The Blame Game
The title of Stephen King’s article on the back page of this week’s Entertainment Weekly is How To Bury A Book. Sounded like a scary thing, so I read what King had to say. Basically, he came across this book Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski. He loved it. He then went on to express his frustration over the fact most people would not read it or ever know about it. Of course, as with the titles he promoted in the past, the sales numbers on B&N and Amazon soared after King gave the book his blessing.
His overall point - I think - was that book sales were down because of: (1) critics and their “stubborn insistence” that popular fiction and literature are two different things; and (2) publishers who have “bought into this elitist twaddle…” At this point I thought King would go down the literary fiction versus popular fiction road. Instead, he confused the bejesus out of me and started talking about bad covers and bad titles. In his view, Fieldwork suffers from both. Now, what covers and the anti-popular fiction sentiment have in common was lost on me. Honestly, he seemed to start at one point then flip to another. I didn’t follow.
However, I do think King is right that bad titles and bad covers have an impact. I’ve seen some covers and had the “what the hell is that supposed to be” reaction. Not to pick on ebooks, but there’s one publisher where the covers are so awful (in my view) that I’ve never even considered trying one of the titles. I know that stinks for the authors, but there are a lot of choices out there and only so much time and money. If I’m going to try a new author - and I do that all the time - there has to be something that drags me in. Sometimes it’s the cover. Many times it’s because I saw the book somewhere or someone recommended it. Other times it’s sitting on the table in front of me, I pick it up and like the back cover copy, and off it goes with me to the cash register. Give me a blend-into-the-background cover and I’m more likely to pass it over.
King asks at one point: “Why. why, why would a company publish a book this good then practically demand that people not read it?” A valid question and one not limited to bad covers and titles.
