Pet hates (for grumpy old gits)

[Mike (the Paladin)]

They want to be sure you know it's not a history or a cook book.

[Derek]

I don't know, but it seems even more prevalent in German. Whenever I am doing librarian work on Goodreads, and come across German-language editions of books that I know in English, they seem to have "Roman"(which is "Novel") in the title.

[Whitney]

Derek wrote: "I don't know, but it seems even more prevalent in German. Whenever I am doing librarian work on Goodreads, and come across German-language editions of books that I know in English, they seem to hav..."

Same for French books. I noticed when traveling all the novels say 'Roman'.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

So true...
http://themetapicture.com/book-slappers/

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Pet peeve: Independent booksellers who behave like martyrs & don't take any responsibility for adapting their business model to keep pace with the times.

Our local indie bookseller is always either moaning about being the last of dying breed or boasting about how she's been in the industry for 40 years and knows it all:
* She has banned smartphones in the store because, "people take pictures of the ISBN then go and order the books online because they're cheaper". (?) I once tried to show her the "scan" function on the GR app, but she wouldn't hear of it.
* Once, I took my laptop in to use my TBR as a shopping guide & she demanded to know what I was looking at. When I showed her GR, I got a sneer in response. So then I asked if she had any of the 200 books on my priority list in stock. She said something about how they're all pretty mainstream, and she of course knows them all, but...... and wandered off. Apparently the answer was "no".
* One of her staff maintains a FB page for the shop, but they mostly post about the demise of indie booksellers. There's nothing to actually engage people.

Apparently they've decided it's 'technology vs bookshops' and that's an end to it. In doing that they've missed the opportunity to use the internet to their advantage.

If they have all this expertise, why aren't they marketing themselves as being able to provide something the internet can't? Otherwise, the book buying decision comes down purely to price, in which case the bookseller loses. I'm not saying all indie booksellers are like this (or even most) - but there are a few who seem to be relying purely on people being willing to pay extra just to keep them in business - without giving anything back in return.

I should be an independent bookseller's dream, but that behaviour is SO off-putting!

Thank you. I've had that rant brewing for a few months now. :)

[Whitney]

Ruby wrote: "Pet peeve: Independent booksellers who behave like martyrs & don't take any responsibility for adapting their business model to keep pace with the times.

Our local indie bookseller is always eit..."

Sounds like the attitude that I used to encounter at the Seattle Co-op markets. Lots of whining about Whole Foods hurting their business. Little admission that maybe the problem was that if people can get their organic, free-trade pluots without the snotty holier-than-thou attitude and grudging service they will choose that route.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Whitney wrote: "Sounds like the attitude that I used to encounter at the Seattle Co-op markets. Lots of whining about Whole Foods hurting their business. Little admission that maybe the problem was that if people can get their organic, free-trade pluots without the snotty holier-than-thou attitude and grudging service they will choose that route. ..."

Well said.

[John]

I went to a writer's group a couple of times, and the last time they had it at a small independent bookstore. First of all, the owners were nice, BUT, their categories for books were BADLY hand lettered on typing paper, hanging down from the ceiling by fishing twine, an not readable from more than 3 feet away. It's not like we're in the 50's, if you have a computer and a printer, even an old one, you can print out sheets with something that I assume was a permanent classification (like "Science Fiction").
I only mention it because it would have taken an hour to improve, and the rest of the store was like that. No wonder they're going out of business, it looks like they really don't care to enhance the shopping experience.

[Jennifer]

I have no life. I have sat here and read about 2 pages of pet hates. Mine included. Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking. I am still frustrated with the book store classification system and that I go there to purchase a book that I KNOW is released. (Goodreads told me so ) and I am told by the young clerk who tells me (like I am some kind of idiot) that there is not a new book published by this author.Would Goodreads lie to me?? I surely hope not.

I would also like to vent about those e-books that libraries lend. We need more time!!! I mean life interrupts the reading process and we are required to set the instrument down.

