Authors the New Reviewers?

by Steven Zeitchik, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 5/24/2005

Viking reports that yesterday's Today Show Book Club pick, Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road has been riding to success on the backs of an unlikely source of buzz: authors.

Isabel Allende has been talking it up at media events and readings, after the book got some serious blurbage from the likes of Louise Erdrich and Jim Harrison. (Allende was the also the one to select it on Today.) The first-novel centers on the harrowing story of Canadian soldiers during World War I.

Reviews, though, have been as quiet as the author attention has been loud. Viking spokespeople call it "surprisingly difficult" to get reviewers' attention and note the effects of the larger winner-take-all phenomenon. "There seem to be less reviews in general and everyone seems to review the same five books week in and week out," says Paul Slovak. But don't discount author coattails: Allende is reported to have said the book could take off like The Kite Runner.