Things that make me buy a book: theme, topic, and trope, although I've been influenced by reviews too (usually NYT, NPR), and definitely by books winning the big post-pub prizes. Meeting the author through a live, small-venue reading usually does it. A blurb from one of my literary heroes and a great title/ cover make me take a second look, but they're not always clinchers. And it's funny about side pieces, because while I aspire to place more of them myself, sometimes they scoop a book--I might think "okay, I now know enough about this literary phenomenon, I don't need to read the whole thing." I need to think about whether all that math is different for indie-press books that rarely win attention in the big culture-curating industry. Recommendations from friends might matter more there, although theme-topic-trope are still big factors. Anyway, thanks--I love this newsletter.
Lesley it's SO FUNNY you say that about side pieces because Nancy Reddy said THE SAME THING to me yesterday about those excerpts and short essays that come out alongside a book! We were chatting and she said something along the lines of "usually it makes me feel like now I know what the book is about and I'm good." So interesting! I always also am so curious about what blurbs actually move books or what name on a book really moves people to buy it (I know for a fact that Carmen Maria Machado is a mover of books) but I'm so curious about all our little favorites too! NPR and NYT, of course, of course! This also reminds me I need to go to more readings and events, especially the more intimate ones. I have been slacking.
The blurbers I love aren't exactly the same as the writers I love, interestingly--I've just learned that their judgment is great, or at least their taste close to mine. They're really idiosyncratic, too! In prose: Roxane Gay, Stephen King, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman. In poetry, Diane Seuss more than anyone. I've never seen a blurb by Jan Beatty or Anne Carson to my memory, but they would make me sit up and notice.
If Anne Carson ever blurbed a book, I think I would RUN to order it. I feel the same way about Kelly Link, and writers I know to be sort of fickle about where they put their blurbs. I'm always like oh, you really DID like this. And for the record, Diane Seuss is the nicest person I've EVER requested blurbs from, a BEAUTIFUL SOUL.
Hi Lesley! I love the way you've put this--that an excerpt can "scoop" the book. (I find podcasts almost always have the opposite effect, where I hear someone talk about their work and want to know more!)
I'd add, re reviews, that it's not necessarily a *good* review that makes me buy/want to read something, but usually a specific detail about the book, where I'm like, oh, I need to know more about that--when I read the review of Peggy O'Donnell Heffington's Without Children in the Washington Post, I was interested in the topic, but this was the sentence where I was like, I need to buy this book so I can figure out how she does this: "Each chapter of “Without Children” is vivid and informative enough to fascinate in its own right, but by the end its strands have braided into a broader thesis."
I don't know what the lesson in that is for writers, necessarily, but I think maybe it's helpful if we're writing about books we love--that detail about what the book does especially well will help draw other readers in.
I definitely think there's something to be said about the MEAT of a review, which is why critics are so important, right? (People who truly want to open a book up and examine the insides in a way that isn't just more marketing copy). It's almost the same question of workshops--okay, you loved it--WHY? The why and the how feel like such important aspects to me in reviews of whether or not I'll pick up a book.
I wonder if I should start calling things "trigger words"--like I'll read anything that uses the synonyms of feral and girlhood together. Dizz Tate's book is marketing copy that really worked for me. Something about our own obsessions that can sell books, but then I also have the bad feeling about that, somehow I'm always reading into a sort of vacuum. If I always turn to those books for my pleasure read. This is something I constantly worry about with publishing, the fences and boundaries around, "Oh, I only read ____ books" whether that's genre, or topic, or something else entirely--it really limits us to both sections of the bookstore, and vacuum reading. I am endlessly curious how to get people out of that. How to get poets to read murder mysteries, etc (mostly how to pitch those things to new audiences).
Things that make me buy a book: theme, topic, and trope, although I've been influenced by reviews too (usually NYT, NPR), and definitely by books winning the big post-pub prizes. Meeting the author through a live, small-venue reading usually does it. A blurb from one of my literary heroes and a great title/ cover make me take a second look, but they're not always clinchers. And it's funny about side pieces, because while I aspire to place more of them myself, sometimes they scoop a book--I might think "okay, I now know enough about this literary phenomenon, I don't need to read the whole thing." I need to think about whether all that math is different for indie-press books that rarely win attention in the big culture-curating industry. Recommendations from friends might matter more there, although theme-topic-trope are still big factors. Anyway, thanks--I love this newsletter.
Lesley it's SO FUNNY you say that about side pieces because Nancy Reddy said THE SAME THING to me yesterday about those excerpts and short essays that come out alongside a book! We were chatting and she said something along the lines of "usually it makes me feel like now I know what the book is about and I'm good." So interesting! I always also am so curious about what blurbs actually move books or what name on a book really moves people to buy it (I know for a fact that Carmen Maria Machado is a mover of books) but I'm so curious about all our little favorites too! NPR and NYT, of course, of course! This also reminds me I need to go to more readings and events, especially the more intimate ones. I have been slacking.
The blurbers I love aren't exactly the same as the writers I love, interestingly--I've just learned that their judgment is great, or at least their taste close to mine. They're really idiosyncratic, too! In prose: Roxane Gay, Stephen King, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman. In poetry, Diane Seuss more than anyone. I've never seen a blurb by Jan Beatty or Anne Carson to my memory, but they would make me sit up and notice.
If Anne Carson ever blurbed a book, I think I would RUN to order it. I feel the same way about Kelly Link, and writers I know to be sort of fickle about where they put their blurbs. I'm always like oh, you really DID like this. And for the record, Diane Seuss is the nicest person I've EVER requested blurbs from, a BEAUTIFUL SOUL.
Hi Lesley! I love the way you've put this--that an excerpt can "scoop" the book. (I find podcasts almost always have the opposite effect, where I hear someone talk about their work and want to know more!)
I'd add, re reviews, that it's not necessarily a *good* review that makes me buy/want to read something, but usually a specific detail about the book, where I'm like, oh, I need to know more about that--when I read the review of Peggy O'Donnell Heffington's Without Children in the Washington Post, I was interested in the topic, but this was the sentence where I was like, I need to buy this book so I can figure out how she does this: "Each chapter of “Without Children” is vivid and informative enough to fascinate in its own right, but by the end its strands have braided into a broader thesis."
I don't know what the lesson in that is for writers, necessarily, but I think maybe it's helpful if we're writing about books we love--that detail about what the book does especially well will help draw other readers in.
I definitely think there's something to be said about the MEAT of a review, which is why critics are so important, right? (People who truly want to open a book up and examine the insides in a way that isn't just more marketing copy). It's almost the same question of workshops--okay, you loved it--WHY? The why and the how feel like such important aspects to me in reviews of whether or not I'll pick up a book.
I wonder if I should start calling things "trigger words"--like I'll read anything that uses the synonyms of feral and girlhood together. Dizz Tate's book is marketing copy that really worked for me. Something about our own obsessions that can sell books, but then I also have the bad feeling about that, somehow I'm always reading into a sort of vacuum. If I always turn to those books for my pleasure read. This is something I constantly worry about with publishing, the fences and boundaries around, "Oh, I only read ____ books" whether that's genre, or topic, or something else entirely--it really limits us to both sections of the bookstore, and vacuum reading. I am endlessly curious how to get people out of that. How to get poets to read murder mysteries, etc (mostly how to pitch those things to new audiences).
Putting on my comms hat, I've been super impressed with how Cecilia Rabess is making lemonade out of lemons
She really is!