The Post Ended Its Book Coverage. The Times Should Step Up.

Dear New York Times, we need you now more than ever

Feb 06, 2026

I turn my faint and fading hopes to you, New York Times

If you follow bookish news, you might have heard that the Washington Post, owned by the world’s richest bookseller, just eliminated all book coverage. (more here from the Authors Guild on why this matters.)

I’ve written fourteen books in 25 years, and I’ve always depended upon the kindness of book reviewers. The Post has bestowed upon me many kind and thoughtful reviews, the kind that told me the reviewer understood what I was trying to do and really got it. Then they asked me to review books, so I did the same for other authors. I was terribly honored (and intimidated) to review the likes of Mary Roach and Rebecca Solnit.

But never mind—that’s all over now. Many of the other great newspaper book review sections that were alive at the beginning of my career, back in 2001, are also dead or mostly dead.

Which leaves us with one faint but viable hope: The New York Times.

The Washington Post might be struggling financially, but the Times is crushing it. They added 1.4 million NEW digital subscribers last year, and they’re still growing. Adjusted operating profit last year was $192.3 million. They have over ONE BILLION DOLLARS on hand.

They can afford to splash out on some AWESOME book coverage.

Look what they did with cooking. Look what they did with games. Everyone I know uses those apps. Do it again, New York Times, only do it with books.

Here are the ideas of just one person—me—generated in a heated rush on a Wednesday morning before lunch. Imagine what you’d get if you asked actual clever people across publishing, bookselling, libraries, BookTok, etc etc.

Something’s bound to work. Make it happen, New York Times.

Many more bestseller lists

Three of my four New York Times bestselling books landed on the Advice, How-To, & Miscellaneous list. These specialty lists are a great way to hand out more trophies and give more publishers a reason to splash “New York Times Bestseller” on book covers. How about a cookbook list? A nature & science list? Many different genre fiction lists? A books-in-translation list?

Why limit these? They can’t cost that much to compile. I know the Times has their secret formulas, but they also have computers. Throw out a ton of lists, make those lists more visible, celebrate more great books, and get authors, publishers, and readers excited.

More and better ads

This one’s for you, publishers. As important as favorable Times coverage is for you, and as much as you care about the bestseller lists, you don’t support the paper. Look at last Sunday’s book review section, above. It’s a ghost town. The only ads you see are house ads, run by the Times for the Times’ products.

I know—print is dying and it’s all digital ads now. But I don’t see publishers there much, either. I just clicked through the book review section online and only saw one ad, for a sweater I’d already bought.

And don’t tell me you don’t have the money. Annual revenue for the big five publishers topped $12 billion last year. You can throw a few bucks at the Times.

Of course, the Times could get more creative about welcoming bookish advertisers, from publishers to bookstores to—I don’t know, the American Library Association? Book festivals? How about combo ads for, say, new releases on birds, with the costs shared (gasp!) across a few publishers? Rethink your rate cards, Times. Figure something out.

I know what else publishers are going to say. Ads don’t work. Well, maybe that’s because your ads suck. Here’s what a typical book ad looks like:

This is, honestly, a better-than-average book ad, what with the little drawings plopped in here and there. But all publisher ads follow this terrible formula: First you take a rectangle (the shape of the ad), then you put another rectangle inside (that’s the book), then you surround it with still more rectangular text boxes that contain your blurbs and catalog copy. Maybe it has a jaunty headline like “Fall Into Great Reads!”

They’re awful.

Does no one have a camera? Could you not photograph three high-profile authors on a park bench, engrossed in your latest page-turner? Anything? Something like this, maybe?

Does anyone know a writer who could write an actual clever slogan?

News flash, publishers. Ads aren’t MEMOS. They’re not meant to be READ. Nobody wants to read 500 words of blurbs and catalog copy, gridded around a dustjacket. Digital ads can be animated. Get creative.

Here’s another ad, from the same edition of the paper. It’s for Louis Vuitton, who, I’m told, makes handbags. Did they take a picture of the handbag and surround it with blurbs and rave reviews? No. No, they did not.

Sure, there’s a handbag in the picture there somewhere, but there’s also ~~an awesome camper van~~ WAIT IS THAT JEREMY ALLEN WHITE????!!!!!

I know you can’t make his deal, but doesn’t ANYONE in publishing have an idea for a cool ad with cool people in it? Or a cute dog? Don’t y’all publish books by celebrities sometimes? Make them pose for a damn ad in exchange for that outlandish advance!

OK I need to pick up the pace or we’ll never get through this. Consider the rest of this a lightning round. Some of it’s workable, some of it isn’t. Some of it’s been tried before, some of it’s already being done in some fashion. The point is—I came up with all of this BEFORE NOON! Someone else think of something!

Bookstore Haul: Have an interesting person go into a cool bookstore and pick out five books. Write it up, take some photos, maybe do a little TikTok-style video.

Matchmaker/Speed Dates: Get five people in a room who are all looking for a book to love. Have booksellers, sales reps, editors, librarians, influencers, whoever, go around and pitch them some books. See if anybody makes a book match. Do a fun little write-up with snappy quotes, make some cute videos, embrace the awkwardness, etc.

Imagine bookish speed dates at Portland’s Rose City Book Pub, covered by a local writer for the Times

Bookish advice column: Not a book recommendation column per se, but advice about socially awkward bookish situations or relationship problems, advice for writers, insider career advice to people in publishing or bookselling, book club etiquette, something wide-ranging and also juicy. Judge John Hodgman but for books.

