NBCC Polls Members' Ethics
By Rachel Deahl -- Publishers Weekly, 12/11/2007 6:59:00 AM
Sixty-four percent of accredited book reviewers feel that critics who write an unpaid blurb for a book should be banned from publishing a full review. And 76% of critics feel that if you haven't read a work cover to cover you shouldn't be critiquing it in print. These are just some of the findings of the NBCC's 2007 ethics survey, the first one the organization has done in 20 years.
Administered by NBCC member and Philadelphia Inquirer critic Carlin Romano, the 2007 survey contains 364 responses (357 of which are from NBCC members), compared to the 126 that the 1987 survey drew. The NBCC is also, for the first time, distributing the results to the media and the public.
Highlighting how some attitudes about ethics in reviewing have remained the same while others have shifted, Romano pointed to the fact that, in 1987 75% of respondents said it is unethical to back out of reviewing a book a reviewer didn't like because the critic wanted to avoid trashing it in print. Only 34% expressed this sentiment in the 2007 survey. Romano's further breakdown of the survey can be found here. A couple a questions that arose because of newer technology found that 51% of reviewers believe it is okay to link a review to Amazon or other sites that sell books, while 60.5% said it is fine for book review sections to ignore titles from self-published authors from such online presses as iUniverse.
