Given that the vast majority of books are self published, if the NYT isn’t getting paid for reviews one would expect the vast of their reviews would be of self published books. Is this actually the case?
Re:How We Got from Twinkies to Tofu
by vertex-four on Thursday February 15, 2018 @05:37PM
(#16388415)
No, I wouldn’t expect that, as it’s much less likely that a reader of the NYT would be interested in a given self-published book than a traditionally published one. (The reason for that being that in order to be traditionally published, the book has to go through a process intended specifically to ensure that at least some significant segment of readers will likely enjoy it - while there is no such process for self-published books.)
Come on, this is incredibly obtuse. If the mean number of readers of a self-published book is 10, versus an average large-press book being 50K, which review do you publish?
Also, you shifted the argument. You asserted that "of course" someone paid the NYT to publish the review. Who did, and how did you discover this?
> If the mean number of readers of a self-published book is 10, versus an average large-press book being 50K, which review do you publish?
I don't get paid for writing my blog, and I've reviewed books that have probably only ever had ten readers. If they're really not getting paid either way then it shouldn't matter.
Which of these entities do you think paid the NYT to publish this review? Because that would be a major story.