I’ve seen a lot of conversation online about the Washington Post shutting down its book review section, and I can’t say I’m surprised whenever I see such news. I ran a books section at a Canadian daily newspaper for a time, and it was incredibly difficult to generate any interest in book reviews. Maybe that was because of my editorial oversight, but I think the overall trend of diminishing books coverage backs up my personal observations.

And if you compare the readership of books pieces to sports coverage? Book reviews aren’t even in the same league.

My time as a books editor was before BookTok became a thing, so I can only imagine it’s that much harder to get attention now with the competition from social media, dedicated literary sites, book bloggers, and so on.

Interestingly, I didn’t see the same decline in book stories. If I could find the right angle on an author profile or news about a book, the readership was often considerable and engaged. One of the most popular stories I ever wrote was about Vancouver writer Sebastien de Castell’s rise in the fantasy scene while he was still an emerging scribe. It far outperformed any reviews we ever published, as did most other pieces that had some sort of “story” angle to them.

In a world where we curate everything to fit our interests (okay, the algorithms curate everything to fit our interests), I think very few readers care about someone else’s opinion of a book. However, I firmly believe there is a very large audience out there that is still interested in discovering new books they may enjoy, which is why the new mediums are so popular. But they are very different models of conversation around books and reading than the traditional books section.

There’s one thing that remains true irregardless of technological and economic change. Word of mouth is the best possible publicity for a book. Passionate readers urging others to check out their favourite books leads to more passionate readers.

So yes, we can mourn the death of the Washington Post books section. We should mourn the death of any such place that facilitates conversations around culture. But each of us should also become our own books section. Share your favourite reads. Talk about them on your platform of choice, review them where you like, tattoo your favourite lines on visible parts of your body. Carry on the conversation and keep culture alive. Because we see what happens when people don’t care about culture.

As always, thanks for reading.