This is about book publicity. I don’t get it – and I’ve done it. I mean that I actually have worked for some wonderful (read “trusting, nice, talented”) authors in order to get the word out about their books and about their appearances. Truth is that THAT is the easy part; I don’t mean it’s not work, it is, calling bookstores, convincing them to schedule a signing for an author who is not Stephen King, contacting reviewers, convincing them to consider a book that is not by Michael Connelly, all that stuff. The hard part is the part I never – thank the gods – had to do. Coming up with the description of the book, the selling points, the blurby stuff.

I do very badly at summarizing a book (just ask Shaz how often I agonize about the one-sentence summary that we’re supposed to provide with RTE reviews – oh horrors!) I do worse at being pithy (pause here for inevitable jokes. Thankyouverymuch.) I don’t get it. I don’t get “high concept” which Stu first explalined to me when we watched Robert Altman’s film “The Player” with several vignettes, several little scenes, mostly just camera scans where writers were trying to sell a screenplay by describing it in one “high concept” sentence. You know the marketing thing: “X meets Y”, “the bastard son of Someone Witty and Someone Else Even Wittier”.

Then there are the ones that really drive me mad because if you analyze them, your head aches. “From the studio that brought you”, “from the publisher of”. Why do I hate these? Because unless it’s a studio or publisher that specializes in some itsy bitsy teensy weensy subsubsubsubsub form, then it is meaningless. Random House is a HUGE publishing venture and just because they published Chicken Soup for the Person with Chicken Pox, vol III” does NOT mean they are going to be the best EVER at doing well…anything. Twentieth Century Fox has put out lots of fab, gear movies. And lots of duds. Chez roscoe, we have a tendency to intone when we hear such things “from the caterer of,” or “from the completion insurance firm that brought you”….it’s fun reading all the credits all the way to the end. Don’t you think?
As Stu puts it, all of these “in the tradition of “Brokeback Mountain”, “Raising Arizona”, “Red River Valley” and “Moon Over Parador” – it’s all meaningless because what they really are trying to say is

“In the tradition of something that made a lot of money.”

Now, sure, you can sometimes count on a publisher or movie studio to put out a certain kind of product. Windham Hill records “new age” and George Winston and you know you ain’t gonna find metal or rap or whatever in their catalogue. Soho tends to offer books with “exotic” (read “foreign”) locations but not always. Walker (now subsumed/eaten by Bloomsbury) certainly is still putting out “hard to categorize” books (I most recently read/reviewed their WHERE’S MY JETPACK? And just got something from them called IF MINDS HAD TOES, a novel which just might be really good. It’s set in “the World of ideas, a sort of afterlife….Socrates has been president for two millennia but Ludwig Wittgenstein is gunning for the job.” Not your average Big Publisher Book. Walker still publishes Jim Sallis, bless them, and when Michael Seidman was there he bought Keith Snyder.

But – and I’ve probably whinged about this before (hey at least I’m consistent?) it’s the “If you like X, you’ll love Y” stuff that gets me. It’s the glomming together of 3 names that have little or nothing in common to convince you that this book is JUST LIKE THOSE.

I know what they’re trying to do. I get it. I just wonder about the rest of us, the ones who aren’t fooled by this nonsense. The ones who are looking for REAL information, not just “let’s put 3 names in a hat and say it’s like those guys”. What happens when someone BUYS one of those? Do they ever say “this is nothing at ALL like those other authors? I feel cheated. I spent $26 on THIS?”

Probably not because they forget why they bought it; I do. Stu has a hold list at the library that never stops. We have gobs of resources and ways to find books and realize that so many people don’t, and need leads and help. Sure, okay. But it’s, I dunno, condescending. It’s so phony and so often it is actually wrong and misleading to suggest “if you like X, you’ll love Y.”

Recently I read a book that had such a blurb. And I admit I did wonder. The paperwork said that fans of This Author would love this book. What do you do when you hear that? What if your response is “Er, um, I don’t like This Author’s work at all. Haven’t been able to read This Author.” Is it still worth trying? I started out thinking the book was okay, but that changed and I ended up thinking it was pretty lousy. Hmmm, maybe I should read those blurbs.

Perhaps reverse thinking works better. While I seldom pick a book based on cover copy, I do know that seeing a) either 6 blurbs by seriously cozy/romancy writers tells me it’s unlikely I’ll love this book the way they do. Or when I read blurbs on mystery fiction from authors who do not write mystery fiction – either this book is so uncategorizable, OR hmm, I just find it suspect, shall we say. It’s certainly possible that a mystery with blurbs from a bunch of authors I don’t know can be good, of course. But it’s telling. (As are the small press books that have blurbs only by other authors of that press – and yes, I’ve seen that.)

But it’s the ones that, as I say, glom together Sara Paretsky, JD Robb and oh I don’t know, um, Anne Perry. Great, they’re all women. You know the ones? John Harvey, Val McDermid and Peter Dickinson. Jeff Abbott, Jeff Deaver and T. Jefferson Parker..

This all came into my head because of a bookmark I have not read the book that it’s advertising, dunno where the bookmark came from. It confirms, once again, how bad I would be at that part of publicity where I had to figure out the target audience and how to grab them. One side offers (in the tradition of an author who sells really well) “could be Stephanie Plum’s big city cousin.” Sorry, I guess I thought Trenton was a big city. This character is New York based – I guess she could be anyone’s “big city cousin” then.

The flip side however is the stopper, as the character “could be Kinsey Millhone’s New York gal pal.”

Have you ever read any Sue Grafton? Do you know Kinsey? Is there a character in mystery fiction less likely to be described as having a “gal pal?” Kinsey a) lives in Santa Teresa, California, so is unlikely to have a “New York gal pal”; b) is not comfortable with too many people (yes, I did stop reading several books ago but Grafton has set up this character with a clear sense of why she’s prickly, why she’s somewhat of a loner. She has friends, but she’s not comfortable with girly stuff, unless in the last few books she’s undergone a huge personality transplant.”

But Kinsey Milhone’s New York gal pal?

Do you get these? Do you use/find useful/appreciate this form of shorthand? That’s what it is right? I mean it is a way to get you information about a book?

I recently had to explain to someone that while it’s true I don’t dig Jack Reacher (because he’s too perfect, NOT because he’s not well written. I think, for the record here, that Lee Child is a very gifted, very talented writer. Reacher just doesn’t do it for me) but I can still like other (how did she put it? Testosterone-driven heroes. I don’t t oo often but some DO work for me. I DIG Atticus Kodiak. Lee Child is NOT Greg Rucka is NOT…fill in the blank.

I’m working on my own versions of these when they don’t work just for fun. Anyone? Do you find these sorts of “if you like, then you’ll love” publicity blurbs useful? Do you trust them?

Oh and I'm feeling somewhat better, the pain has not recurred even if I didn't sleep last night. Again. But thanks for asking.