How to save newspaper book review sections

There's been much whining and complaining lately about cutbacks at newspaper book review sections. But the only thing that will help is to get more people to read reviews.

At least one newspaper, The Raleigh News Observer, has a plan to revitalize its book review pages. Under new literary editor Marcy Smith, the paper is adopting a "reader-based" approach as opposed to a "books-based" approach. That means shorter reviews on a broader variety of books.

To that end, she has lined up a dozen writers to do regular columns on "niche" genres: among others, children's and young adult books, food, poetry, race, women's issues, science fiction and mysteries.

Well, it's a start. Here are three more ways the News Observer and other papers can prevent their book pages from becoming totally obsolete:

• Focus on local writers.
• Run reviews from local readers instead of syndicated reviews of bestsellers.
• Enable comments of the book reviews on the paper's Web site.
  

  
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  Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors