james_davis_nicoll | (no subject)

"Book publishers that have a PW site license subscription do not pay the processing fee. Site licenses are available to any book publisher, and pricing starts at $950. Anyone within a book publisher with a site license can submit a title for review consideration without paying the $25 fee.*** "

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"spam us if you pay for it"

"Money flows *to* the author."

So you are saying that James should pay the authors he reviews for doing a review about them?

Did Trump buy PW?

I guess that they're feeling like not publishing much of anything this year.

I'm wondering if they've gotten swamped by AI-generated material.

Still makes no sense to punish the real authors.

Absolutely. Authors and small-press publishers, who you'd think are already dealing with enough.

Obvious method: "if the author has ever been reviewed in PW, they get free submissions for their work, cancellable if it turns out to be AI spew".

But this is also obviously a badly thought out attempt to make money by burning the last of PW's reputation.

The slush pile has always been a thing. It's just lately that it has turned into an actual swamp.
And PW isn't a publisher, but a review magazine. I am wondering what their ratio of actual books to review to AI slop is now. If it's as bad as I suspect then it would be costing time and hence money to try and differentiate.

Edited 2025-04-09 05:07 (UTC)

All true, but: this new policy is in no way a solution to the problem of AI submissions. It's a doomed to fail solution to the problem of PW not being profitable enough.

OK, so what should they charge for then?

Huh. Cheap compared to what the PW BookLife reviews for selfpub start at.

Details here. Only difference is that the review is guaranteed. With prices starting at $399 US, darn well better be.

https://booklife.com/about-us/booklife-reviews.html

An attempt to turn a fire hose into a garden hose.

-Awesome Aud

I've never been so glad to have left that job. WOW.

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