How Gehayi Chooses To Buy A Book
Prompt submission for LGBT FEST is now open!
Please, go post your prompts! You don't have to participate to come up with prompts, so even if you don't want to be part of the ficathon, you can still toss out a few ideas.
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Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent asked today how people judge whether or not they're going to buy a book. I wrote up an answer...but it turned out to be rather long for a comment. So I decided to post about how I choose to buy a book, instead.
For me, the process of elimination goes something like this:
First, the author. An author I've read before and like is going to get my attention first, because I know what kind of quality to expect from that person.
If I don't see the name of an author I recognize, or if I have all the books by the familiar authors and therefore have to move on to unfamiliar ones, I then check the title. Titles that contain words like "blood," "crimson," "scarlet," "eternal love," "night," "dusk," "midnight" and "embrace," I eliminate on the grounds that the book is likely to be about vampires and/or vampire romance. I am sick to death of vampires. Jim Butcher is quite literally the only author who can get me to read about vampires, and that's because his vampires are extraordinarily dangerous predatory bastards who relish Xanatos gambits rather than the most usual variety of modern vampire, the Common Immortal Angstmuffin.
If the title intrigues me, I pick up the book to look more closely at the cover and the blurb on the back.
There are three types of covers that I give an automatic miss:
a) Headless Naked Torsos and their variants, Profile Shot Cut Off at Nose and Shot Of Woman Wearing Backless Gown or Complex Tattoo on Naked Back. I know that publishers often use such shots on covers to save money, as costumes and costumed models cost more, and not every model is willing to show his face on an male/male romance (or her face on a female/female one). Pictures of naked torsos are cheaper, and can be used for romances of all ilks, suspense novels, science fiction and fantasy, etc. Eliminate the head as well, and you've eliminated any hairstyle that could limit the photo's use to one particular era. I get this. I do.
But I still look at a Headless Naked Torso shot and get nauseated and creeped out. Headless Naked Torsos always remind me of decapitated corpses. (It probably doesn't help that I can remember reading newspaper articles, in my teenaged years, about a serial killer who used to mutilate and then behead his victims.) It's not the author's fault--but I don't want to buy a book whose very cover is disturbing.
So any headless or faceless shot gets a pass. That eliminates 90% of the books out there these days.
b) If there is a cover with a lion, tiger, panther or wolf on it, I know that this will deal with at least one shapeshifter. Those get an automatic veto as well. I've seen stories about were-sloths, were-octopodes and were-snails. At this point, I'm were-beinged out.
c) If there is a sunrise or a sunrise with a white or yellow flower and/or a white bird in flight on the cover, I regard the book with wary suspicion. If the word "Christian" shows up in the blurb or subtitle, it gets an automatic veto, because most of the people I've seen in the media who use the term "Christian" are ultra-ultra-conservative Protestants, and as I'm a fairly liberal lapsed Catholic/agnostic, they and I are not really on the same page about anything. (I do remember one so-called Christian book that attempted to be about Catholics, but since the author herself was a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist, that...did NOT work. Let's just say that I found and wrote down seventy-eight things she got wrong in the first chapter. Yeaaah.)
If the word "Christian" is not mentioned, I look for other code words and phrases, like "inspiring," "overcoming life's challenges," "dealing with the problems God/Jesus sends you," "fulfilling," "Bible/Testament/Word of God," "witnessing," "true happiness" or "making life complete." If any of them show up in the book's subtitle, blurb or comments about the book, I know that the book is very likely an inspirational--whether fiction or non-fiction, it doesn't matter. I've tried reading inspirationals (a fair number, actually) and they do less than nothing for me. Ergo, if a book is an inspirational, I know that I don't want to bother with it. Next!
By now, I've eliminated all but five or six books. The survivors are likely to be: Stephen King; a suspense thriller; a historical with a lush and beautiful cover; a fantasy novel; an anthology of stories, most likely science fiction or fantasy; and a true crime work, probably by John Douglas or Ann Rule.
King, Douglas and Rule have an advantage in that I know what to expect from them in terms of topic and quality. I therefore put them to one side and focus on the others.
I open the suspense thriller first. This is because suspense thrillers, King and true crime books are usually on the racks on the level with my eyes. Historicals tend to be higher on the racks, while science fiction and fantasy are closest to the floor. I open the thriller to the first page. I want to see if I can get into this story.
Even here, however, I'm checking for certain things. In serious mysteries and thrillers (and I have no trouble reading non-serious ones; in fact, I love many non-serious mysteries), I read for accuracy and anachronism. Courtroom dramas tend to make one particular error that invariably annoys me--having the lawyer at the rich law firm/monolithic government agency research and write up her own brief. (Not a chance. That's what legal secretaries and paralegals are for. They should be doing most of the research, if not all, and the odds are that the paralegal or legal secretary will not only keyboard the brief for her boss, but compose it as well. The boss has other things to do.) I'm also wary of any story a) that doesn't take into account the omnipresence of cell phones and their impact on the isolation that creates much suspense or b) where iPods have always existed. I picked up a book a few weeks ago in which the prologue was set in the historical 1940s--not an alternate universe, in our universe--and the hero, a spy, was using an iPod. Uh, NO.
