I Remember When...
I remember when people picked up a book and read it...without the drama.
I must be old, because I remember a time when books head hopped and nobody noticed. Anybody notice the Big 6 still does? I know Random House does. I had trouble with one of their titles because of it--but I've been trained to watch it for as an editor, so it would bother me. But I remember when ALL books did that. There were no rules against it and not every single reader was a self-declared editor. Now, we can't head hop. At all. Ever. Unless we're with Random House.
I remember when if you bought a book and didn't like, you could NOT go back to the store and demand a refund. "Don't like it? Sorry. Take it to the used bookstore."
I remember when books were 6.99 for a paperback, for a full story, none of this 99-cents for 80k or FREE door stop stuff. You got what you paid for back then.
And if you ever pick up a fiction book from those days, there is no Table of Contents. Why would there be? But a friend on FB was saying she had to add a TOC to all her fiction books now. It is Amazon-recommended and reader-demanded. Apparently readers wish to skip chapters. How the hell do you know what's going on then???
And let's be realistic here for a second, just what are half of these TOCs going to look like?
Copyright......1
Story.............2
Hot Sex Scene....3
A Little More Story....10
Really Hot Anal Sex Scene....11
Some More Story....30
Really Hot Menage Scene....31
Cheesy Happy Ending....49
The End....50
Regardless, what's with all the demands? It's an ever-growing list. It started as "no head hopping, no tragic endings...no closed-door sex..." and became "We want a book a month and all of them FREE! We want full-length novels for next to nothing. No short stories!" And now it's "We want TOCs so we can just skip what few pages of story there is!"
I must be old, 'cause I remember when people just bought a book, sat down, and read the damned thing...without all the drama.
I must be old, because I remember a time when books head hopped and nobody noticed. Anybody notice the Big 6 still does? I know Random House does. I had trouble with one of their titles because of it--but I've been trained to watch it for as an editor, so it would bother me. But I remember when ALL books did that. There were no rules against it and not every single reader was a self-declared editor. Now, we can't head hop. At all. Ever. Unless we're with Random House.
I remember when if you bought a book and didn't like, you could NOT go back to the store and demand a refund. "Don't like it? Sorry. Take it to the used bookstore."
I remember when books were 6.99 for a paperback, for a full story, none of this 99-cents for 80k or FREE door stop stuff. You got what you paid for back then.
And if you ever pick up a fiction book from those days, there is no Table of Contents. Why would there be? But a friend on FB was saying she had to add a TOC to all her fiction books now. It is Amazon-recommended and reader-demanded. Apparently readers wish to skip chapters. How the hell do you know what's going on then???
And let's be realistic here for a second, just what are half of these TOCs going to look like?
Copyright......1
Story.............2
Hot Sex Scene....3
A Little More Story....10
Really Hot Anal Sex Scene....11
Some More Story....30
Really Hot Menage Scene....31
Cheesy Happy Ending....49
The End....50
Regardless, what's with all the demands? It's an ever-growing list. It started as "no head hopping, no tragic endings...no closed-door sex..." and became "We want a book a month and all of them FREE! We want full-length novels for next to nothing. No short stories!" And now it's "We want TOCs so we can just skip what few pages of story there is!"
I must be old, 'cause I remember when people just bought a book, sat down, and read the damned thing...without all the drama.
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LOL. If I had retained the rights to my little pornos, I would put that in them, that ToC. Glad you enjoyed that.You see ToCs in print books? Really? I just randomly picked up a print book from early 2000s and opened it and there is no ToC. It's like Title page, author page, author note, chapter one.. Only the nonfictions seem to have them--at least from what's on my shelf.
I like freebies too--for trying new authors. I confess I may balk at times at trying someone new but I may read their free book and enjoy it and I will buy their other stuff. Excellent point.
I agree with what you say about returning books just because you don't like them. It's so wrong. When you buy a paperback in a store you read the description, have a flick through, then buy it. As you say, you don't then return it if you don't like it. Amazon have the 'look inside' feature, so people should use it. As you know from a previous conversation we've had, I have been guilty of not using this feature and ended up reading a very distasteful book, but have learnt the hard way to use the look inside feature, even when the book is a 'freebie'. If you're paying for the book then you should actively use that feature as much as possible. Personally I think if e-book retailers have a 'look inside' feature, they should put a stop to people returning the book just because they don't like it, because the reader has had a chance to 'try before they buy' already.
I don't recall ever having a paperback book that didn't have a table of contents, but have certainly come across e-books that don't. I did like your table of contents, that would be hilarious if someone actually did a ToC like that.
Personally I think what would be more helpful with e-books would be if the book description is at the beginning of it. With a paperback you've always got it on the back cover, but e-books never seem to have it included. If you've got a load of books on your device and you're not near a wi-fi spot when you go to read your next book, you can sometimes be reading 'blind' for a while. I have this problem quite frequently, because I have quite a few books in my 'to read' folder on my kindle, there are a variety of books ready for my different reading moods, so when you fancy reading a comedy you can end up starting to read a drama, until you're in range of wi-fi and can have a look at the description.
I am a self-confessed freebie book whore, but I don't agree that all of them should be free. I like that with e-books authors who wouldn't traditionally get published are able to now, and some of them are bloody good. But I feel that each author should only ever have one book free. They should have confidence in that work, and if people enjoy it then they will be prepared to pay for other works from them. By progressively putting all the books on my kindle cloud onto GR, I've come to realise that with some authors I've managed to get all of their work to date for free, which is wrong. A prime example, I read a book a while back, which I absolutely enjoyed, went to buy some of the authors other work and couldn't because I already had them, so now I'm sat waiting for their next book so that I can actually pay money for it, because that author deserves to be paid for their work.
I get the feeling with a lot of the free books, that authors put them up for free so that people can do the 'beta reading', then they open themselves up to criticism of bad grammar, typos and basically unedited work, which must surely knock their confidence a bit. If they put in the description it's a first or second draft, then people would be a bit more understanding of the bad presentation.
I basically agreed with all of your post, but am now smacking my hand, as I've realised I've included two 'demands' in my response, lol.