Tracking another decline …

… The Decline of the Book Review | Higher Ed Gamma

. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The reason is straightforward, as Phillipa K. Chong explains in Inside the Critics’ Circle, a sociological study of the decline of the literary book review: Book reviews no longer attract sufficient eyeballs to generate the ad revenue that used to support book sections.  But the problem is deeper than a decline in serious book readership. As Chong explains, freelance reviewers must take care lest they alienate the newspapers or magazines that hire them, or, as writers themselves, trigger reprisals from the authors whose books they might disparage, nitpick, or savage.