Books to TV/Movies: Sure, Heated Rivalry is the latest book to TV cultural phenomenon, but I just saw No Other Choice, so I read the book it was based on, the Donald Westlake novel The Ax. Whoa! Interesting! Timely! Worth a couple paragraphs! And there are endless older movies/TV/ books to mine. I know you run this stuff from time to time, but make it fun and snappy and more often.

Bring back excerpts. New books used to get excerpted! We have infinite space online, why not go back to that? The Times’ recent review of No Other Choice includes a link to an excerpt from The Ax that the paper ran back in 1997 to accompany its book review at the time.

Blurb feed: Authors get asked to blurb books because they’re similar to books we wrote, or because our agent/editor is desperate and needs a favor. But the books we actually read and enjoy are often quite different. What about a way for authors and other high-profile or noteworthy people to post off-the-cuff reviews, not blurby marketing copy, of whatever they’re actually voluntarily reading? I’d love to follow a feed of this. And what a thrill for a publisher or author to find their book randomly celebrated by some person of note! Invite a large group of diverse voices to participate and see what you get each week.

How about an app? Many have tried and failed to make the killer book app. Goodreads was once a good idea, then Amazon bought it, and now it’s a weird mishmash of toxic book culture and neglected technology. Can the NYT figure out the bookish app everyone really wants? What with the massive archive of book reviews, author interviews/features, other book-adjacent coverage, and bestseller data? Could they spend, like, a day thinking about this?

I use the Cooking app exclusively to figure out what to make for dinner. It’s perfect. I want that exact app to help me figure out what to read next. (I know some book recommending happens in the regular NYT app, but it’s just …. not enough.) Sure, everyone eats but not everybody buys books. But I bet the number of active, recipe-seeking cooks is roughly equal to the number of active book buyers.

Fun, gossipy book club reports: Book clubs are reading books and having opinions! What about featuring interesting book clubs and what they thought of their latest pick, what happened at the meeting, etc., for a quirky, folksy, book club column? Also, speaking of apps: Many sites have tried to be the central clearinghouse for book clubs. Could the Times figure that out too? Thx.

Chatty book news column: I know it seems like bookish gossip is already covered in industry publications. But guess what? Non-industry people don’t read those! How hard would it be to do a weekly or monthly round up of fun, dishy news on book deals, publisher happenings, awards, BookTok breakouts, trends like sprayed edges and limited editions? Trade show highlights? Scandals?

Cultural event coverage: Book festivals! Cool community literary events! Historic homes of famous authors doing interesting programs! Museums holding bookish exhibitions! Rare book fairs and auctions revealing hidden treasures! Is there a way to cover the best of those happenings—almost like a travel column, or a society column, for books?

Illustrators and book cover artists/designers: Can we get a monthly look behind the scenes at the process to illustrate and/or design a book or cover? Please?

Author/editor conversations: I feel like people would read 1000 words of an author talking to their editor about what went down while the book was in process.

just throwing some love out to independent bookstores

Involve Bookshop.org: These people are crushing it. They’re helping to keep independent bookstores afloat. Send all the affiliate links to them exclusively, and find out if they have any good ideas that could use a partner like the New York Times!

Review an author’s entire output, not just their latest book: Many of my readers are surprised to see some of the other books I wrote. They’re even more surprised that I make art, that I helped create a traveling exhibit based on one of my books, etc. etc. Why not look at the entirety of what an author has done, with the idea that readers might like to explore all of it? The plays, the songs, the screenplays, the early forgotten novels, the cool newsletter, the beloved annual workshop in Italy, etc.

Rethink book reviews: I know, book reviews are already getting shorter. But still—maybe the era of the 800-word book review is coming to an end. Honestly, I’ve written a lot of those, and I’d say up to 400 words in the middle is filler to meet the word count. It’s plot summary. It’s the part where the author, reading the review aloud to their spouse, goes “blah blah blah” and skips to the last two or three paragraphs. Or as my husband says: “There ought to be a way to make book reviews more interesting. I’ll read a restaurant review of a place I’m never going to. Why aren’t book reviews like that?” So maybe the answer is…

Get someone other than authors to write book reviews. Chefs don’t write restaurant reviews. Directors don’t write movie reviews. Guitarists don’t write music reviews. It’s awkward to ask us to review our colleagues. Yes, a smart 800-word review is a big ask for non-writers. But make them shorter and breezier, and maybe a whole crew of booksellers, librarians, other bookish types will step up.

Last but not least: Hire Ron Charles, formerly of the Washington Post. He seems happy here at Substack, and y’all should definitely all go subscribe, but maybe he’s open to the right offer. He’s funny, smart, and full of good ideas. I haven’t asked Ron about his ambitions for the future, this is just me mouthing off. But I say to you, NYT: At least give the man a call.

Now it’s your turn

I’m sure you have better ideas than these. Let’s hear them!

Supporters are doing a sketchbook/journal deep dive

Last week, we looked at a bunch of options for adding lettering and writing to a sketchbook. I have some suggestions here for what to write, and how to write. Lots more to come on this, and every Monday we’re doing something connected to sketchbooks, journals, and notebooks.

Here’s a preview of last week:

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