Advertising and The New York Times Book Review

9 Feb

As many of you know, lack of advertising recently killed The Washington Post Book World. As this Times article on the demise of Book World notes:

The New York Times Book Review is now the largest remaining Sunday tabloid section, publishing at least 24 and as many as 30 or more pages a week with a staff of 15 and contributions from dozens of freelance reviewers. In addition to being included in the Sunday paper, the Book Review is sold as a separate section to 23,500 subscribers. An additional 4,200 copies of the section are sold in bookstores across the country.

And so, in the spirit of the popular The First Ten Books in Little, Brown’s Spring ’09 Catalog, I present to you, without comment or judgment, a rundown of the ads in the February 8, 2009 edition of The New York Times Book Review. (With the exception of the full-page ads, page sizes are approximate.)

  • Full-page ad for T.C Boyle’s THE WOMEN (Viking – Penguin Group)
  • Half-page ad shared by Marcianne Blévis’ JEALOUSY and Phillip Lopate’s TWO MARRIAGES (Other Press)
  • Half-page ad for THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn/Putnam – Penguin Group)
  • Full-page ad for One Day University
  • Half-page ad for IN LINCOLN’S HAND edited by Harold Holzer and Joshua Wolf Shenk (Bantam – Random House)
  • Quarter-page ad for DAKOTA by Martha Grimes (NAL – Penguin Group)
  • Quarter-page ad for Ariana Franklin’s THE SERPENT’S TALE (Berkley – Penguin Group)
  • Third-page ad for MARSHMALLOW’S FOR BREAKFAST by Dorothy Koomson (Delta – Random House)
  • Quarter-page ad for ANNE PACKARD: INTROSPECTIVE by various contributors (Skylark Press)
  • Two small ads for THE JAZZ EAR by Ben Ratliff (Times Books – Henry Holt)
  • Full-page ad for OBAMA: The Historic Journey with introduction by Bill Keller (The New York Times/Callway; distributed by Riverhead Books – Penguin Group)

Note:

THE JAZZ EAR and the Obama book also carry the imprimatur of the Times‘ online store.

Finally, there are four classified ads (editor for hire, rare books wanted, etc.) and a very small ad for NationsCourts.com, which promises “court documents in interesting new cases . . . [f]or attorneys, journalists, writers and bloggers.”

4 Responses to “Advertising and The New York Times Book Review”

  1. Kat February 9, 2009 at 7:10 pm #

    How many pages in total was the book section? I always read on-line, so I don’t have a good gauge.

    (Off to go see what ads are on-line, and if any match up with the list above)

  2. denniscass February 9, 2009 at 8:51 pm #

    This week it was what the Times says is there minimum: twenty-four (24) pages.

    Please do report back on what you find on-line.

  3. denniscass February 13, 2009 at 5:16 pm #

    I had hoped to stir up more discussion with this post, but perhaps I needed to frame it up more.

    What I find interesting about that list is that almost half of the ads are paid for by the Penguin Group. So if Penguin hadn’t advertised that week, what would they have done?

    Ads for books have never been a popular way of getting out the vote. And ad revenues are down across the board.

    Still you have to wonder: what does a post-advertising publishing world look like?

    Do even “big” books become sell-it-out-of-the-trunk-of-your-car books?

  4. PE Harris February 15, 2010 at 1:03 pm #

    I can’t find the link for placing an ad in the NY Times Book Review

    can anybody help?

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