Kirkus Reviews

Overview

Kirkus Reviews, published on the first and 15th of each month, previews books prior to their publication. Kirkus reviews over 7,000 titles per year.

In 2014, Kirkus Reviews started the Kirkus Prize. It is one of the richest literary awards in the world, bestowing $50,000 prizes annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction, and young readers’ literature.

Influence and reception

Motoko Rich noted in The New York Times on December 11, 2009, that Kirkus is "typically not seen by the general public – except in blurbs on books or excerpted on barnesandnoble.com", and "Kirkus reviews were often used by librarians and booksellers when deciding how to stock their shelves." Target market members who read or valued Kirkus reviews reported also reading Kirkus' "rivals Publishers Weekly, Booklist, San Francisco Book Review and Library Journal", as well as "talking with publishers’ sales representatives and reading advance galleys, when deciding what to buy." And, Motoko reported: "Authors seemed to have a mixed relationship with Kirkus. Not surprisingly, it had to do with what the reviewers said about their books."

Kirkus launched a fee-for-review program in 2005, originally called Kirkus Discoveries and now called Kirkus Indie. The program allows authors or publishers to purchase a review from Kirkus, but only one or two of the books reviewed is included in the regular Kirkus Reviews publication.

History

Virginia Kirkus was hired by Harper & Brothers to establish a children's book department in 1926. The department was eliminated as an economy measure in 1932 (for about a year), so Kirkus left and soon established her own book review service. Initially, she arranged to get galley proofs of "20 or so" books in advance of their publication; almost 80 years later, the service was receiving hundreds of books weekly and reviewing about 100.

Initially titled Bulletin from Kirkus' Bookshop Service from 1933 to 1954, the title was changed to Bulletin from Virginia Kirkus' Service with the January 1, 1955 issue, and successively shortened to Virginia Kirkus' Service with the December 15, 1964 issue, and Kirkus Service in 1967, before it attained its definitive title, Kirkus Reviews, with the January 1, 1969, issue. It was sold to The New York Review of Books in 1970 and later sold by the Review to Barbara Bader and Josh Rubins. In 1985, magazine consultant James B. Kobak acquired Kirkus Reviews. David LeBreton bought Kirkus from Kobak in 1993. BPI Communications, owned by Dutch publisher VNU, bought Kirkus from LeBreton in 1999. At the end of 2009, the company announced the end of operations for Kirkus. The journal was purchased from VNU (by then renamed The Nielsen Company, or Nielson N.V.) on February 10, 2010 by businessman Herbert Simon. Terms were not disclosed. It was thereafter renamed Kirkus Media, and book industry veteran Marc Winkelman was made publisher.