The Book Signing
No comments
A mostly-fictional illustration of how reader feedback can be less than useful, and how we often get from a book mostly what we bring to it.
Overheard between 3 and 4 p.m. at the Noble Barn Book-a-Palooza:
“It’s so romantic. I want a boyfriend just like Shane.”
“Shane was an insensitive jerk. I hated him. Louie knew what it took to win a girl’s heart.”
“Team Shane!”
“Team Louie!”
“Here you go, ladies. Enjoy.”
“The women in the story are all weak-willed stereotypes. I’d thought we were beyond that sort of blatant sexism. It seems I was mistaken.”
“Thank you for writing with so much understanding and respect for women.”
“It scared the living daylights out of me. I’m still checking under my bed for…you know…”
“It reads like a kids’ book.”
“I can’t keep this in my house. I have children.”
“This is a truly inspiring story. Everyone should read it.”
“You call yourself a Christian? That’s rich. I think you’re trying to fool people into buying this book. Everybody knows Christians will buy anything with a Christian label.”
“That’s not been my experience, ma’am, but it would certainly help.”
“I couldn’t stop reading…it moved so fast I could barely catch my breath. ”
“Drowsy by page 3, snoring by page 7. Your book is the cure for insomnia.”
“It was disgusting. I had to throw it in the garbage bin and put a couple bags of trash on top of it for good measure.”
“So, so, so, so sad. I cried for hours.”
“I’ve been depressed for three months. This book showed me how to smile again.”
“It changed my life. I mean it. 180-degree-about-face never-gonna-be-the-same-again changed.”
“Can you sign this ‘To My Friend Victoria?’”
“But…we only met a couple of minutes ago.”
“No problem! I just friended you on Facebook.”
“Unlike, unlike, unlike. -1, -1, -1. With a bullet. Three bullets.”
“Can I get this on e-book? Paper books kill trees.”
“I’d buy one, but I already have 200 e-books I haven’t read yet.”
“I counted 2 profanities, 1 obscenity, 7 rude expressions, 3 references to bodily functions, 15 euphemisms for profanities or obscenities, and an implied adulterous relationship. I hope you’re proud of yourself, you pornographer.”
“Your characters are two-dimensional.”
“You should have spent more time on world-building and less on character development. Bla-bla-bla.”
“There’s too much religion in the story.”
“You didn’t mention Jesus once.”
“Are you famous? I never heard of you.”
“Masterful.”
“Inept.”
“Obsessively detailed.”
“Vague.”
“Jaded and worldly.”
“Naive. A Pollyanna tale.”
“All man-made books are evil. I don’t need to tell you what that means for the destiny of your immortal soul.”
“Is this some kind of racket? You’re selling it for half this price on Amazon.”
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
“The allegory is way obvious. Next time, just rip pages out of the Bible and write over the names with Sharpie, why don’tcha?”
“I don’t understand the allegory. Is Shane Jesus, or is he John the Baptist? And Louie…well, he makes no sense at all.”
“A bold political statement, my boy. Watch your back.”
“Where are the real-world problems? This is 300 pages of irrelevant fluff.”
“Dude, your story’s so gritty and intense. I can tell you spent some time on the mean streets.”
“You’ve never set foot outside your little pink house in the suburbs, have you?”
“So, what’s this book about, anyway?”
“It’s about a boy named Shane, and his dog, Louie. They take a backpacking trip along the Appalachian Trail.”
“Sounds boring. Is it about you?”
“No. There are some beautiful pictures, though.”
“Pictures? Cool. Hey, nice dog. Is he a German Shepherd?”
“Golden Retriever.”
“I love dogs. I’ll take a copy.”
“How do you want me to sign it?”
“Just say, ‘To Charlie’”
“That’s your name?”
“Nope, it’s my dog’s name. He loves books. They keep him from chewing on the furniture.”
That is sadly appropriate.
I’ve always thought authors loved to hear feedback. I thought struggling self-published or small-press-published authors would especially crave some honest thoughts from readers. I like to give feedback when I have a concrete and specific thought (otherwise, I don’t really like expressing hollow opinions, like the stereotyped quotes from the article).
I don’t write many reviews, mostly because I’m slow and don’t know how to manage my time, but when I do, I almost always read the book through twice, more carefully the second time, searching to bring to light a hidden aspect of the work.
So, how can I provide feedback to authors that actually is helpful, if thoughts and opinions are helpful at all?
Writers do. But we like useful feedback. 0=)
Personally, I prefer to know what worked, what didn’t, and what I could do differently. I know that sounds horribly vague, but it’s true. One other thing that’s always neat is, if you’re an expert in a field, and the writer clearly isn’t, then a friendly feed-back email is priceless.
Course, I think on the writer’s end, it’s a tight-rope-walk to be clear enough without spoonfeeding the reader, and it’s also important to learn how to distinguish between the reviewer’s perspective (Ex: Maybe the one girl comes from a controlling background, so she’s more likely to be sensitive to something most people wouldn’t think twice about) and the actual problem. It’s always good, on the writer’s end, to explore criticisms like that further. And, you know, sometimes the character’s supposed to be a controlling jerk. 😉
As a fan of book reviews I found your post to be hilarious. The best humor is always closest to the truth. And you hit the nail on the head. Thanks
Feedback is always interesting, at least. I find that most of it is helpful, in the sense that it highlight things readers noticed that I should consider in writing future stories, and it gives me a feel for what is important to my audience. A smaller fraction is useful–information that tells me what needs fixing (or should continue) and perhaps how to go about fixing it.
The funniest thing about feedback is that it’s so often contradictory. For every person who enjoys the pace of a given story, for example, there will be another who hated it because it moved too slow or fast for them. Some people will offer comments that make you wonder if they even read the book. It can get confusing very quickly. As in my highly-exaggerated scenario here, it’s hard to tell who’s right, who’s wrong, and who just dropped in from an alien spacecraft. Sometimes people enjoy or hate a book for reasons I never would have imagined. A fan’s a fan, even if they use your book for a doorstop or really sink their teeth into it, like Charlie.
In any event, I try to accept feedback in the spirit in which it’s offered. It’s important to remember, as Kaci noted, that everyone brings their own experiences into the reading of a book, and their interpretation of it, for better or worse, is filtered through those experiences.
Writing is worth it; writing is worth it… This is the kind of material that makes a good story, so it’s all worth it…
Hee hee hee.
Fred, this is very funny!
Inane!
Urbane and witty!
Goofy!
Brilliant!