Kirkus Reviews: The End
Editorial by Jerome Kramer

So that's it for Kirkus Reviews, huh? Is this really necessary? Or a good idea?

Seventy-six years after Virginia Kirkus launched her ground-breaking advance-review publication with the mission of letting booksellers and libraries know which upcoming titles should be added to their collections, its conglomerate owner, Nielsen Business Media, is ceasing operations of the brand. Kirkus appears (probably) to be done for, along with one of its sister titles, also linked to the dusty analog days of printed words on sheets of paper, Editor & Publisher.
(read on ...)

Bonus Material: Are Prepub Reviews Irrelevant?
By Edward Nawotka

In today's lead story about the demise of Kirkus Reviews, former Kirkus managing director Jerome Kramer asks "whether the industry still needs advance reviews the way it used to?" was known among the major journals that published pre-pub reviewsKirkus--Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and Booklist--as the "mean" one. Kirkus didn't sugarcoat its reviews, which may, in the end, have been part of the problem.
(read on ...)