Reviews for Sale.

The article presents an editorial on the launch of two new review services by Kirkus. The cash-challenged publication, with a circulation under 3000, will now offer publishers the ability to "self-select" titles for review, old or new, "conventionally published, self-published, e-published and Print-On-Demand," for $350 each. The reviews, while not appearing in the print publication or database, will be posted as Kirkus Discoveries on Kirkus's web site and may be used by publishers in any "marketing materials and anywhere else you'd like to reprint [them]," according to Kirkus. For publishers of lifestyle books (cookbooks, personal finance, home improvement, health, and parenting), $95 can buy inclusion in Kirkus Reports, an email newsletter, or "media tipsheet," as Kirkus calls it, that recommends titles to editors and magazine and newspaper journalists. Kirkus calls this "a co-op marketing partnership between Kirkus and publishers." In fact, Kirkus, established in 1933 as Virginia Kirkus' Bookshop Service to help booksellers buy stock that would sell, has a reputation for blunt, often acid, language and flip judgments that have led many librarians to eschew its reviews. Given that reputation, it's hard to believe that Kirkus's new fee-commissioned "reviews" won't adopt a milder tone. What publisher would pay to have its books eviscerated? Actually, publishers needn't worry: the for-fee model allows them to decide whether a review, once written, will appear at Kirkus Discoveries.