The dark side of blurbs.

[seanan_mcguire]

I read a book recently* that I should have adored. It had a great cover, an interesting premise, and blurbs by several authors that I idolized and trusted. If they were endorsing it, it should have been amazing.

It is currently at the head of my short list for "worst book I read in 2012." I want those hours of my life back.

It wasn't offensive; it didn't call me names or slap my hands or steal my shit. It wasn't poorly written, although it had some pacing issues; the words were in the right order and generally spelled correctly. I can't in all good conscience call it a bad book. But I hated it. Absolutely, empirically, and with very few caveats. It was not my cup of tea. It wasn't even in my cup of tea's time zone. So why did I pick it up?

The blurbs. They made me think this book and I would get along, thus projecting one of the Geek Fallacies onto an innocent piece of prose. Friendship is not transitive, and neither is readability.

This is the dark side of blurbs: this is why authors sometimes have to say "no," even if they like another author's work. Because when I put my name on the cover of a book, I am saying "I like this, and if you like the things I like, you will like it, too." But what happens when you don't? Suddenly everything else I like is questionable. What if Diet Dr Pepper, Monster High dolls, and carnage are all waiting to betray you, too? Where is the line?

We have to be careful. We are trading on your faith, and our reputations.

Have you ever read a book based on the blurbs, only to find your faith in the authors who provided them somewhat shaken? Not your faith in the author who wrote the book—presumably, if you bought it based on blurbs, you didn't have any—but your faith in the blurbers?

(*No, I will not name the book. Why? Well, one, I am not in the business of bad book reviews, unless it's a non-fiction book riddled with factual errors. Other people obviously enjoyed this book, otherwise the blurbs wouldn't have been there in the first place. Your mileage may vary, and all. And two, as an author, I wouldn't want to find someone ranting about one of my books like this. So since the book didn't murder my puppies, I will not name it.)

Comments

[alicetheowl.livejournal.com]

Diet Dr. Pepper has already betrayed me, by its very nature of being diet. Fake sugar tastes like powdered tin to us supertasters. But then, I already know not to go by food recommendations. I had to politely explain to my father-in-law that, while I'm sure his wife is a wonderful cook and knows the right amount of fake sugar to use in her recipes, I will still taste it, the same way the slightest little bit of cilantro in a recipe will make it taste like the dishes weren't properly rinsed after they were washed. (Most disconcerting, when I didn't know why that kept happening.)

Anyway. I've learned to see that people have different tastes. The fact that a lot of the books you've put on your favorites lists have made me step back and acknowledge I can see the influence, rather than that I agree with your assessment, didn't stop me from picking up Spellbound when I saw you'd blurbed Switchblade Goddess. Because I am always looking for new things to read, and something has to be pretty awful for me to feel angry for having read it. (I haven't gotten around to reading it, yet. February turned into a busy reading month, somehow.)

I also look at what people compare things to. Had I read the reviews for one particular monstrosity, I would've seen it was compared to two books I wouldn't have read the first chapter of if you'd paid me, and never picked it up.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

The "compare to" sometimes burns me worse, because then I go in expecting something like X, when really they're just saying it met X in a dark alley once and they didn't get along. But I think you have a very solid and balanced approach going here.

[alicetheowl.livejournal.com]

Heh. Very true. That's why I rarely look at just one or two reviews when I'm trying to figure out if something is worth my time. I look through a whole bunch, looking for narrative kinks, or for warning phrases. If, "but then she meets _______" appears, and the blank is a male protagonist's name, there's a good chance I won't like it. That tends to mean some incarnation of the alpha male, which I intensely dislike.