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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 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*)
no subject
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.