If the book grabs me, I'll read to the end of the first chapter. If it doesn't, I'll stop midway and start reading another story.
The historical gets checked for accuracy, plausibility and vividness of language. If it's accurate, believable and I can get lost in the beauty of the language and the reality of the world, the book has a pretty good shot.
The fantasy novel gets checked for worldbuilding, storytelling and elves. If there are elves in the story, especially the beautiful and eternally wise kind who are gently fading because Now Is The Age Of Humanity or the sort who only exist to have as much sex as possible with as many people as possible, the book gets cut right there. I can't abide elves, especially the Tolkienesque or faerie porn varieties.
The science fiction novel gets examined, not for scientific accuracy--I'm not nearly expert enough on science to do that--but for logic. For example, I can understand why an author would want her alpha male space captain to wear clothes straight from the Age of Sail on earth--they're pretty! But why is this the uniform for a space fleet? Aren't there a lot of buttons and lace and whatnot that an engineer could catch on outjutting parts of machinery? And if the captain has a small robot not unlike a Roomba that can travel to the surface of an unfamiliar planet and check the atmosphere, why isn't he using this robot to examine the planet and its atmosphere instead of sending down some highly trained members of his crew to suffocate when they discover, belatedly, that the atmosphere isn't breathable for humans?
The anthology involves some scattershot reading, as I want to make sure that a substantial percentage of the stories are at least good, if not great, are somewhat plausible (especially if they're stories that fit into existing canon), make sense and draw me in.
By now, I've eliminated two or three more books. For the purpose of this example, let's say that the suspense thriller failed the accuracy test and the fantasy book was eliminated for elfishness. The historical novel and the anthology move on to the finals. I'm still debating about the science fiction novel as I move on to the established finalists--King, Douglas and Rule.
I will start by eliminating one of the true crime books. I can't buy both--the cost would be prohibitive for my budget--so I have to pick which one I want more.
The content gets looked at here. Has the author covered this material in another book, or is it new? Is there a particularly high gross-out factor? Will this give me nightmares if I read it at night?
I decide that the Douglas book is intriguing and insightful, but that it covers too many cases I've read about in the author's other works. Rule is also insightful, and she's dealing with cases I've never heard of. Rule moves on to the Final Four; I reluctantly put Douglas back on the racks.
I then open the King book, braced for pretty much anything.
Not much can disqualify a Stephen King book in my eyes. I can only think of one thing that ever did: a first chapter printed to look like cursive script with a blotchy pen. It was supposed to be the journal of the heroine. Problem was, I couldn't read it, and it gave me a headache. If that happened in this case, I would put the book back on the shelves with a sigh.
Rule, a historical novel, an anthology and (possibly) a science fiction book. Which one do I pick?
I then check the spines of the book for price. Rule is 8.99. The historical is 7.99. So is the anthology. The science fiction book is 12.99. It goes back on the shelves.
Then I try to decide which book I'll have an easy time finding elsewhere. I've seen the anthology on Amazon and BN.com, and I'm pretty sure that I can get the Rule book in a local bookstore. However, I haven't heard of the author of the historical novel before, and I don't know if I'll be able to find her work in either a brick-and-mortar bookstore or online.
I check the first chapters of the books again, this time examining them for readability. When the first flush wears off, will I want to read these books over and over again?
I'll re-read all of them; that's simply the norm with me and books. However, I'm least likely to re-read Rule and about equally likely to re-read the historical and the anthology. That, combined with the fact that they're slightly cheaper, eliminates the Rule book. I put it back and resolve to get it out of the library instead.
So now I'm down to the final two: the historical and the anthology. Which do I get?
Well...which one tells a better story?
I skip around, reading some bits from the middle of the historical and some from the middles of various stories in the anthology. Both books are very good--but the author of the historical novel is more compelling. The world she writes about is rich, colorful and vividly alive, the characters are fascinating and the plot is sparking my curiosity. I want to know how the characters are going to get out of this mess!
Last question--will it drive me absolutely crazy if I don't find out how the story ends?
In the case of the anthology, no. I still want the book and want it very badly... but I don't HAVE to find out how the stories end. If I don't find out how the historical novel ends, though, I'm going to be quite enormously irritated. I'll be kicking myself for weeks, in fact.
That settles it. I'll save up my money and buy the anthology online. The historical, however, is coming home with me today.
That's how I decide whether or not to buy a book. Don't tell me you're surprised.
