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1. The best one, two or three paragraph publicity releases summerize the contents (nonfiction) or storyline (fiction) and if done well enough are a wheel that doesn't have to therefore be reinvented by the reviewer in the crafting of a review for publication or broadcast. What a good reviewer will do, in addition to utilizing the publicity release in this manner, is to then add a line or two or three of personal commentary or advice to the reader of the review as to the value or "recommendability" of the book the prospective reading public for which the book would be particularly appropriate.

2. Editors of newspapers, newsletters, magazines and journals are on deadlines and must occasionally resort to "filler" to round out the column of a page, or the page of a section, or a section of an issue. Currently I have 39 volunteer reviewers (and the same would hold true for other publications with paid staffs), some of whom wouldn't know a deadline if it was to bite them on the ankle! So an editor's resorting to incorporating the publisher's publicity release info is ideal tactic to use as a fall back measure to getting an issue out on time.

3. Still others reviewers are but fledgling in the art and craft of book reviewing and what they turn in must be augmented by the incorporation of publicity release info. I can't tell you how many times an ISBN or even a price has been left out of an otherwise perfectly good review. Or that a reviewer had a comment which would have made a whole lot more sense to a reader if the reviewer had given a bit more "book content" background, precisely the kind that good publicity releases provide the reviewer when the editor sends it back for a re-write.

4. Publisher originated publicity releases should be written so as to be able to be printed verbatim in the pages of a local newspaper or a national newsletter. Think of it this way -- you were able to reach that one person with the apparently persuasive information of why your book should be bought, taken home and read. That the one person you reached was then able to turn around and provide that same persuasive information to hundreds, perhaps thousands of other people is a cause for publisher celebration.

And the better crafted your PR the better your chances of that "publicity release chain reaction" will take place.

James A. Cox is Editor-in-Chief of Midwest Book Review