Book Reviews in the Age of Email Leaks
November 9th, 2016
I was reading book reviews while doing selection for our non-fiction collection, and came across one for Age of Jihad: Islamic State and the Great War for the Middle East, by Patrick Cockburn.
After what I read I still couldn't decide whether or not to buy it for the library, so I went out to Amazon to see more information.
The bits of information on Amazon records I always look for are publication date, format, number of review stars, publisher, best seller rank, and also whatever is in the editorial review section.
Often these are blurbs written by (I'm guessing) paid reviewers, but sometimes I recognize names as someone I'd expect to be an authority on the subject. Sometimes they're even full-blow Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, or other review journal reviews.
And sometimes they completely surprise me.
When I looked at this section for Age of Jihad, I found this:
So is this a thing now? Being mentioned flatteringly in leaked email correspondence is a source of promotional material? Huh - that doesn't seem like the best use of the technology tools we have, but I guess it's the world we live in.
It hadn't occurred to me until I saw this, but I bet a whole bunch of people immediately did Ctrl+F for their name as soon as the text of her emails were released.
