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Books (rant)


weird elf

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Sooo this might be way out of left field, I dunno. I just realized something today (and yeah, I'm slow sometimes, bear with me).

 

First things first: I like to read.

I do, however, very much NOT like to read about hetero- / amatonormative, cookie-cutter, society's-expectation, idealized "love" crap. At all. Please and thank you. (Because, and I'm sure some of you will relate, the way books claim "love" works is very much out of tune with my own experience and I'm fed up to the gills of having my own experiences devaluated by having other people's definitions and idea(l)s of all that $h*t forced down my throat.)

 

So, here goes. Rewind to a couple weeks ago when a friend / much bigger bookworm than I am got wind of the fact I hadn't made it to the library before the weekend, and supplied me with a three foot stack of books (not even exaggerating). I've read about half a dozen of them (as in, barely even made a dent in the pile) and that pile consists of her best-ofs, each of them highly recommended, and I have liked most of what she has recommended to me so far, but I still had trouble picking a new book whenever I finished one because four out of five will bleat about some kind of love story on the cover.

Now here's the thing: I started reading one of her books at her place a while ago, without a closer look at the covers, and only after finishing it realized that it claimed to be about a "love story". And here's the thing: It bloody isn't! It's a cultural, historical masterpiece that happens to contain two people who possibly may have felt something for each other at some point or another, without even bloody realizing it until, like, the last ten pages or so. So why, WHY in BLAZES does this thing claim to be about something it's not, and something that would - had I taken a closer look at it before - have caused me to not even consider it worth my time?

 

I mean ... just how overhyped is "love", exactly? If books sink so low as to self-advertise as being about "love" when they are about so much more and "love" barely even makes an appearance. Seriously. The f*** is up with that?

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Was the focus of the book on those two characters and was there any indication of them thinking (a lot) about one another at all? Was this love developed or was it fairly random?

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One of the two was the narrator, who was completely oblivious to the other character's feelings for him until the last ten or so pages. So, no, the focus was not on the two of them, and there was next to no "personal" thought about the other, they had been co-workers so what thought there was was mostly professional.

 

I guess it was mostly aimed at people who would jump at any excuse to "ship them". Like maybe a meta "will they / won't they"? But, and that's the thing, there's a complete and full story without all that. If anything, his memories serve as a frame on which the more fleshed-out aspects of the book are hung, or around which they're grouped, so to speak. It is by no means the focus of the story, but the covers claim it is, and that's the part I really don't get.

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Publishers will put on the covers and blurbs whatever they think will sell the book best - it's gone to an absurd level over the last years, with books having a lot of praise from who- and whatever on the back instead of a summary of the content, or a summary that doesn't do the book justice by focussing on the "wrong" bits.

Love stories sell in huge numbers. Cultural, historical masterpieces don't. The book market is a market - and books that don't sell will end in the kind of bookstore I work at, or in recycling.

Also, (supposed) love stories lower the bar for people to buy a book - there is a surprising number of readers awed/frightened by books that seem too high-brow. So this stealth approach might actually get a book more readers and less of a chance of ending up in the wastepaper press.

 

 

 

 

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1 minute ago, Greypan.da said:

or a summary that doesn't do the book justice by focussing on the "wrong" bits.

THAT. That's exactly what I'm annoyed by.

 

That's ... I don't even know what that is. Is "stealth discrimination" a thing? Making things unnecessarily complicated for a minority by trying to trick the perceived majority (in this case, the amatonormative part of society) into buying a book they'll probably be disappointed by anyway?

 

... srslywtf.

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I wouldn't so much call it stealth discrimination than pandering to your presumed target consumer group. Fiction is generally mostly targeted towards cis female heteroromantic/-sexual audiences - add white if your publisher is based in the "Western world". Men, as a rule, buy a lot less fiction than non-fiction. This target audience leaves a lot of people without representation in fiction. 

Diversity has just fairly recently become a big topic on the book market, with publishing houses realising that there are actually people who aren't all (or even any) of what they assume. This is a problem - starting in children's books and just continuing all the way through. Things are starting to change - but it is a long and slow process, especially as in many areas of "underrepresentation" you'll first have to find authors at all, and then publishing houses ready to take the risk.

 

As for tricking people into buying stuff they don't want - that's basically the idea of advertising. 😉 

Maybe some people will be disappointed by a book that was sneaked on them as a love story but isn't - but I wouldn't want to discount those people buying this under misleading premises who find that this marketing trick actually doesn't matter because the book was great anyway and they wouldn't have touched it otherwise. 

 

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I always find it annoying when they do this, because a lot of the time I end up not reading books that I would actually really like because the description doesn't appeal to me. I understand why they want to put whatever will make the book sell on the back cover, but why can't they include an accurate description in addition? As I write this I'm thinking about The Raven Cycle, which is one of my favorite book series and is marketed as a "paranormal romance," I believe. The romance is there, but my favorite parts are the friendship, mythology and magic, and quite frankly I think the romance is much less important than a lot of the of the other aspects of the books.

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Luftschlosseule
15 hours ago, weird elf said:

So why, WHY in BLAZES does this thing claim to be about something it's not, and something that would - had I taken a closer look at it before - have caused me to not even consider it worth my time?

So, okay. How do I put this.

The author is responsible for the story, and teams up with an editor, to work on the manuscript. So far, so good.
Then you have the rest of the package: Title, cover, blurp, layout and marketing. That huge chunk is done by the publisher. They'll highlight what they think will sell best, because that's how the money is made. This I why, if you want to know what you're getting yourself into, you should always read up reviews instead of just relying on the blurp. Cool? Cool.

 

If you want, I can provide you with my GR (GoodReads) account and my reviews. For my sex repulsed friends, I always tag books that have sex in them, I tag which kind of relationship occurs, and try to give a synopsis that fits the book.

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Satsuriku_No_Tenshi
On ‎2‎/‎19‎/‎2020 at 8:47 PM, weird elf said:

So why, WHY in BLAZES does this thing claim to be about something it's not, and something that would - had I taken a closer look at it before - have caused me to not even consider it worth my time?

 

 

That's the case with new films which are advertised. It's described to attract buyers and audiences and may not be what is really is. Just be more skeptical and questioning. 

 

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