atwood, and Norman Mailer (5-31-11) We protest the state of the imagination of the PEN International Congress, 1986. We protest the underrepresentation of women on the panels and in the readings.
• Realms of Possibility: A Conversation with Phillip Gourevitch, Norbert Grstein, and Colum McCann (10-13-09) Says Gourevitch, to begin: "I’ve been struck over time that nonfiction writers are often treated the way photographers were treated by the great art museums and art snobs of the early or mid-twentieth century. Just as photography was not accepted as Art—with a capital A—nonfiction is still largely excluded from Literature—with a capital L."
• Saul Bellow, Allen Ginsberg, Nadine Gordimer, Salman Rushdie & Others (5-31-11). Says Bellow, to begin: "There has never been much rapport between government and art in the United States. The thing was set up only, on the political level, to create a kind of democratic society in which we might do as we pleased. But there is absolutely nothing about the setup of American society which obliges the government to us in any sense in this respect."
• Invisible Cities, Visible Cities (6-17=13) For many novelists, describing the city where a story takes place is as fundamental as providing a well-developed protagonist. This panel looks at how the city both limits and liberates, how it is informed by collective knowledge and individual exploration, and how, particularly in the era of globalization, it can be a place of imposing history and rapid reinvention. - See more at: http://www.pen.org/audio/invisible-cities-visible-cities#sthash.UldOTThO.dpuf
• Money and Translation (6-17-13)
Is there anything we can do, as writers and translators, to break the causal chain of financial influence in the U.S. reception and publication of foreign literature?
• All That’s Left to You: Palestinian Writers in Conversation (video of panel discussion, 5-4-13). For the first time, PEN brings together a panel of leading Palestinian writers to talk about their place in the global literary community. From Palestine and from the diaspora, they share their work, experiences, and visions, revealing how a literature is both imagined and created under occupation, siege, and exile.
• Censorship and Power in Iran (video of panel discussion, 5-17-13) PEN American Center joined with the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran to host a screening of journalist and filmmaker Maziar Bahari’s powerful documentary film “Forced Confessions,” an exposé of the now-routine practice of extracting staged public “confessions” from political prisoners in Iran. After the film, Maziar joined Jon Stewart and CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon for a lively discussion on press freedom in Iran in the run-up to the crucial June presidential election.

Profile of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia and Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Ellen McCarthy, WashPost, 1-7-10--an interesting story!)

Real Clear Books, links to top of the day's book reviews in various publications. See also Real Clear Politics, Real Clear Markets, Real Clear World, and Real Clear Sports.

The Renegade Writer: A Totally Unconventional Guide to Freelance Writing Success by Linda Formichelli and Diana Burrell

The Revelator (John Platt's monthly column about new environmental books, an initiative of the Center for Biological Diversity, including books on wildlife, conservation, climate change, pollution, environmental history, ecotourism, sustainability, etc.

Reviewing the Reviews (Cheryl Jarvis, PW, 6-29-12) What took me aback wasn’t the criticism or the praise—everyone’s entitled to an opinion—but the shoddy journalism. The number of reviewers’ statements that were dead wrong was astonishing.

Romance Novels reviewed
• For Romance Readers A blog about all things romantic in writing and reading
• Romance Junkies (reviews of contemporary, romantic suspense, paranormal/futuristic, historical, and erotic romance novels)
• The Romance Reader (the very latest news and reviews of romance novels)
• The Romance Reviews
• RT Book Reviews
• Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (all of the romance, none of the bullshit)

Rorotoko (Start the day smart. Cutting-edge intellectual interviews.)

The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything. Linda Holmes (NPR, 4-18-11) on how, with so much music and literature out there, we can't get to it all, so we must "cull" (sort what is or isn't worth our time) or "surrender" (this goes on the list of what I won't get to).

So What Do You Do, Tom Lutz, Editor of Los Angeles Review of Books? Cameron Martin's interview with TL (Media Bistro, Avant Guild 10-26-11)

• 20 Places Where Bookworms Go to Read and Socialize Online (Study.com, 10-6-08)
• Weird Book Room (Abe Books)
• Washington Post’s Book World Goes Out of Print as a Separate Section (Motoko Rich, NY Times, 1-28-09)
• “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.” ~ Carl Sagan
• When Writers Speak (Arthur Krystal, NY Times, 9-25-09) Why good writers can be bad conversationalists.
• Why Book Critics Go On for Inches (Cynthia Crossen, WSJ, 5-1-09) Why good publications spend a lot of space on books they think are terrible, and how she decides when not to read a book.
• Why Do Critics Hate Movies Audiences Love?. I like Nell Minow's title for the interesting conversation, on video, between film critic A.O. Scott and David Carr, which the NY Times calls The Sweet Spot (6-1-12). Carr emphasizes how much a bad review can hurt. Scott emphasizes how bad The Lorax was (which he called a "noisy, useless piece of junk."
• Words Without Borders (online magazine for international literature) See also Words Without Borders book reviews
• World Literature Today (excerpts, interviews, and reviews from and about international voices)
• Writers on Writing Barbara DeMarco Barrett)

