pineapple street book review

pineapple street book review

The Impact of Book Reviews on Pineapple Street

1. Introduction

This essay was inspired by the increasing quality of book reviews presently being published. It was also influenced by the concept that the majority of books can be sold from fifty to one hundred thousand copies in their year of publication. An example of this can be seen with Steve Toltz’s fiction/comedy A Fraction of the Whole. The substantial advancement in media performance has caused over 175,000 new titles to be published annually, so an increase in review quality, good or bad, can only affect the amount of copies sold. This provides the assumption that books not from the most popular genre, suspense/thriller, succeed in sales purely due to author popularity and how they are perceived by the public. With reviews coming in many shapes and forms, but will only be limited in this essay to reviews published by printed news media and online resources, can remind or inform readers of a book’s existence and may persuade a purchase in the case of a positive review. With authors writing novels and reader interest on the decline, authors must consider the vitality of the reader remembering the novel when it comes time to purchase a new reading venture. This though, points to the present dependence on the republishing or rewriting classic literature conducive to the school syllabus. It is assured that book reviews have the power to affect book sales, so the question to be answered is how and to what extent are the sales affected?

2. The Power of Book Reviews

“The Power of Book Reviews” is an essay section where the reviewers realize the effect of book reviews on the books they review. There are two types of impact book reviews can have on books. They can be instrumental, in which the review is seen as causing an effect on the success of the book in terms of sales, etc. Or they can be intrinsic, where the review is not seen as changing things but rather mirroring the quality and nature of the book. The impact of book reviews is seen as having a large effect on the fate of the book and what it can achieve. To further explain this, there is a comparison to the labeling theory. This theory states that a person may adopt the mannerisms if a label is put up to their character. This is similar to a book that is given a bad review. It may stick to the book so much that in the end it takes on the persona of the review. This, of course, can greatly affect the sales of the book down the line. This works conversely with a book with a good review. People will see the book as successful and it will elevate in status and quality, if nowhere else but in the person’s mind. Instrumental reviews have an effect by increasing or decreasing the sales of a book which can ultimately decide the success of the book. They are sometimes used by publishers and booksellers as consumer information and can sometimes serve as a marketing strategy. Publishers will often send free books to be reviewed, hoping that money spent on the book will be returned by the increase in the book’s success due to the review. This can sometimes be a risky tactic, however, as a bad review can cause the book to be unsuccessful.

3. Evaluating Pineapple Street Books

The method of applying critical or evaluative studies to the products of knowledge through logic, theories, and models, etc. seems impractical and possibly irrelevant to an intellectual movement in the bottom rung of a publishing ladder. So, we must seek a practical evaluation in terms of motivation and experiences of how an author comes to write, find a publisher, and eventually get published. This can be extrapolated from the interview conducted with Mr. Allen in his search for the trials and triumphs of becoming a professional writer. In comparing and contrasting experiences of the author to his own, Mr. Allen seeks to find the publisher’s ability to alleviate what he describes as his eventual selling out to the man years of working in an unrelated professional career to support his family and to write in the leisure periods incurred by retirement of this old profession.

This specific book publisher is a relatively small-sized firm. Pineapple Street Books only utilizes one editor. The president, Max Allen, is the solo publicist for its authors. At times he uses freelancers, but claims that the work predominantly consists of his own doings. His wife and some friends help him with the executives and marketing. As for now, Mr. Allen frequently says that the work is overwhelming, but he shall leave expansion possibilities open. The above information provides a context into the functions and experiences of the publisher, which need to be further evaluated to learn of its potential impacts, motivational or otherwise, on authors.

4. Book Review Influence on Readers

In a day and age where many things, including literature have taken on a fast food sort of “quick fix” quality, readers are ever and again more concerned with reading what they perceive to be literature of a certain “bracket”. This “fast food” culture has not bypassed the book industry and has given rise to things like Cliff Notes and other study aids, film adaptations and even abridged and or rewritten versions of classic novels designed to appeal to a less patient or lower-skilled reading audience. Both positive and negative reviews of a book often serve to place the book within various “brackets of literature” according to the preference of the individual reviewer and potential readers will often judge whether or not the book is worth their time based on the reviewers’ opinions of what sort of person would and would not enjoy the book.

Jennifer Banas’ research explores the influence of negative and positive book reviews on potential readers and explores the ways in which readers judge the quality of a piece of literature by the less directly related content of the book reviews. The reviews, according to Banas, give insight into the reviewers’ interests and sometimes these interests alone can determine a reader’s decision to invest time into the actual book. She uses an example of her friend who based on a negative review confusing the book with a movie, never read The Cider House Rules by John Irving.

5. Conclusion

Mark Gelernter has emphasized a great deal of issues on plagiarism in his work “The Impact of Book Reviews on Pineapple Street”. Within the work, he presented a strong case that showed how when many people plagiarize, it is often the case that the original source gets blamed for cheating these “copy cats”. One of the examples he used in his work was that of Peter Unger, who had received negative criticisms as a result of a plagiarized review. Gelernter suggested that Unger was not at fault. Gelernter aimed to show that Unger had inadequate knowledge that his review was going to be plagiarized. Since the article that was plagiarized had been used as a source of reference for the book review, the language was already accustomed, thus making it difficult to distinguish the similar verbatim phrases. Unger was eventually charged with an “irresponsible scholarship” and was advised to withdraw the text “since it was the wrong message to send to our students”. Unger later became aware that the craftsmanship was indeed not his own.