Standalone book sections have thinned across newspapers over the past two decades. The cause is not editorial contempt for books but the way a review page was funded.
Book pages were paid for by book advertising
A newspaper section exists when advertisers want to reach the people who read it. Publishers once bought space alongside reviews because print advertising was among the few ways to reach committed readers.
As promotion moved to retail placement, targeted advertising and direct contact with readers, that spending followed.
The page lost its funding before it lost its audience, and sections are cut on the funding side of that equation.
The same fate met sections built around motoring, property and technology advertising, which is a sign that the cause was structural rather than literary.
Reviews are expensive per column inch
A serious review requires a reviewer to read an entire book, which can take days, and then write something publishable. The cost per finished piece is high compared with most editorial.
Under budget pressure, editors keep coverage that generates traffic or advertising and reduce coverage that does neither reliably.
Author interviews and news about publishing survive better than reviews because they cost less to produce and travel further.
An interview can be arranged in an afternoon and is supported by a publicist who wants it to happen. A review has no such assistance.
The function moved rather than vanished
Reviewing did not disappear. It relocated to reader communities, video and audio channels, newsletters and dedicated literary outlets, some funded by subscription rather than advertising.
Volume in these places far exceeds what newspaper pages ever carried. What changed is the concentration of authority.
A single national review once moved sales measurably. Now attention is dispersed across many smaller sources whose individual effect is smaller.
Who loses from the shift
Books that depend on being brought to readers' notice by a trusted critic are the ones most affected: translated work, poetry, small-press fiction and serious non-fiction without a topical hook.
Titles with an existing audience are largely unaffected, because their readers find them through the author rather than through coverage.
The gap widens over time, since a book that goes unnoticed at publication has few later opportunities to be noticed at all.
What replaced the gatekeeping
Discovery now runs through recommendation among readers and through retailer systems that promote what is already selling.
Both mechanisms reinforce existing momentum, which is precisely what a professional review section, at its best, was able to interrupt.