• What readers hate most in books — from dreams to italics (Ron Charles, Washington Post, 2-8-23) Ron Charles asked readers of of the Post's Book Club newsletter what things most annoy them in books. Some of their pet peeves: dream sequences, historical anachronisms, factual inaccuracies, typos and grammatical errors (where was the editor?), not knowing the difference between words like ‘flout’ and ‘flaunt,’ foreign phrases that contain mistakes, the overuse of words like “preternatural” and “lugubrious,” excessive length, including "interminable prologues, introductions, expositions, chapters, explanations, descriptions, paragraphs, sentences, conversations, sex scenes, fistfights and italicized passages" and in particular long passages in italics [see especially Cormac McCarthy], the lack of “quotation marks for dialogue,” “gratuitously confusing timelines,” “unrealistically clever children or talking animals,” “disabled characters who exist only to provide treacly inspiration,” “women who always need rescuing,” explicit sex scenes and gratuitous violence, especially against animals, children and women, among other things. Writers, take note!
• Why Bad Reviews Are Good for Authors (Mark Dawson, 6-25-21) "Books with several hundred five-star reviews and no negative ones make readers suspicious, and with good reason....Believing that there must be something wrong with every book, some bypass the praise altogether and look only at the negative reviews to see if the faults that exist are ones they can tolerate."
• Female video game journalists on what to do when the mob comes for you (Luke Winkie, Nieman Lab, 7-26-21) “Remember: 98% of the time the people harassing you are not attempting to engage with your work in good faith. As such, they do not demand your attention. You don’t have to respond to them or refute them.”
• Your book sucks: are authors being bullied with one-star Amazon reviews? (Hayley Campbell, New Statesman UK, 3-17-14) Anne Rice thinks there are communities of “parasites” intent on dragging down writers by slating their books online. Is she right – and why are we such slaves to the star rating, anyway?
• U Mad? (Lauren Oyler, BookForum) How to troll book people. The antagonistic relationship between writers and critics has produced a rich literature of trolling; critics’ necessary self-regard makes them perfect targets, and authors’ general belief that one should never acknowledge negative reviews of one’s book—out of self-preservation, if not respect for the process—is exactly the kind of challenge trolls gleefully accept.
• Oops! Famously Scathing Reviews of Classic Books From The Times’s Archive (Tina Jordan, NY Times, 3-9-19) We called "Sister Carrie" a book "one can get along very well without reading," dismissed "Lolita" as "dull, dull, dull," and had nothing nice to say about "Howards End." What can we say? We don't always get it right. Here's a look back at some of our most memorable misses. On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin (1860) “Shall we frankly declare that, after the most deliberate consideration of Mr. Darwin’s arguments, we remain unconvinced?”
• Lit&leisure's satisfying and helpful negative review of the bestselling novel Where the Crawdads Sing. Elisabeth doesn't generally do negative reviews, but for a book that sold like hotcakes yet was definitely not up to snuff, she felt compelled to write this one. Makes me want to read her positive reviews! Useful for a book group discussion.

• Don’t Shoot the Book-Reviewer; He’s Doing the Best He Can (Clifton Fadiman, New YOrker, 5-6-39) A god, talking in his sleep, might have written “Finnegans Wake.
• Banning the Negative Book Review (Bob Garfield, NY Times, 11-29-13) How pure can a review site be that makes money through affiliate-marketing commissions from Amazon.com?
• Feeding off the trolls, or: how to profit from one’s enemies (Austin Kleon, 4-12-18) "In Plutarch’s 'How to Profit by One’s Enemies,' he advises that rather than lashing out at your enemies or completely ignoring them, you should study them and see if they can be useful to you in some way. He writes that because our friends are not always frank and forthcoming with us about our shortcomings, 'we have to depend on our enemies to hear the truth.' Your enemy will point out your weak spots for you, and even if he says something untrue, you can then analyze what made him say it."
• Hatchet Job of the Year awards (Omnivore.com)
• Burying the Hatchet: The Death of the Negative Book Review (Lee Siegel, New Yorker, 9-26-13) Criticism used to be socializing by other means, full of controversy and even bloodshed. But now our book reviews are not so much polite as ...“modest and generous.”

