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As those familiar pointy white tents were being pitched all over campus this week in preparation for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, I couldn’t help but get to thinking about how we deal with literature here at the dB Magazine. And no, I’m not talking about deciding between a post-structuralist or a formalist approach to interpreting a text. What I’m referring to is the much more tangible problem of what exactly we, as a collegiate arts magazine, ought to do with the massive number of books submitted to us for review every week.

This is not the first time I have given this matter serious thought. One look at our cluttered cubicle in the Daily Bruin office should serve as evidence to the fact that the business of books is impossible for us to ignore. We’re literally swimming in the stuff.

But as any regular reader of our publication has no doubt noticed, it is a rare occurrence that we actually run a book review. Sometimes we profile an author who is coming to speak on campus, but regularly reviewing books seems to be a task too difficult for us to manage, and it doesn’t take too much thought to figure out some of the reasons why.

For starters, every single one of our writers is a busy college student. They all have a heavy reading burden to keep up with for their classes, on top of whatever sadistic reporting assignments we editors dish out for them on a weekly basis. Convincing them to read an extra book in a short period of time and then write about it in an even shorter period of time is difficult, if not often impossible. Most of our writers are also not paid a regular salary, something I would change if I could, but until UCLA Student Media emerges from the Dark Ages and starts coughing up the dough, strong-arming my reporters into staying up all night to finish some potentially mediocre novel is not something I’m willing to do.

The other obvious problem is the sheer number of books we have to choose from in deciding what to review. The film industry releases hundreds of films every year. The book industry publishes tens of thousands. In my time serving as dB Magazine editor since last summer, I have never once requested a copy of a book from a publishing house. Nevertheless, a steady stream of them flows into my mailbox and onto my desk daily. Sorting through them all would be a full-time job in and of itself. I love reading, but I also have a lot of other work to do.

This isn’t to suggest I don’t understand why publishers are so persistent in sending us advanced copies of their titles. With the recent increase in availability of self-publishing technology, the number of books available today is considerably more than ever before. In a business based on sales, getting even the smallest edge in terms of publicity in such a competitive market can make an enormous difference.

Nor am I suggesting our failure to regularly review books is somehow acceptable. Resigning to the notion that because we are a collegiate publication, our abilities are somehow more limited than any other newspaper is, in fact, unacceptable. But no matter how long I have tried to wrap my brain around this basic problem, I have yet to come up with a solution. My only solace is that even major newspapers face some of the same problems.

For example, the decision of whether to review self-published books is one every publication in the country has come up against in the last few years. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Bob Hoover went so far as to publish his paper’s policy on the matter, explaining why he won’t review self-published books because “They have not passed muster by professional editors and marketers or been found good enough to carry a company’s brand.” But at the same time, an endless stream of articles have popped up recently proclaiming the revolutionary possibilities of print-on-demand technology, citing case after case of success stories where authors have self-published and gained a considerable following. Clearly, not every book deserving of publication is actually picked up by a traditional publishing house. The book business is a risky one, so editors often stick with what they know will sell.

In the end, the entire issue still leaves me with more questions than answers. Perhaps as I stroll though the Festival of Books this weekend, a solution will present itself. In the mean time, I’ll keep staring at the pile of books on my desk, hoping their authors are having better luck elsewhere.

If you would like to review books for dB Magazine, please apply to write for us next fall. E-mail Mathis at smathis@media.ucla.edu for details on the application process.