So, Publishers Weekly runs cookbook reviews? Not really.

Via an intrepid correspondent known only as Homer, a chilling interview w/ the guy responsible for the cookbook reviews that appear in Publishers Weekly. I don't follow PW, but it's certainly a frequent source of blurbs on mass-market paperbacks, and thus a voice to be heeded in the book world. Or not, based on this account of their process. The most remarkable thing about this interview is that it exists. What Mark Rotella describes happening at Publishers Weekly is to cookbook reviewing as bleaching pig assholes is to calamari. That is to say, one does not expect the person responsible to describe the bleaching and the slicing of the pig assholes as if he were running a legitimate seafood operation. But that's about what happens here: 

Q. How important is it to read the book from cover to cover?

A. That’s a good question. I expect my reviewers to read it through. They do it a disservice otherwise.

and

Q. How many recipes should a reviewer test?

A. Because of the expense of the ingredients, we don’t formally ask reviewers to do that. Most of my reviewers will test and report what they’ve found, but it doesn’t always go in their review.

Q. Isn’t testing central to a cookbook review?

A. It is, but there are other parts of the book that are just as essential.

In a way, this complete IDGAF approach is the only thing that mitigates what seems at first like the most alarming part of this, which is that the rate for these reviews is $25 and no byline. Under the circumstances, Rotella seems to be getting about what he pays for.