“Publishing commentators are discussing the fact that the archive that Kirkus Reviews had is hugely valuable–wondering what could be done with that,” said publishing expert Kat Meyer, pondering the sad news that Kirkus Reviews will close. “Is somebody going to buy it? It could be turned into anything from a Rotten Tomatoes for books (or added to such a site), or it could become valuable for libraries.”
Meyer was the special guest on the Morning Media Menu today, talking about her work as chief content wrangler at the book-focused company, Next Chapter Communications and the uncertain fate of the book review in the 21st Century. She also talked about her new media reading community at Follow the Reader, a team of readers and writers that can help fill the review gap, but never replace the 5,000 annual reviews that Kirkus produced. Click here to listen.
Meyer concluded: “The book bloggers out there will be able to fill in a little bit where Kirkus left a big gap. The differences are going to be you could rely on Kirkus–these people were being paid to do the reviews, they were honest…with a blogger, you’re not going to get that consistency all the time.”
You can listen to all the past podcasts archived at mediabistro.com or download episodes for free on iTunes. Click here to download the MP3 version.