The once-staid Kirkus is launching an iPad-centered initiative; BlueInk Reviews is helping the industry find the best self-published titles; and a mysterious startup based on a Rotten Tomatoes-like site for books is crashing in the Simon & Schuster building. This is the book review in 2011.
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus (which was acquired a year ago by mall developer Herb Simon) recently began reviewing kids’ iPad book apps. “We heard from our friends and from librarians and booksellers what a gaping hole there was for someone to curate and review all these apps,” Bob Carlton, VP and Publisher, says, especially since the Apple App Store is so difficult to navigate.
Though Children’s & YA Books Editor Vicky Smith didn’t have experience reviewing apps, she found it easier to adapt to the new environment than she’d expected: “After passing drafts of reviews back and forth [with Kirkus’s first app reviewer, technology reporter Omar Gallaga], we settled into a pretty comfortable meld of looking at an app from both the narrative and art perspectives and the interactive game elements. A lot of apps are taken from very recognizable properties like Dr. Seuss, but others are taken from much less well-known paper books or are completely new, so you have to contextualize the whole story and picture experience as well as the interactive experience. Each individual app determines our approach.”
Obtaining apps to review is different from obtaining galleys. Last fall, Kirkus canvassed over 300 individuals and companies creating storybook iPad apps. “We sent a request to them as we’d do with traditional publishers,” Carlton says, “and they provided us with download codes.” Unlike books, Kirkus generally reviews apps after publication, though a few developers have come forward with the opportunity to test apps earlier. Kirkus is also in discussion with Barnes & Noble to review its upcoming Nook picture books. Carlton says storybook apps for Android are “lagging.”
Kirkus plans to launch an app discovery engine this month. (Check here for updates.) Carlton says it’s surprisingly difficult to preview apps online. “Wesaw an opportunity to do video reviews and complement them with a top-ten list,” he says, and parents, teachers, and librarians embraced the idea—as did many app developers. Since users are already reading Kirkus’s app reviews from their iPads, Kirkus chose to make its app discovery engine a web-based application instead of a traditional app. It is also designed as a widget that can be integrated into partner sites.
For now, book apps are primarily aimed at children ten and under. “There doesn’t seem to be as much for later elementary and teens,” Smith says. “I think developers are still getting their heads around the paradigms. If you are looking at a picture book and trying to figure out how to translate that experience into an app, you’ve got a model based on 32 pages, a short story and lots of graphics. [But] doing a full-blown app that is novel-length is quite a challenge.” Carlton says many book apps now are based around “pass back”: “You’re in the minivan, you’re about to go on a trip and you pass the iPad back to your child. That’s very different from how a 14-year-old immerses herself in a 200-page book.”
In addition, Smith says, rights are driving many development choices; her unscientific analysis reveals “more 3 Little Pigs apps than anything else, because nobody has to pay royalties for the 3 Little Pigs and you don’t have to explain the story to anybody.” Public domain titles present a lower barrier to entry to the app market. Smith is excited about “people developing original stories. I really see an opportunity for inventive storytelling that is completely original and organic to the iPad.”
BlueInk Reviews
In February, Patti Thorn, the former book review editor of the Rocky Mountain News, and former agent Patricia Moosbrugger launched BlueInk Reviews, a website devoted to reviewing and highlighting self-published books. Reviewers are professional writers or former editors. Authors pay in advance for the reviews, but don’t know which reviewers are assigned to their books, and cannot receive refunds if they’re unhappy with the review (though they can request that their reviews be removed from BlueInk’s website). All books are considered for Starred Reviews, and all Starred Reviews are eligible for the BlueInk Best Book Award.
BlueInk reaches out not just to self-published authors but also to agents, publishers, librarians, and readers. “Other review sites generally treat self-published authors like stepchildren,” says Thorn. “To us, self-published books are the main event. This is an amazing pool of content, growing every day, but there is so much out there that it’s difficult for authors to distinguish themselves. Our reviews will help authors establish credibility with readers. And when we find exceptional books, we plan to celebrate them.”
The site is easy for industry professionals to search. Agents and publishers can use “Power Search” to search exclusively for books that have received rave reviews, and can search by genre or subject matter. They can also search for reviews that include an author’s sales figures. (Inclusion of sales figures is an optional addon for authors; BlueInk doesn’t currently verify the data.)
Librarians and booksellers can search for books set in their region or written by authors in their area. Users can also search the site to find books that are recommended for fans of a certain author (“highly recommended for fans of Jodi Picoult,” for example). And the site offers Google Books Preview so that users can read excerpts immediately. “Our goal with all of these features is to save professionals time,” Thorn says. “We hope they will get in the habit of checking in with us regularly.”
Figuring how to monetize a self-published book review site was difficult, Thorn says, because of the vast number of selfpublished titles and their varying quality. Crowdsourcing allows an author’s friends and family to skew reviews, and professional reviewers have to be paid. “We can’t visualize a model that doesn’t require some sort of payment per book,” Thorn says. “It’s difficult to fund any online venture with advertising alone. And we can’t see readers paying for a subscription-based service, at least not at this point in time. Perhaps industry professionals would be willing to pay, but we want to reach readers at large as well. It’s a challenge to think of a way to fund such a venture that doesn’t involve each author paying for the service.” And as even more traditional book reviews disappear, the site notes, “we see a not-too-distant future where even traditionally published authors will seek our service rather than the uncertainties of a ‘free’ review which may never actually appear.”
Rotten Tomatoes for Books?
Bethanne Patrick, who tweets @thebookmaven and runs the FridayReads meeting, spoke to PT about a Rotten Tomatoes-like model for books: something that, like the popular movie site, “combines expert reviews with user reviews at an aficianado-like level, along with community generated reviews.” But, she says, “it’s very hard to do this for books,” as she learned when she was working on such an initiative at Book Studio (a website published by WETA, Washington, D.C.’s public television/radio station). “Reading a book can be a commitment of twenty hours. It’s different for movies. When we were trying to put together a meaningful Rotten Tomatoes-like model for the Book Studio, we had to contend with questions like: Here’s a book’s release date. When do the professional reviews come out? How long after that will we get blog reviews? How much longer after that will people jump in with their own community reviews? And some people who might write the best reviews might be waiting for that book to come out at the library. There are parallels for movies, but it comes down to a numbers game for books. People often use books as the test case. In this case, though, there are consumer sites for movies, for rating cars, and for ranking colleges and universities, but no one’s come up with this for books.”
They may be trying, though. Patrick told us about Obikosh, a company founded by Paolo Lemgruber and headquartered in the Simon & Schuster building. PT was not able to reach Lemgruber, but on its website, Obikosh describes itself as “a well-funded new stealth startup” that “will redefine the way consumers interact with content, devices, and each other. We envision a world where people can openly and actively discuss and recommend their favorite media to each other without dealing with overcrowded pages, fake reviews, or a biased editorial voice.” In a recent job posting for a VP of Marketing, Obikosh described itself as “THE resource for people to discover, explore, learn about and find new books. It’s a free to consumer site supported by advertising and e-commerce.” Patrick says there are also other players in this space, so we may see a very new online book review model soon.