• This Guy Thinks We Shouldn't Have Negative Book Reviews. Two Thumbs Down! (Isaac Chotiner, New Republic, 9-26-13)
• How NOT to react to negative criticism for a self-published novel (Bi
• When Book Reviews Go Bad: Negative reviews and how to cope (Carol Pinchefsky, Wizard Oil, August 2006)
• How NOT to react to negative criticism for a self-published novel (Big Al's Books and Pals reviews a poorly edited novel and author melts down in public)
• 10 ways to deal with a negative book review (Jane V. Blanchard)
• How Writers Can Benefit from a Negative Book Review (BookBaby 1-15-13)
• Why Book Critics Go On for Inches (Cynthia Crossen, WSJ, 5-1-09) Why publications spend a lot of column inches on a book they think is terrible.
• Why Do Critics Hate Movies Audiences Love?. I like Nell Minow's title for the interesting conversation, on video, between film critic A.O. Scott and David Carr, which the NY Times calls The Sweet Spot (6-1-12). Carr emphasizes how much a bad review can hurt. Scott emphasizes how bad The Lorax was (which he called a "noisy, useless piece of junk."
Most Negative Review Awards:
• Hatchet Job of the Year (Cargo Collective). Read those reviews!
• Most negative review award (funny, but terrible for the author) goes to Lionel Shriver for Vow: A Memoir of Marriage (and Other Affairs) by Wendy Plump (The Guardian, 3-8-13). A badly written memoir of marital infidelity has Lionel Shriver yearning for Anna Karenina. (Interesting to compare with reviews on Amazon

Writer Races to Victory From Way Off the Pace. Novelist Jaimy Gordon was a long shot for the National Book Award for fiction, with her novel Lord of Misrule, which won. "To write a novel that was even remotely commercial...she had to get out of Providence, where even to think of such a thing was considered a sell out..." Janet Maslin describes the novel as "so assured, exotic and uncategorizable, with such an unlikely provenance, that it arrives as an incontrovertible winner, a bona fide bolt from the blue."

• Anthony Trollope on negative book reviews
(from The Way We Live Now (Chapter XI, Lady Carbury at Home)
During the last six weeks Lady Carbury had lived a life of very mixed depression and elevation. Her great work had come out, — the 'Criminal Queens,' — and had been very widely reviewed. In this matter it had been by no means all pleasure, inasmuch as many very hard words had been said of her. In spite of the dear friendship between herself and Mr Alf, one of Mr Alf's most sharp-nailed subordinates had been set upon her book, and had pulled it to pieces with almost rabid malignity. One would have thought that so slight a thing could hardly have been worthy of such protracted attention. Error after error was laid bare with merciless prolixity. No doubt the writer of the article must have had all history at his finger-ends, as in pointing out the various mistakes made he always spoke of the historical facts which had been misquoted, misdated, or misrepresented, as being familiar in all their bearings to every schoolboy of twelve years old. The writer of the criticism never suggested the idea that he himself, having been fully provided with books of reference, and having learned the art of finding in them what he wanted at a moment's notice, had, as he went on with his work, checked off the blunders without any more permanent knowledge of his own than a housekeeper has of coals when she counts so many sacks into the coal-cellar. He spoke of the parentage of one wicked ancient lady, and the dates of the frailties of another, with an assurance intended to show that an exact knowledge of all these details abided with him always. He must have been a man of vast and varied erudition, and his name was Jones. The world knew him not, but his erudition was always there at the command of Mr Alf, — and his cruelty. The greatness of Mr Alf consisted in this, that he always had a Mr Jones or two ready to do his work for him. It was a great business, this of Mr Alf's, for he had his Jones also for philology, for science, for poetry, for politics, as well as for history, and one special Jones, extraordinarily accurate and very well posted up in his references, entirely devoted to the Elizabethan drama.