And its really sad that threads like this....slowly....wind...down....

P.S. The platypuses in the fedoras are adorable.

[Derek]

I'm afraid Goodreads might lie to you. When GR announces a new release, it's generally the US release date, so if you're elsewhere it may still not be available.

[Mike (the Paladin)]

Well, she's in the US so shouldn't be an issue. I usually check a couple of places.

[Whitney]

Go in armed with the ISBN number and then let them try and tell you it doesn't exist.

[Mike (the Paladin)]

I like to buy books locally but sometimes it's like the employees don't get that they need to help customers to keep the store open and their jobs existing. Weird.

[Jennifer]

Mike (the Paladin) wrote: "Well, she's in the US so shouldn't be an issue. I usually check a couple of places."

Mike, I live smack dab in the middle of Alaska. I have only 2 choices for physical book stores. The locally owned one has a pitiful selection of "new" books. They have a grand selection of used. And Barnes and Noble....some guy sitting in New York City is deciding what people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere want to read. I mean, do you think we are..normal??

Oh and customer service?? What is customer service??

[Mike (the Paladin)]

I meant with the release date information. The actual presence of the book is a different matter. Amazon is killing brick and mortar stores because of it. All a local store has going for it is customer service and of course human contact.

[Jennifer]

Mike (the Paladin) wrote: "I meant with the release date information. The actual presence of the book is a different matter. Amazon is killing brick and mortar stores because of it. All a local store has going for it is cust..."

I wish we had better customer service. I really would rather purchased books locally, than online. There is something joyous about physically perusing a book store.

[Mike (the Paladin)]

I'm a bit older and "back when" I would sometimes take one of my "days off" and spend it browsing book stores. Often I'd go in not specifically looking for a given title. There were then several good book stores and several good used book stores. I found many of the books I still love like that. Now we browse on line. Often now we don't even get physical books. My daughter got me a Kindle for Father's Day and now I also pick up, "E-books". I have a large library of audio books from Audible as I love audio books.

All that but we've lost the joy of spending hours surrounded by books and getting the joy of discovery. Book stores today carry a very limited selection of titles and usually have an online option where you can buy the same book from the same store but for less money.

Of course you can usually have a cup of coffee and buy toys in book stores now.

[Mike (the Paladin)]

Same here a used book store I've gone to for 20+ years is still here and Mckay used books has opened across town.

[Derek]

We have a newish used-book store, "Doull Books". I'm just completely tickled that somebody had the nerve to open a business to sell dull books!

[Mike (the Paladin)]

ba-dum-bump

[Ed]

If a friend asks me to give his or her book a good review on GoodReads, I'd probably be a bit conflicted. I've not been given the chance to have this moral dilemma, and probably won't.

Ridiculous use of apostrophes (I mean you, who wrote the book about Wit'ch), poor editing, deliberate new words for old things, and poor binding (I took out a library book, a new hardcover. A block of about seventy pages were put in backwards)

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

I have to say, as much as I've enjoyed City of Saints and Madmen, the paperback cover and binding are really crap. The cover art doesn't reflect the style of illustrations or the story. It's also the kind of book you have to continually flick around in - back and forth between the appendices, bibliography, glossary, footnotes, references etc etc. Which is fine IF the binding is of high enough quality to sustain it. I've got pages falling out all over the place. Oh, and there is no consistent page numbering. Each section is numbered separately, or in many cases not at all. I'd really like to see a nice special edition of this book.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

So today (as I was browsing their very small book selection) a newsagent told me, "There's some more books over there on sale. The ones written by females are cheaper, because they don't sell as well." Yeah, I'm out. I just can't..even..

[Derek]

Ruby wrote: "The ones written by females are cheaper, because they don't sell as well..."

Arrgh! He's probably right, but telling your customers that doesn't do anything to solve the problem. I simply can't imagine why the author's gender could matter.

