A minor professional gripe I have is that, in the past, when one used to do book reviews, one would receive an actual copy of the book in the mail. Now all you get is a stupid .pdf. How exactly is one supposed to read and underline a .pdf? This is reviewing for academic publication. I need to do a lot of leafing back and forth and underlining. Also, one chooses books to review because one hopes to use them later in one’s scholarship. And I simply can’t use anything for research that isn’t a real book on paper. My brain refuses to process at the level necessary for this kind of work.
The physical copy of the book was a reward one got for reviewing. These book reviews don’t count as publications and are, of course, uncompensated. One does them as service to the profession. In other words, one does them out of the goodness of one’s heart and to keep things going in the field. Getting the book in the mail was a little bonus in a task that is otherwise academic charity. Academic books cost upwards of $100 each, and such things as book money for professors are long dead in most places.
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