Thank God for Mean Reviews

Nick Hornby has a post on reviewing and being reviewed, subheaded “Books need your kindness now more than ever.” I haven’t read the whole post because it’s paywalled and I have decided not to pay. But the subhead struck me as odd.

Why would books need kindness now more than ever? Presumably, because people are reading them less, right? But negative reviews, while they might be bad for the sales/readership of a particular book (although I’m not totally willing to grant that—controversy can be great for sales) are probably good for total book readership in general. Like, if you imagine a world with no negative book reviews, do you imagine people reading more, or less?