From Publisher’s Weekly:
Handselling a book whose reading experience would be materially diminished by spoilers can be a particularly difficult challenge for a bookseller if the book’s intrinsic strength is related to elements that would be inconsiderate to broach. For example you might ask why reading Sarah Everett’s The Probability of Everything brought up for me the topic of circumventing damaging spoilers, and all I could morally say was that it is an amazing book and you should read it yourself straightway and find out.
Sure, to promote the book one could just elide the dynamic surprise element or go big on description so as to say that its brilliant and novel use of an unreliable narrator is used as a lever to humanize the impacts of inhumanity with remarkable force. By tightly maintaining focus on its insightful and resilient young narrator the story extends from the personal to the cultural and communal with far-reaching effect. And so forth. One might feel more latitude if pitching the book to an adult who is purchasing it for a young reader, but it would still be wrong. Nonetheless, the susceptibility of The Probability of Everything to having its reading experience diminished by spoilage is a tricky but ultimately happy constraint. After all, having a book to share the power of whose impact on the reader would rival that of the earth’s on being struck by a giant asteroid is a rare and desirable responsibility.
Link to the rest at Publisher’s Weekly
PG tried to remember an occasion on which a book store employee ever handsold him a book and couldn’t remember a single one.
While PG’s reading tastes do not always dwell on the beaten path, he almost never has problems finding a book that he enjoys either online or (citing ancient history) in a physical bookstore.
One of the reasons PG prefers shopping for books online is that there is much, much more information about almost any given book online than there is in any physical bookstore.
For example, PG will likely choose his next non-fiction read about the history of the Byzantine Empire. In some of his non-fiction history reading, PG has finally appreciated what a huge empire it was. The Ottomans controlled a large swath of North Africa bordering on the Mediterranean, Egypt, Greece, Macedonia,the Balkans and virtually all the countries on the bordering the western side of the Black Sea.
PG doesn’t think most employees in most bookstores could tell him a single thing about Bessarabia or Azerbaijan. To be clear, PG is not trying to show the breadth and depth of his knowledge, just what particular twig his historical interest is perched on at the moment.
In a year or two, his historical interest will be perched on an entirely different twig and he probably won’t remember where Bessarabia or Azerbaijan are himself.
I was sort of hand sold a book in a bookstore. It was the Game of Thrones series 20 years ago (or so). Someone stacked them at the end of the aisle with a sign proclaiming they were favorite reads to the staff at that particular Borders book store. I nodded, and made a mental note to look them up.
About a week later I read a review in the newspaper that declared, “Look, if you usually wait until a series is complete before you buy, go ahead and break that rule here.” And the reviewer made a case for why the series would be enjoyable even though they weren’t finished. Probably the last time I’ll break that rule.
On the subject of the Byzantines, I have “The Alexiad” on my to-read list. I don’t remember where I first heard of it, but the deal with that book is that it was written by a Byzantine princess named Anna Comnena, about her father, Alexios I. Spoilers come with the territory where history is concerned, so no problems there.
Hooks are used because they often work. The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most notable, perhaps. However, what caught my eye was not the spoiler question but whether handselling was an effective thing.
I have two examples in recent memory, one positive and one negative-ish. On the positive side, we went to Chapters here in Ottawa, of which there are probably about 8 in the city. We wandered down to the teen section, and we were looking for something new for my son. He was about,umm, 11/turning 12 and he is now 13 turning 14. Anyway, when the clerk passing by asked if we needed any help, normally I would say no, but I said, “Sure, we could. This is Jacob and he is a voracious reader. He’s worked his way through series X, Y and Z. Looking for something a little more mature, but preferably still PG” (his choice, not mine), some mystery, maybe some fantasy. The guy called in reinforcements and we had two youngish store employees helping him for about 20 minutes, one guy in early 20s, other a girl in late teens. They made some AWESOME suggestions of series to try, we picked up about 6 on their recommendations and he loved 5 of them, with 6th being ho-hum.
On the negative side, I went looking for a book by Murakami that was supposed to be in stock and wasn’t. I had read another book that was considered similar to his stuff, decided I’d try the master, no luck. A store employee suggested another one by a Japanese artist, sounded good, basically a “dream detective”. Cool, right? Yeah. So while parts of it were intriguing, parts of it were also almost anime porn. Nothing like the genre I specifically had asked for, and the guy had read it so he knew what was in it. Traumatised me almost as much as a book called Bear, a Canadian Governor General’s award winner that has some, umm, bestiality right in the middle of it. A little shocking reading it at the age of 14 after a female relative leant it to me!
For me, the advice is probably worth what we pay for it.
There are many books based too solidly on a hook, hoping no one will give it away and spoil it for others; that’s not a very good book. Not much depth.
You can sort of do that in movies (The 6th Sense relies on viewers not knowing the psychiatrist is dead – if you didn’t know, you do now). Mostly because people don’t watch them more than once, and are entertained enough not to tell all their friends the twist just to get revenge.
But most of these books are now known precisely by that hook – as a quick summary so readers don’t have to actually read it. I’d much rather have that quick knowledge than actually have to read some of them. I wish someone had told me about the ending to The Lovely Bones; I wouldn’t have bothered reading.