BEGINNERS
BEWARE the hype
Your job is to write your book, says Adrian Magson, without paying attention to the hard sell of other authors’ titles
Adrian Magson,
In arecent trawl through an emailshot list of newly-published books, a number of vivid descriptors leapt off the screen, such as ‘breathless’, ‘mesmerising’, ‘fearless’, ‘haunting’, ‘masterful’, ‘captivating’ – even ‘incredible’.
Of course I knew that all these words were meant to tell me I should dash helter-skelter to the nearest bookshop and splash my cash because I was missing something. I didn’t, but that’s how they came across.
It makes me wonder whether the marketing departments of the various publishers involved ever do a switcharound with each other so as not to use the same adjective too often, as is the case with book cover illustrations.