Why I have no plan of attack on Plan of Attack

I just received the following e-mail from an avid reader: Ok, Dan, it’s been 3 days now. How come no response to Woodward’s Plan of Attack ? The plain and simple answer is, I’m swamped. These books are coming fast and furious, and I only have so many hours in the day. I’ll try to ...

By Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

April 21, 2004, 12:58 AM

I just received the following e-mail from an avid reader:

Ok, Dan, it’s been 3 days now. How come no response to Woodward’s Plan of Attack ?

The plain and simple answer is, I’m swamped. These books are coming fast and furious, and I only have so many hours in the day. I’ll try to get to it sometime soon. [Oh, sure you’re swamped — on things that don’t sit well with your political views–ed. No — I haven’t had time to blog about either the oil-for-food scandal or Iran’s role in the Shiite uprising. Really, I’m swamped.] Parenthetically, there is another reason — they’re expensive to get in hardcover, dammit. Thankfully, one or two publishers have started sending me the occasional review copy — and have I mentioned recently Ivo Daalder and James Lindsey’s America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Brookings, 2003) is a hell of a good read? However, publishers are unlikely to send bestsellers like the Susskind, Clarke, or Woodward books to bloggers — they don’t need us. [Jayson Blair needs you!–ed. Yes, but we don’t want him.] Apparently, I’m in the minority on even getting the occasional review book. David Bernstein‘s not getting review copies — and he thinks that since he blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy, book companies should be sending him gratis review copies. Tyler Cowen points out that there may be a reason why this won’t happen:

[I]f you read about a book on a blog, you may think you don’t need to read the book. If I think about myself, I now read more blogs and (slightly) fewer books as a result. You can tell all the stories you want about complementary uses of books and blogs, but at some margins differing activities are likely to be substitutes.

Kevin Keith offers an amusing but illegal solution to the problem. Back to main point: feel free to discuss the Woodward book here. UPDATE: The Weekly Standard‘s Richard Starr e-mails a useful suggestion on the question of review copies:

I suspect bloggers waiting for review copies to show up in the mail are going to wait a long time. However, they might want to try what publications do, which is asking the publicity department of a publisher for a review copy of titles that interest them. Then they should make sure when they write about a book (for good or ill) to send a copy back to those same publicists. Eventually stuff might start turning up unbidden, but I suspect the direct ask will bear fruit sooner. Also helpful is to get oneself added to the mailing lists for the publishers catalogues of future titles, which usually include a check-off sheet to be returned to the publisher noting the titles one is especially interested in.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

Tag: Politics