***
Please, go post your prompts! You don't have to participate to come up with prompts, so even if you don't want to be part of the ficathon, you can still toss out a few ideas.
***
Rachelle Gardner, Literary Agent asked today how people judge whether or not they're going to buy a book. I wrote up an answer...but it turned out to be rather long for a comment. So I decided to post about how I choose to buy a book, instead.
For me, the process of elimination goes something like this:
First, the author. An author I've read before and like is going to get my attention first, because I know what kind of quality to expect from that person.
If I don't see the name of an author I recognize, or if I have all the books by the familiar authors and therefore have to move on to unfamiliar ones, I then check the title. Titles that contain words like "blood," "crimson," "scarlet," "eternal love," "night," "dusk," "midnight" and "embrace," I eliminate on the grounds that the book is likely to be about vampires and/or vampire romance. I am sick to death of vampires. Jim Butcher is quite literally the only author who can get me to read about vampires, and that's because his vampires are extraordinarily dangerous predatory bastards who relish Xanatos gambits rather than the most usual variety of modern vampire, the Common Immortal Angstmuffin.
If the title intrigues me, I pick up the book to look more closely at the cover and the blurb on the back.
There are three types of covers that I give an automatic miss:
a) Headless Naked Torsos and their variants, Profile Shot Cut Off at Nose and Shot Of Woman Wearing Backless Gown or Complex Tattoo on Naked Back. I know that publishers often use such shots on covers to save money, as costumes and costumed models cost more, and not every model is willing to show his face on an male/male romance (or her face on a female/female one). Pictures of naked torsos are cheaper, and can be used for romances of all ilks, suspense novels, science fiction and fantasy, etc. Eliminate the head as well, and you've eliminated any hairstyle that could limit the photo's use to one particular era. I get this. I do.
But I still look at a Headless Naked Torso shot and get nauseated and creeped out. Headless Naked Torsos always remind me of decapitated corpses. (It probably doesn't help that I can remember reading newspaper articles, in my teenaged years, about a serial killer who used to mutilate and then behead his victims.) It's not the author's fault--but I don't want to buy a book whose very cover is disturbing.
So any headless or faceless shot gets a pass. That eliminates 90% of the books out there these days.
b) If there is a cover with a lion, tiger, panther or wolf on it, I know that this will deal with at least one shapeshifter. Those get an automatic veto as well. I've seen stories about were-sloths, were-octopodes and were-snails. At this point, I'm were-beinged out.
c) If there is a sunrise or a sunrise with a white or yellow flower and/or a white bird in flight on the cover, I regard the book with wary suspicion. If the word "Christian" shows up in the blurb or subtitle, it gets an automatic veto, because most of the people I've seen in the media who use the term "Christian" are ultra-ultra-conservative Protestants, and as I'm a fairly liberal lapsed Catholic/agnostic, they and I are not really on the same page about anything. (I do remember one so-called Christian book that attempted to be about Catholics, but since the author herself was a dyed-in-the-wool Baptist, that...did NOT work. Let's just say that I found and wrote down seventy-eight things she got wrong in the first chapter. Yeaaah.)
If the word "Christian" is not mentioned, I look for other code words and phrases, like "inspiring," "overcoming life's challenges," "dealing with the problems God/Jesus sends you," "fulfilling," "Bible/Testament/Word of God," "witnessing," "true happiness" or "making life complete." If any of them show up in the book's subtitle, blurb or comments about the book, I know that the book is very likely an inspirational--whether fiction or non-fiction, it doesn't matter. I've tried reading inspirationals (a fair number, actually) and they do less than nothing for me. Ergo, if a book is an inspirational, I know that I don't want to bother with it. Next!
By now, I've eliminated all but five or six books. The survivors are likely to be: Stephen King; a suspense thriller; a historical with a lush and beautiful cover; a fantasy novel; an anthology of stories, most likely science fiction or fantasy; and a true crime work, probably by John Douglas or Ann Rule.
King, Douglas and Rule have an advantage in that I know what to expect from them in terms of topic and quality. I therefore put them to one side and focus on the others.
I open the suspense thriller first. This is because suspense thrillers, King and true crime books are usually on the racks on the level with my eyes. Historicals tend to be higher on the racks, while science fiction and fantasy are closest to the floor. I open the thriller to the first page. I want to see if I can get into this story.
Even here, however, I'm checking for certain things. In serious mysteries and thrillers (and I have no trouble reading non-serious ones; in fact, I love many non-serious mysteries), I read for accuracy and anachronism. Courtroom dramas tend to make one particular error that invariably annoys me--having the lawyer at the rich law firm/monolithic government agency research and write up her own brief. (Not a chance. That's what legal secretaries and paralegals are for. They should be doing most of the research, if not all, and the odds are that the paralegal or legal secretary will not only keyboard the brief for her boss, but compose it as well. The boss has other things to do.) I'm also wary of any story a) that doesn't take into account the omnipresence of cell phones and their impact on the isolation that creates much suspense or b) where iPods have always existed. I picked up a book a few weeks ago in which the prologue was set in the historical 1940s--not an alternate universe, in our universe--and the hero, a spy, was using an iPod. Uh, NO.