There is the review intended to sell a book, — which comes out immediately after the appearance of the book, or sometimes before it; the review which gives reputation, but does not affect the sale, and which comes a little later; the review which snuffs a book out quietly; the review which is to raise or lower the author a single peg, or two pegs, as the case may be; the review which is suddenly to make an author, and the review which is to crush him. An exuberant Jones has been known before now to declare aloud that he would crush a man, and a self-confident Jones has been known to declare that he has accomplished the deed. Of all reviews, the crushing review is the most popular, as being the most readable. When the rumour goes abroad that some notable man has been actually crushed, — been positively driven over by an entire Juggernaut's car of criticism till his literary body be a mere amorphous mass, — then a real success has been achieved, and the Alf of the day has done a great thing; but even the crushing of a poor Lady Carbury, if it be absolute, is effective. Such a review will not make all the world call for the 'Evening Pulpit', but it will cause those who do take the paper to be satisfied with their bargain. Whenever the circulation of such a paper begins to slacken, the proprietors should, as a matter of course, admonish their Alf to add a little power to the crushing department.

For many of us, Amazon's value lies chiefly in the reviews posted for each title, which gives us a sense of whether to buy the book or not. That value has declined because of controversy about various kinds of "fake book reviews." Note: A sock puppet is an online persona/pseudonym created to disguise a reviewer's identity.
• Fake Amazon reviews draw fraud charges in groundbreaking FTC case (Nick Statt, The Verge, 2-26-19) A supplement company paid a third-party website to write misleading reviews about a weight-loss drug. It's the first time the FTC has cracked down on a company buying fake Amazon reviews. “People rely on reviews when they’re shopping online,” Andrew Smith, the FTC’s director of consumer protection, said in a statement. “When a company buys fake reviews to inflate its Amazon ratings, it hurts both shoppers and companies that play by the rules.”
• Amazon is filled with fake reviews and it’s getting harder to spot them (CNBC, 9-6-2020) See also Amazon flooded with thousands of fake reviews, report claims (CNBC, 4-16-19) "Independent site ReviewMeta – which examines reviews on Amazon – said in the report that it believed every unverified five-star review on the top ten pairs of headphones was fake." And The ‘Amazon’s Choice’ badge recommends products that are unsafe or fake, WSJ investigation finds (CNBC, 12-23-19)
• Amazon deletes 20,000 reviews after evidence of profits for posts (Dave Lee, Financial Times, 9-4-2020) FT investigation finds suspicious behaviour by 9 of top 10 UK contributors on feedback.
• How Online Reviews Influence Sales (Spiegel Research Center)
• Amazon Has Ceded Control of Its Site. The Result: Thousands of Banned, Unsafe or Mislabeled Products (Wall Street Journal, 8-23-19) Just like tech companies that have struggled to tackle misinformation on their platforms, Amazon has proven unable or unwilling to effectively police third-party sellers on its site
• 5-star phonies: Inside the fake Amazon review complex (Zachary Crockett, The Hustle, 4-13-19) "I spent two weeks in the underbelly of Amazon's fake review economy — and emerged questioning our collective trust in the stars."
• Is It Really Five Stars? How to Spot Fake Amazon Reviews (Joanna Stern, WSJ, 12-20-18) It’s on us to understand how Amazon reviews really work before we buy, and it’s on Amazon to start rethinking the star system entirely
• Amazon is suing over 1,000 fake review sellers (Nick Statt, The Verge, 10-19-15) Amazon targeted "1,114 anonymous users of the freelance jobs site Fiverr who were offering up Amazon reviews in exchange for cash. Fiverr, which is not listed as a defendant in the case, lets people offer services that typically cost around $5, indicating that Amazon does not appear to care how small or insignificant the fake reviews operation may be."
• Revenge, ego and the corruption of Wikipedia (Andrew Leonard, Salon.com, 5-17-13). The unmasking of a writer who took advantage of online anonymity to pursue old vendettas, creating and disposing of various sock puppet disguises and abusing Wikipedia’s policies on conflict of interest.
• Sock puppet accounts unmasked by the way they write and post (Edd Gent, New Scientist, 4-6-17)
• Use of bots and sock puppets (Politics and technology entry, on Wikipedia)
• Anonymous revenge editing on Wikipedia – the case of Robert Clark Young aka Qworty
• The Fiverr Report on Melissa Foster – Fake Reviews, Fake Awards, Fake Everything (Amazon Alert, 9-21-13). Provides a list of the top fake-review authors, including Amanda Hocking. Includes fake reviews on Goodreads, which I think Amazon now owns. The good fakers include some 1 and 2-star reviews to look credible.
• Amazon Alert: Your Guide to Unethical Authors (Amazon). "Tired of fake reviews? We are too."
• The Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy (David Streitfeld, NY Times, 8-25-12). "Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth....[Bing Liu] estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake. Yet it is all but impossible to tell when reviews were written by the marketers or retailers (or by the authors themselves under pseudonyms), by customers (who might get a deal from a merchant for giving a good score) or by a hired third-party service." See also In a Race to Out-Rave, 5-Star Web Reviews Go for $5 (Streitfeld, 8-19-11) and Is That Review a Fake?
• Update on Amazon's Disappearing Reviews: Konrath Continues Bold, Pro-Lies Stance; Amazon's Policies Clarified (Ed Robertson, Failure Ahoy! Adventures in Digital Publishing, 11-3-12). Responding to bad behavior by axing genuine reviews as well as fakes, Amazon has stirred serious criticism. Robertson points to the best summary of why Amazon is deleting so many honest reviews in Peter Durward Harris' post in Amazon forums.
• The 'sock puppet' scandal: How to stop fake book reviews online (Laura Hazard Owen, paidContent, 9-6-12)
• The furor over 'sock' puppet' Amazon book reviews (Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times, 9-4-12).
• Giving Mom’s Book Five Stars? Amazon May Cull Your Review (David Streitfeld, NY Times, 12-22-12). Amazon's "sweeping but hazy purge [of "illegitimate reviews"] has generated an uproar about what it means to review in an era when everyone is an author and everyone is a reviewer."
• Authors condemn fake internet reviews (The Telegraph, on Web abuse by writers, 9-3-12)
• NI crime writers Stuart Neville and Sam Millar clash (Nuala McCann, BBC News, 9-3-12
• Case Study of Paid Book Review Mill (ShelfAwareness, 8-27-12)
• RJ Ellory admits posting fake book reviews over past 10 years (Andrew Hough, The Telegraph, UK, 9-4-12). Bestselling British crime writer, exposed for writing fake online reviews lauding himself while criticizing rivals, admits he has engaged in the practice for a decade. Thus begins the "sock puppet review" scandal.
• RJ Ellory: fake book reviews are rife on internet, authors warn Bestselling writers Ian Rankin, Lee Child, Susan Hill, Val McDermid and Helen FitzGerald, who have collectively sold millions of novels, “unreservedly” condemned the “abuse” on websites such as Amazon, where reviews posted under “fake identities” are causing untold damage to the publishing world. Read their letter in full.
• Leading academics in bitter row over anonymous 'poison' book reviews (Alastair Jamieson, The Telegraph, 4-18-10). Orlando Figes, professor of history at Birkbeck College, London, and author of a book on Stalin, has named his wife as the author of comments criticizing books written by other renowned scholars as being "dark and pretentious" and "critically dull."
• Historian Orlando Figes agrees to pay damages for fake reviews on Amazon (Alexandra Topping, Guardian, 7-16-10). Historian to pay damages and costs to two rivals who launched a libel case after he posted reviews "praising his own work and rubbishing that of his rivals."

