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kaigouDear Marketing Person:
I was going to spend $10 on a book, until I read the teaser you wrote, which begins, and I quote:
Imagine the glory of Rome. Now imagine it’s fall.
If you cannot see why I threw the book back on the shelf with a cry of disgust, you should not only be fired, you should be shot, as well.
No love,
me.
Mesdames Edghill and Lackey:
Please be aware that we have an annual quota on all characters used in typesetting, including punctuation, capitalization, bolding, and italics. Consider this notification that the first half of your two-novella book, Bedlams Bard, has not only maxed us out on italics, it has maxed us out for the next three years, and that was only in the first five chapters.
Please, couldn’t you have thought of the newbie authors and their chance to italicize at least four words per novel? The children? The kittens? The burning, weeping eyes of your readers attempting to parse pages upon pages where there’s more italics than not?
Have pity, please, both upon your readers and our goddamn quota, because if Poul Anderson can’t even italicize a single quasi-alien term in his next bestseller because we’re maxed to the gills, it is ALL YOUR FAULT.
No love,
the editors
I was going to spend $10 on a book, until I read the teaser you wrote, which begins, and I quote:
Imagine the glory of Rome. Now imagine it’s fall.
If you cannot see why I threw the book back on the shelf with a cry of disgust, you should not only be fired, you should be shot, as well.
No love,
me.
Mesdames Edghill and Lackey:
Please be aware that we have an annual quota on all characters used in typesetting, including punctuation, capitalization, bolding, and italics. Consider this notification that the first half of your two-novella book, Bedlams Bard, has not only maxed us out on italics, it has maxed us out for the next three years, and that was only in the first five chapters.
Please, couldn’t you have thought of the newbie authors and their chance to italicize at least four words per novel? The children? The kittens? The burning, weeping eyes of your readers attempting to parse pages upon pages where there’s more italics than not?
Have pity, please, both upon your readers and our goddamn quota, because if Poul Anderson can’t even italicize a single quasi-alien term in his next bestseller because we’re maxed to the gills, it is ALL YOUR FAULT.
No love,
the editors
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no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 06:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 06:30 am (UTC)Tsk... you're fussing just because they didn't capitalize "Fall?" };->
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Date: 8 May 2006 06:34 am (UTC)(Gets up off floor, dusts self off. Reads comment again.)
*THUD*
(Dies laughing....)
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Date: 9 May 2006 02:45 pm (UTC)Maybe she means they should have called it "autumn"?
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Date: 8 May 2006 06:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 06:41 am (UTC)And I'm going to actually have to go and check "Bedlam's Bard" to see if they've *really* used that many italics... :)
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Date: 8 May 2006 03:12 pm (UTC)If I wanted to read another story that begins with:
"blah blah" = dialogue
'blah blah' = thoughts
:blah blah: = telepathy
~blah blah~ = non-english
...I know exactly where I'd look and it sure as hell wouldn't be in a place where I'd be expected to pay for such a travesty.
The characters think too goddamn much, is the problem. Instead of reacting, or summing up the moment, or just carrying on and letting me figure it out, the two authors insist on TELLING ME every damn thing.
That means an entire paragraph of italics while the character "thinks" about it, and what's really aggravating is that each scene is pleasantly deep third, so the thoughts conceivably could have been inseparable from the narration and I wouldn't have the headache-inducing italics.
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Date: 8 May 2006 06:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 11:57 am (UTC)I guess it would have been a nice pun had it not been an earnest work of historical fiction.
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Date: 8 May 2006 02:59 pm (UTC)(I think they're still ok on punctuation, though. :P)
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Date: 8 May 2006 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 07:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 03:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 12:21 pm (UTC)*waves 'Save our Italics!' banner and laughs long and hard*
They get a -5 points for using Bard in the title anyway. There are just tooooo many book on Bards, singers, songs, spellsongs etc. out there. Now if it had been Bedlam's Opera, they'd have me mildly interested (I take it using italics is okay if typeset is not involved...? *gets ready to duck*)
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Date: 8 May 2006 03:16 pm (UTC)The other option: "for centuries the world has been ruled by Light and Dark in balance, but one day a child would be born, destined to break/rule/undo/create a New Order; this is the story of that child" ...
I saw that on at least twenty different book teasers, and on at least three, that was the extent of the teaser -- as though the marketers didn't realize just how flippin' cliched it was, or figured their high fantasy readers are such twits it didn't matter. It's sort of like fanfiction -- "we'll all just write the same get-together blanket stories a hundred times over" -- but with slightly better cover art. Slightly.
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Date: 8 May 2006 01:03 pm (UTC)Ah, but Poul Anderson can, like the writers at SG-1, resort to apostrophes to signal alien word-origin. I think you need to go back to the kittens for this argument...
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Date: 8 May 2006 03:19 pm (UTC)I would think that harming the readers' eyeballs and causing them to, oh, maybe NOT SPEND ANOTHER PENNY ON YOU would be far more convincing an argument for an author. Sigh. Oh, and the kittens.
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Date: 8 May 2006 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 May 2006 01:47 am (UTC)(And if this came across as rude, really, I apologise...)
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Date: 9 May 2006 01:55 am (UTC)Naw, didn't come across as rude in the least. Remember, you're talking to a ruthless bastard, here. Gotta work harder to piss me off (though it's not impossible, mind you). Say, show up and insist I paint my bathroom deep turqouise. That might piss me off. Maybe. Unless you're offering to do the painting for me, of course.
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Date: 8 May 2006 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 09:45 pm (UTC)I say when you italicize, it draws attention to that word, as if you're saying, LOOK AT ME. Thing is, if the narrator/POV doesn't consider the word that remarkable, why does it need the accent, even if it is foreign? And what about words that are foreign but are Americanized, now: kimono, sake, honcho. Where do you draw the line? ...So I don't italicize any of it, unless it's foreign language in dialogue, or someone quoting poetry or internally quoting someone's earlier words.
I see absolutely no reason to italicize thoughts, not if you're writing deep POV (my preference for reading and writing); even if it's omniscient, just put a frickin' "she thought" on there and be done with it!
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Date: 8 May 2006 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 9 May 2006 12:06 am (UTC)But, to each their own. It is a style, after all.
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Date: 8 May 2006 11:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 10:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 03:37 pm (UTC)"I told him, 'Julie, don't go! It's the Ides of March already!' But he wouldn't listen."
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Date: 8 May 2006 10:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 May 2006 05:59 pm (UTC)::FLAILS::
Loving you SOOOOOOO MUUUUUUUUCH.
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Date: 8 May 2006 10:27 pm (UTC)