If the book grabs me, I'll read to the end of the first chapter. If it doesn't, I'll stop midway and start reading another story.
The historical gets checked for accuracy, plausibility and vividness of language. If it's accurate, believable and I can get lost in the beauty of the language and the reality of the world, the book has a pretty good shot.
The fantasy novel gets checked for worldbuilding, storytelling and elves. If there are elves in the story, especially the beautiful and eternally wise kind who are gently fading because Now Is The Age Of Humanity or the sort who only exist to have as much sex as possible with as many people as possible, the book gets cut right there. I can't abide elves, especially the Tolkienesque or faerie porn varieties.
The science fiction novel gets examined, not for scientific accuracy--I'm not nearly expert enough on science to do that--but for logic. For example, I can understand why an author would want her alpha male space captain to wear clothes straight from the Age of Sail on earth--they're pretty! But why is this the uniform for a space fleet? Aren't there a lot of buttons and lace and whatnot that an engineer could catch on outjutting parts of machinery? And if the captain has a small robot not unlike a Roomba that can travel to the surface of an unfamiliar planet and check the atmosphere, why isn't he using this robot to examine the planet and its atmosphere instead of sending down some highly trained members of his crew to suffocate when they discover, belatedly, that the atmosphere isn't breathable for humans?
The anthology involves some scattershot reading, as I want to make sure that a substantial percentage of the stories are at least good, if not great, are somewhat plausible (especially if they're stories that fit into existing canon), make sense and draw me in.
By now, I've eliminated two or three more books. For the purpose of this example, let's say that the suspense thriller failed the accuracy test and the fantasy book was eliminated for elfishness. The historical novel and the anthology move on to the finals. I'm still debating about the science fiction novel as I move on to the established finalists--King, Douglas and Rule.
I will start by eliminating one of the true crime books. I can't buy both--the cost would be prohibitive for my budget--so I have to pick which one I want more.
The content gets looked at here. Has the author covered this material in another book, or is it new? Is there a particularly high gross-out factor? Will this give me nightmares if I read it at night?
I decide that the Douglas book is intriguing and insightful, but that it covers too many cases I've read about in the author's other works. Rule is also insightful, and she's dealing with cases I've never heard of. Rule moves on to the Final Four; I reluctantly put Douglas back on the racks.
I then open the King book, braced for pretty much anything.
Not much can disqualify a Stephen King book in my eyes. I can only think of one thing that ever did: a first chapter printed to look like cursive script with a blotchy pen. It was supposed to be the journal of the heroine. Problem was, I couldn't read it, and it gave me a headache. If that happened in this case, I would put the book back on the shelves with a sigh.
Rule, a historical novel, an anthology and (possibly) a science fiction book. Which one do I pick?
I then check the spines of the book for price. Rule is 8.99. The historical is 7.99. So is the anthology. The science fiction book is 12.99. It goes back on the shelves.
Then I try to decide which book I'll have an easy time finding elsewhere. I've seen the anthology on Amazon and BN.com, and I'm pretty sure that I can get the Rule book in a local bookstore. However, I haven't heard of the author of the historical novel before, and I don't know if I'll be able to find her work in either a brick-and-mortar bookstore or online.
I check the first chapters of the books again, this time examining them for readability. When the first flush wears off, will I want to read these books over and over again?
I'll re-read all of them; that's simply the norm with me and books. However, I'm least likely to re-read Rule and about equally likely to re-read the historical and the anthology. That, combined with the fact that they're slightly cheaper, eliminates the Rule book. I put it back and resolve to get it out of the library instead.
So now I'm down to the final two: the historical and the anthology. Which do I get?
Well...which one tells a better story?
I skip around, reading some bits from the middle of the historical and some from the middles of various stories in the anthology. Both books are very good--but the author of the historical novel is more compelling. The world she writes about is rich, colorful and vividly alive, the characters are fascinating and the plot is sparking my curiosity. I want to know how the characters are going to get out of this mess!
Last question--will it drive me absolutely crazy if I don't find out how the story ends?
In the case of the anthology, no. I still want the book and want it very badly... but I don't HAVE to find out how the stories end. If I don't find out how the historical novel ends, though, I'm going to be quite enormously irritated. I'll be kicking myself for weeks, in fact.
That settles it. I'll save up my money and buy the anthology online. The historical, however, is coming home with me today.
That's how I decide whether or not to buy a book. Don't tell me you're surprised.
***