Wednesday, July 02, 2008

NPR Boosts Book Coverage

Publisher's Weekly reports that NPR has begun an expansion of its web-based book coverage, "adding weekly book reviews, and has hired six new book reviewers—including a graphic novel reviewer—and added more features to an already existing lineup of author podcasts, critics' lists and other book-focused content ... is now offering three or four book reviews a week, including such newly added roundups as Books We Like, short reviews of favored new titles, and Three Books We Like, which allows each NPR critic to gather and survey three titles on a particular subject."

The new reviewers include "Jessa Crispin, founder of the literary blog Bookslut.com; John Freeman, book critic and a former president of the National Book Critics Circle; and Laurel Maury, freelance comics and graphic novel reviewer and a longtime contributor to PW Comics Week."

Senior supervising producer Joe Matazzoni said "We’re building up our book coverage because book content really works for our audience. Books are among the top three topics attracting traffic to the NPR site."

I like it, and the expansion has been immediately obvious - the number of NPR items coming through the Books RSS feed has been increasing noticeably lately.

[h/t LISNews]