AMAZON'S REACTION TO THE SOCK PUPPET SCANDAL WAS EQUALLY UPSETTING:
• Amazon Tackles Review Problem, Deletes Wrong Reviews (Suw Charman-Anderson, Forbes, 11-7-12 )
• Amazon Customer Care Droids (Johnny Be Good, Stop the Good Reads Bullies blog, 10-20-12)
• Fake Reviews: Amazon's Rotten Core (Suw Charman-Anderson, Forbes, 8-28-12)
• Do Consumer Reviews Have A Future? Why Amazon's Sock Puppet Scandal Is Bigger Than It Appears (David Vinjamuri, Forbes, 9-12-12). A huge controversy has erupted over the use of “Sock Puppets” – fake personas created by authors – to write phony positive reviews of their own work and attack their rivals. The controversy started at the Harrogate Crime Festival in the U.K. in July, when British crime writer Stephen Leather casually acknowledged using sock puppets to generate buzz for his books. Amazon's guidelines for creating reviews include these two rules:
--"Sentiments by or on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product (including reviews by publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product)"
-- "Reviews written for any form of compensation other than a free copy of the product. This includes reviews that are a part of a paid publicity package"
• Amazon Freaks Out About Sock Puppet Reviews and Deletes a Bunch of Real Reviews (collateral damage department, TechDirt, 11-2-12). After authors freaked out about the sock puppet reviews, Amazon first revised its rules for review writing. making purchased reviews against the rules, and then deleted a lot of legitimate reviews, making it unlikely readers would post reviews in future.
• Why is Amazon deleting writers' reviews of other authors' books? (Carolyn Kellogg, Jacket Copy, Los Angeles Times, 11-2-12). A writer posting a review of another author's book got this response from Amazon: "We have removed your review from .... We do not allow reviews on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product. This includes authors, artists, publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product. As a result, we've removed your reviews for this title."