The Veil of Anonymity

by Michelle Gagnon

Happy New Year, everyone! Did you miss us?
This week Clare and Joe have already covered New Year’s resolutions and the looking forward/looking back aspect of the change in decades. So I’m going to leap into a different issue…

In December it was announced that Kirkus Reviews was falling victim to the same fate as many other review sources, and that parent company Nielsen was shutting them down (although today there were claims that it might be resurrected. Time will tell).

The closing of Kirkus was met with both cheers and dismay—dismay because the number of book review sources (outside of proliferating blogs) continues to diminish. And cheers because Kirkus reviews tended to be notoriously snarky. (One famous example: on Dave Eggers’ bestselling memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,” Kirkus proclaimed: “It isn’t.”)


In the aftermath of the announcement of their demise, many writers seized the opportunity to gloat online, posting their worst Kirkus excerpts in chatrooms and on social networking sites. The response was at times as harsh as the worst Kirkus reviews. Esther Newberg, an executive vice president at International Creative Management, went so far as to say that she was, “Sorry people were losing their jobs . . . but it’s never been a publication worth anything. . . . . Good riddance.”


But for me, the worst thing about Kirkus was that their reviewers had the latitude to be as nasty as possible precisely because they were allowed to hide behind the veil of anonymity.

Now, Publishers Weekly stands as one of the only remaining publishers of anonymous reviews. And today I’m going to argue that allowing PW reviewers to retain that anonymity is downright wrong.


Before the advent of Amazon.com, Publishers Weekly was mainly a trade magazine. A starred review in the publication was something that might propel library orders, and could potentially spark more attention among store buyers. However, by and large the only exposure the public had to those reviews was the positive book cover excerpts.


Not anymore.


Now, the Publishers Weekly review is usually the first- and sometimes only- review posted on your book’s Amazon.com page. It’s also heavily featured by nearly every other online site, from Barnes & Noble to Powells. And that review sits there in perpetuity. It’s the first thing a reader sees when they’re considering purchasing your book online. As the industry continues to shift toward eBook consumption, those reviews will only gain prevalence.


Shouldn’t something that has more of an impact than ever before at the very least contain some attribution? Doesn’t an author who gets slammed by a PW review have the right to know who’s slamming him? Perhaps he could take comfort in the fact that the reviewer was clearly a cozy lover, and he wrote a horror novel. Or perhaps it’s someone she cut in line in front of at a convention. Or accidentally stabbed, and this is the reviewer’s means of extracting payback (mind you, I’m not saying any of that has happened. But until we see some names, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility).


The downside of the internet is that it’s provided a forum for people to hide behind anonymity when writing things that they would probably never say in person. We see it here sometimes, the most vitriolic comments tend to be posted anonymously.(This is a tremendous pet peeve of mine. Everyone has a right to their opinion, and because we don’t believe in censorship here at TKZ, we agreed long ago to let every comment stand. But it really irks me when someone lashes out, yet doesn’t have enough courage in their convictions to claim them.)


I believe that allowing one of the few remaining seasoned review sources to participate in that trend damages everyone. If a reviewer really hated a book, let them go on the record saying so. Those reviews are too important now for the veil of anonymity to persist.

10 thoughts on “The Veil of Anonymity

  1. Anyone who hides behind an anonymous review or comment is an obvious coward!

    Actually, the argument FOR anonymous reviews is that it allows someone to be honest without fear of a campaign of harassment from a disgruntled writer or publisher. The argument against is that it can allow personal or artistic animosity to creep in and overwhelm the review.

    I don’t really know how many amazon shoppers dwell on PW. I think they look at the star rating primarily. That’s where more crap comes in. Haters and envyers and crazies can give unfair one star reviews without even having read the book. In the case of lightning rods like, say, Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin, whole campaigns of such idiots can be unleashed.

    Amazon doesn’t care. It’s almost impossible to have a reader review removed.

    My sense is that most PW reviewers are trying to do a credible job, with the occasional bad apple tossed in. I’d rather see them remain, even anonymously, and the amazon reviews go. But since that won’t happen, may all those non-reading reviewer-idiots develop boils.

  2. The number of abusive and unfair comments and reviews by anonymous reviewers so far outweighs “attacks” by the affected writer it’s not even worth discussing. When a writer strikes back, it’s big news.

    My best argument against anonymous reviews was formed when i did a retrospective of Ed McBain reviews after he died. The New York Times had the same guy review the 87th Precinct books for several years. he hated all of them, and made it pretty clear he didn’t like McBain’s style of writing, nor did he care for the types of stories they were. (Yes, he was an idiot, but that’s a different post.)

    The point is, I recognized his name after a while, and knew to discount his reviews. (Why the Times kept assigning him is another question.) Reviews of books or movies only have real value if you can see what else that reviewer likes, or doesn’t. If I know Slate’s Dana Stevens doesn’t like the same kinds of movies I do, I won’t base my decisions on her reviews; I can’t do that if I don’t know who wrote the review.

    Let’s turn Anonymous’s argument on its head: How many careers have been damaged because Kirkus or PW assigned someone with a predisposition not to like a book to do their review, and he snarked allover it unfairly? Shouldn’t readers be able to tell who it was so they know how much credence to pay to his reviews in the future.

  3. Interesting thoughts, Michelle. And Dana. In the “old days,” a great NY Times review could catapult you into stardom (Jack Kerouac, for example) and a scathing review could kill a book–maybe on rare occasions a career, though I suspect that would be more a matter of the writer’s ability to persevere.

  4. Michelle – interesting post. I guess anonymity in respect to PW doesn’t bother me – anonymity on the web is I think more insidious (and often vitriolic) – some Amazon and website reviews can be downright loony but I think most people discount them. Most PW reviewers I think do a professional job and though I may not agree with the review I don’t find the anonymity irks me too much but that may just be because of the PW ‘veil of professionalism’:)

  5. I always write my books and do my radio show wearing a mask and hiding behind a tree. That way the critics won’t be able to come after me in public.

    Anonymity, the blessing and bane of the inter-web-world.

  6. I think Dana makes an excellent point- I do the same thing with book and film reviewers, there are those whom I know enjoy the same things I do, and I follow their reviews more closely than others.

    I don’t argue that PW reviewers are largely trying to do a credible job (for the $25/review they get paid). But then, why not take the credit for it?
    Well said, Basil. And here I thought you wore the mask because you were a superhero.

  7. Ah…now the secrets out. I’m going to have to invest in a new disguise. It was time anyway, my super leotards were starting to give a wedgie. It’s really dangerous to pick a wedgie out while flying.

  8. Yes, I did miss you! Welcome back, Kill Zone.

    Does anyone else remember a time — maybe 8 or 10 years ago when PW reviewers did have a “byline” at the end of their reviews?

    I know when I started around 1996, they were anonymous, then went to bylines, and now back to anonymous. Or maybe I dreamed it all …

  9. Some online reviewers NEVER write a negative review and so they lack credibility. If a book has flaws, let them be named. A lot of reviewers don’t want to alienate any author or publisher and some reviews are just the opposite. I always assume the bad reviews are from inept people who are failed authors or people with a grudge or a complex, but as long as they are voicing their honest opinion, so be it. I’m not sure on which side of this issue I’m really on as I don’t usually care who writes a review as long as its valid.

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