Keith Donohue had an idea for a book, a story rattling around in his brain for years. But he could never find the time to write it. With a full-time job and a family with three young children, putting it off was easy.
Then Donohue turned 40, and a short time later came the events of Sept. 11, 2001. He decided, "It's now or never," and the red-haired Irishman began writing. He wrote on scraps of paper on the subway to work in Washington, D.C., and scribbled during his lunch hour sitting on park benches.
Finally, after several months of rewriting and polishing, the story was finished: _ The Stolen Child_, a fantasy inspired by the W.B. Yeats poem and what Donohue knew of the changeling legend.
And that's when things got really hard. It took Donohue two years to find an agent to shop the manuscript to publishers, nearly causing him to give up. He received 10 rejections, and was considering self-publishing. Then Donohue got a call from an agent who'd had the manuscript for a year but misplaced it. Soon, publisher Nan Talese, who runs an imprint at Doubleday, took on the book, and it seemed success was at hand.
By 2006, Donohue's book was finally in print. But then another hurdle, seemingly worst of all: The critics weren't impressed with The Stolen Child. In fact, they completely ignored it; not a single major newspaper reviewed it. Ask any big publisher, and they'll tell you: Any novel stiffed by the critics has no chance of becoming a bestseller.
But the story wasn't over. A review copy of the book ended up in the hands of Linda Porco, Amazon.com's merchandising director. She passed it among her office mates, and it was unanimous--everyone loved it. So Porco tried something new. She got more copies of the book and mailed them to Amazon's most active customer reviewers. They review books on the site as a hobby, assigning five stars to the books they love, one star to the books they hate, and an essay explaining why.
Within weeks, 13 of these Amazon Top Reviewers posted a rave review. Promptly, _ Stolen Child_ became Amazon's bestselling fiction book, and reached No. 26 on the New York Times extended bestseller list, an unbelievable climb for a novel with no big newspaper or trade reviews. Now the book is in its eighth printing and the story is being shopped to Hollywood. And--oh yeah--now Stolen Child has plenty of professional reviews.
All this caused quite a stir in publishing circles, but it didn't surprise the folks who actually buy books. Increasingly, readers turn to online reviews written by peers to find out if a book is worth it. Talese, the publisher, says a traditional function of professional critics--building awareness of a new book--is practically obsolete in the Internet age:
We're trying to reach readers. [Professional reviews] have been a way of announcing that a book exists that readers might be interested in, but they are being given less and less room in the newspapers.
Critics argue that amateur reviews are meaningless, that they don't apply the professional critics' intellectual rigor. But when was the last time you ran out and bought a book after seeing it reviewed in a newspaper or magazine? The truth is, many "professional" reviews are simply rehashes of publisher-generated publicity. Most of the time, professional critics don't tell readers the one thing they want to know--whether they'll like the book. Today, all it takes is a quick skim of customer reviews on Amazon, and you've got your answer. Whatever the amateur reviewers lack in highbrow sensibilities, they make up in credibility and relevancy.