[Ed]

We have one large independent book store (RJ Julia's) and one that's not so large (Breakwater Books). While I love buying in both of them, neither has a particularly sf/f section and neither has a good technical section. The former isn't really a problem, but when I need a good technical book, my choices are limited to on-line and the Coop at MIT, and I'd rather not drive for about 3 hours to browse a bookstore.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Derek wrote: "Arrgh! He's probably right, but telling your customers that doesn't do anything to solve the problem. I simply can't imagine why the author's gender could matter. ..."

I actually think he was talking about romance novels. When he showed me the stand he was talking about, it had Sidney Sheldon at the front anyway, and a tonne of crappy romance novels behind.

In retrospect, I wish I'd said, "If you insist on stocking the kind of novels "by females" that have been out of fashion for 50 years, then yeah - they probably won't sell as well."

I had been browsing the classics, and a fair few of those were by female writers.

I doubt it's actually an issue of who the author is, but then again, this IS Townsville..

[Whitney]

Yeah, but, that's where the Powerpuff Girls are from! That just ain't right!

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

New pet hate: Authors of ebooks who keep editing them and releasing updated Kindle versions. FFS. The book is finished. Back away from the keyboard..

[Derek]

Ruby wrote: "New pet hate: Authors of ebooks who keep editing them and releasing updated Kindle versions. FFS. The book is finished. Back away from the keyboard.."

That's exactly the problem though: the book isn't finished. It got "published" without proper, or often even any, editing, and it has probably had a bunch of reviews saying that the story was good, but the editing sucked.

Though I do recall one author who actually changed the story (more than once) because her readers wanted different endings...

[Whitney]

Derek wrote: "Ruby wrote: "New pet hate: Authors of ebooks who keep editing them and releasing updated Kindle versions. FFS. The book is finished. Back away from the keyboard.."

That's exactly the problem thoug..."

This is something that's going to be interesting in how it plays out. There have been the occasional hard copy books that have different editions, but it's obviously something we'll be seeing more off. As Derek said, with self-publishing fixing spelling and grammatical areas is inevitable. Changing in response to audience demands is a lot more dicey. I doubt many serious writers will engage in that.

I do know of one writer who changed his book in response to comments (from me and others) about a couple rape scenes. From what he said and later wrote about it, he did not intend them to come off they way they did (i.e. misogynistic). In response to criticism / discussion, he went back and tweaked them to make his intent more obvious. In this case, he was originally sending a message he hadn't intended, was it wrong to change the book?

I'm not supporting one view or another, just been thinking about it and the implications. When it becomes more common, will it be like books with multiple translators and people debating which version is the best?

[Derek]

Whitney wrote: "In response to criticism / discussion, he went back and tweaked them to make his intent more obvious. In this case, he was originally sending a message he hadn't intended, was it wrong to change the book?"

I'd say it's absolutely not wrong—but it's still a failure of editing. If you hire a real editor, you'll at least get that discussion. Even if you just get a bunch of Goodreaders to beta-read it, you'll get that discussion. It should never reach the point of being "published" without the author at least knowing that there's going to be fallout.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

As with all artists, I think there must be a point at which they're prepared to say "It's finished" and stop tweaking it.

From the reader's perspective, I don't have time to update my Kindle every time someone tweaks it, for whatever reason (particularly when I've seen certain ebooks with more than 40 iterations).

My view: Release it, and live with the finished product.

[Maggie the Muskoka Library Mouse]

Bad editing is my worst pet peeve. I HATE it when a book is badly written and textual errors abound. :(

[Derek]

Margaret wrote: "Bad editing is my worst pet peeve. I HATE it when a book is badly written and textual errors abound. :("

I'm not sure whether I hate that more, or less, than books that are well written (at least, they produce a good and engaging story)—but full of "textual" errors. The badly written ones I can just toss back in the slush pile. The ones that seem like they should be good, but haven't been even slightly edited make me angry.