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Judging Books By: Their Jacket Copy
May 18, 2007

My friend R. (Kevin A. Lewis, here I go again with the Victorian-esque first initials... ) recently finished The Big Girls by Susanna Moore. He did not like it, and one of his chief complaints was that its jacket copy promised a mystery -- and instead he got a "relationship novel; there was no mystery, as mystery is defined." R. thought Knopf was trying to make something "juicy" out of literary fiction, "but the drama was not on the page."

The reason I'm allowing the mysterious R.'s quotes are not to judge the book itself, but to judge readers. Why wouldn't a publisher want to market a title to as many different readers as possible? If I were in charge of jacket copy at Knopf, I would certainly consider playing up the "mystery" aspect of Moore's book (there's certainly a lot of interpersonal intrigue in it)

However, that means risking alienation from readers who are looking for genre titles. If you metaphorically "cry wolf" with one title, what happens when you really do have a juicy mystery to promote?

                                                    

Posted by Bethanne Patrick on May 18, 2007 | Comments (2)