Rosemary Herbert is the Book Review Editor of the Boston Herald. She is a
prolific woman of letters with scores of publications and books to her
credit, and her class in Literary Journalism at the Cape Cod Writers
Conference was dense with information on the writer's craft. I thought
other ASJA members might enjoy listening in for a while as Rosemary
Herbert talks about book reviewing.

Q. You are a writer as well as an editor. Tell our members about your own
writing.

A. I have been in the book world all my life. I was a freelance writer
throughout the 20 years I was a librarian at Harvard, writing for Paris
Review, The New York Times Book Review, and many other publications. I
wrote a column on university press publishing in the Christian Science
Monitor. I interviewed writers in England, including P.D. James and John
Mortimer, for Publishers Weekly. In 1994, I published The Fatal Art of
Entertainment: Interviews With Mystery Writers, which includes interviews
with 13 writers including Patricia Cornwell, Tony Hillerman, and others.

I am editor in chief of The Oxford Companion to Crime & Mystery Writing.
Oxford University Press also brought out my Whodunit? A Who's Who in Crime
& Mystery Writing in 2003. I am editor or co-editor of a number of other
anthologies of mystery writing.

Q. What are your responsibilities as the Book Review Editor of the Boston
Herald?

A. I organize 300 books that come in every week, assign and edit book
reviews and write book features myself. As the first full-time book review
editor of the Boston Herald, I have expanded book coverage here, and with
Senior Editor Linda Kincaid, I co-founded the Herald's Community Book
Club, and I run it. I run the Herald's poetry contest.

Q. Why would a freelancer want to publish book reviews in the Boston Herald?

A. As a reviewer for the Herald, you will receive a great deal of hands-on
attention from the editor. If you have a special interest, you will have a
feeling of contributing to your field. When you have a new book coming
out, we will mention it in what we call the shirttail at the bottom of
your review, so the Boston Herald is a good place for you to build support
for your own book, too.

Q. What do you want to see in a query letter?

A. Your query letter presents you as someone the Herald can assign books
to. Show that you have done your homework. Read the paper, online or
otherwise. Address the editor by name and title. Use "Mr." or "Ms." and
the last name.
Deliver information, write tightly, look capable, make yourself memorable.
Include some little thing that sets you apart as an individual, but don't
use cute or amateur-sounding qualities to get attention.

Use your own voice. Use the active voice and the present tense. Avoid
subordinate clauses unless you want to pack some information in, and you
can do it well. Subordinate clauses are where your writing gets cluttered.

Name a few areas you feel capable of covering. Substantiate your expertise
with clips or links. If your clips are on the web, don't just give the
URL, but nutshell what each piece is about.

If you do not have book review credits, one idea is to take a popular book
like The DaVinci Code, write a review, and show how you would cover it.

Boston is a two-newspaper town, so we need to know whether you regularly
write for the Boston Globe.

Finally, say, "I look forward to finding out what the Herald's needs are."
Enclose a one-page c.v. You can also give names and contact information
for other book review editors you have worked with.

Q. What advice can you offer to a book reviewer?

A. First, always ask yourself, can I be fair to this book? To review
regularly, in addition, you have to be efficient. I have made up a code
for marking the margins of books, one symbol for description, another for
the thesis of the book, and so on. In pencil, because as a former
librarian, I have a hard time bringing myself to mark up a book.

Keep your review moving. If you are going to use a quote, use it near the
beginning of your review. We use AP style, so do not start with a quote.
Offer your own judgment on the book early, and substantiate your judgment.

Think spacially. Herald reviews are 12 inches long, which is about 450
words. Learn to write short. Good reviewers who write regularly tend not
to write long and cut back.

Q. How do you like people to contact you?

A. I would like a letter with clips, rather than an email. I prefer not to
get a phone call at the beginning.

Q. When will new books of your own be coming out?

A. Tony Hillerman and I are editors of A New Omnibus of Crime, which will
come out in the autumn of 2005. It celebrates the 75th anniversary of
Dorothy L. Sayers' anthology the Omnibus of Crime. That was a landmark
anthology for crime in her time, this is for our time.

I have just finished a mystery novel. My sleuth is Liz Higgins, an
underdog reporter on an underdog newspaper in Boston, which is no comment
on my own newspaper, by the way. The book is somewhat edgy. Liz Higgins
wants to cover hard news, but she is assigned to soft community news, soshe never gets that front page story, but just a front page teaser that
refers the reader to an inside page. Hence the name of the book, Front
Page Teaser.

This interview has been provided by Mary Campbell Gallagher, an urbanist,
writer and professional speaker. Mary has published in the Nation, the
Weekly Standard, Commonweal and other national publications. Visit her
web site at http://www.MaryCampbellGallagher.com. Copyright Mary Campbell
Gallagher 2004. All rights reserved. Mary attended Rosemary Harris's
course in Literary Journalism in 2004 at the Cape Cod Writers Conference.
The piece was first published on the Members Section of ASJA.org, the
website of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.

Mary supports the strengthening of local economies and the protection of
manufacturing, and she opposes the spread of big box stores, which weaken
local economies. She recently assembled economic evidence in an op-ed in
Newsday demonstrating that big box stores destroy jobs, they do not create
jobs. http://www.authorsguild.net/sitebuilder.php. In the Brooklyn
Papers she opposed Ikea's efforts to build a big box store on the remote
and historic waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
http://www.authorsguild.net/sitebuilder.php

Articles by Mary Campbell Gallagher

"Superstores Come With Too High a Price," op-ed in Newsday.
http://www.marycampbellgallagher.com/work1.htm

"Why Red Hook Ikea Project Should be Rejected," Guest Opinion by Mary
Campbell Gallagher. In The Brooklyn Papers.
http://www.marycampbellgallagher.com/work2.htm

"New York, New York" Mary Campbell Gallagher. Review of
A New Deal for New York, by Mike Wallace.
In The Nation. http://www.marycampbellgallagher.com/work3.htm