Has the Internet Killed Professional Book Reviewing?

That's the question PopMatters recently asked.

From the story...

And then the blog came along. The power of blogs lies in their everyman-ness. Blogs are like critics-in-a-box: anyone with access to a computer can sign up with WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal, even Diaryland, write up their thoughts, and hey presto! instant critic. Instead of being forced to read half a dozen review pages in search of the perfect book, readers can now pick a genre (cozy mystery, pop science, YA) or demographic (stay-at-home mom, clock maker, dalek) and find reviews written with their interests in mind. But blogs are just the top book in the stack. The real threat to professional reviewing is a lot more insidious: time.

Blogged reviews, like professional, in-paper reviews, take time to read, and time away from reading. Sure, reading a review can prevent you from buying a bad book and save a few dollars. But scrolling through a 1000+ words of in-depth review eats, at best, four minutes’ worth of time. If the review leaves you undecided, it could be another four minutes before you find a second review, and another four minutes for you to read it, bringing the total up to twelve minutes. If we consider that most novels run 250 words to a page, then you could have read about 12 pages—a short chapter—in the time it took to decide if you want to read the book. But never fear: social media is here.