Sitting on my desk this afternoon are two newly arrived  galleys waiting to be assigned for review. Both fiction titles are by popular best-selling authors. Unfortunately for me, both books have November publication dates. We may be living in a digital age of instant gratification, but our old-technology print magazine follows a production schedule that requires the editors to close an issue well in advance  of the actual  issue date. This means we closed the Nov. 1 on October 9 and we are scheduled to finish the Nov. 15 issue on Oct. 23. The next issue for which I could possibly assign these two books is January, definitely too late for collection development librarians who needed reviews of these hot fiction titles two months ago.

One solution to our late galley dilemma is Barbara Hoffert’s popular Prepub Alert column, which previews the hottest fiction and nonfiction books four months in advance of their publication dates.  A quick scroll online through the August 15 column finds that the two galleys in question, Dean Koontz’s lastest Odd Thomas novel, Brother Odd, and Jonathan and Faye Kellerman’s second city-based novella collection, Capital Crimes,were highlighted. As I know many libraries will have already ordered these books as a result, I could discard these galleys, unreviewed, without a guilty conscience, and save precious  reviewing space in our print magazine for notable literary debuts.  On the other hand, there are those libraries with limited budgets who are waiting for reviews that advise them on how many copies of a popular author’s latest book they should purchase or whether they should even buy at all.  

This is where LJ’s new online Xpress Reviews—First Look at New Books come in. Posted every Tuesday on our website are timely reviews of both late-breaking titles and well-in-advance forthcoming titles. While some book publicists have complained that we are “ghettoizing” their books by posting web-only reviews, LJ editors beg to differ. This is not a substitute for print reviews but rather an additional tool to help collection development librarians do their job better. Besides, isn’t it better to have an online review than to be ignored completely? So look for Xpress reviews of Koontz and the Kellermans in the next few weeks. And librarians, while you are marking up your print copies of LJ, don’t forget to check online every Tuesday for reviews of other worthwhile titles.