you! out of the publishing gene pool!

[kaigou]

Dear 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

Comments

[mikkeneko.livejournal.com]

Bujold does? Is this in the Chalion books, I'll have to re-read those, but I totally don't remember that. *ponders*

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

She does it in the Paladin book, where she wants to designate that someone is speaking a foreign language. It didn't get less annoying as I read, but more annoying; she could've just not italicized all the thoughts and let italics only mean "foreign language" -- just like Lackey/Edgwood could've left thoughts un-italicized and only italicized "shared thoughts". The extra punctuation was superfluous and distracting. IMO.