Timothy's Thoughts

Y esterday, I picked on some book product descriptions , pointing out some problems with them. Today, I want to discuss some ways to improve book descriptions. Who knows, maybe I’ll learn something. Lead with the Best Parts Peruse a few websites that list books and you’ll see product descriptions that have been chopped off with the words “read more” at the end. Imagine visiting such a site and the only words you see for one book are “From the author of the Sacramental Sunset Series comes the… read more .” For another book you see, “A mysterious stranger comes to a pastor’s aid, only to… read more .” On which description are you more likely to click? We have no control over how much of a description a customer reads, but they all read the first words. Describe it as a Reader Would We put a lot of stuff in our books that means a lot to us as writers, but the readers see it as just part of the story, not what the book is about. I hinted at this yesterday when I cut away so much of the d...

Yesterday, Michael Hyatt blogged about The Bestselling Christian Books of 2008 . It sort of relates to what I’ve been talking about this week, so I thought I’d go ahead and mention a couple of thoughts I had when I saw his list, as sort of a bonus post. The Disconnect Between Christian Fiction and Non-fiction In looking at the list, 15 Christian non-fiction books made the list and 1 novel. If you factor in the paperbacks, you can count four more novels. A 5:15 ratio is still a dismal showing for Christian fiction. There are many possible reasons for this, but one thing that I noticed is that the doomsday stuff is missing, with on exception. The books on the non-fiction list appear to be uplifting, as do the five successes in the novels. Now, scan the list of books from yesterday. Many of those books aren’t uplifting at all. Many of them are down right depressing—at least they are when you read the product descriptions. Is there a link? Non-Fiction is Easier to Sell Non-fiction is easie...

Product descriptions are a problem for books. As I was working on yesterday’s post, I noticed that many of the product descriptions that the publishers are putting out there aren’t very helpful. With some of them, it took me over a minute to figure out what the book was about. Considering that customers spend about eight seconds looking at the product description, that is a problem. I know I struggle with writing product descriptions, so I thought it might be good to consider how we might improve some of the product descriptions out there. Rather than pick on an author because of a horrendous product description, I have selected the books with the best premise from each of the three publishers I picked on yesterday. One week from tomorrow, at precisely 6:11 in the morning, the rapture or apocalypse or Armageddon or whatever else it is you’d prefer to call it , is going to occur. But only in Goodland, Kansas. The Hendersons are caught in the middle as the town—and the family—divides bet...

Please bear with me, this is a lengthy post, but I hope you will find it helpful. We talk about the plot and characters and all of that, but the publishing industry runs on the idea for the book, more than anything else, as I hope to show with this post. Below you will find short descriptions of various Christian novels that have either been recently released or have yet to be released. In a highly subjective decision process, I have ordered them with the best at the bottom and (shall we say) the others at the top. For all but the first, I summarized the product description, but the first one reads so much like a soap opera that I wasn’t confident that I could accurately glean the central theme from the product description and I copied what the publisher has provided. I wasn’t selective in choosing the books, but gathered them from lists, making this list representative of everything Thomas Nelson, Zondervan and Bethany house are publishing in the way of Fiction. Some of the...

Is my writing good enough? It’s a question that aspiring authors ask often. I saw it yesterday in the comments to Rachelle Gardner’s post, Don’t Take it Personally , but I’ve seen it other places as well. What unpublished authors would like is for someone to look at their work and say either, “You’ll be published some day,” or “You’re wasting your time.” Personally, I think it’s the wrong attitude. There isn’t a person out there who can do more than make an educated guess as to the eventual success of an author. Consider that Mark Twain strongly criticized James Fenimore Cooper’s writing skill while others praised him. I look at some of the work that well known authors are producing. If an aspiring author handed me the same work and asked what I thought, I would say, “It isn’t good enough.” But apparently it is or they wouldn’t be selling books. We all have different tastes and that probably has more impact on the success of a book than writing skill ever will. Me, I don’t care for ro...

Writers talk much about platform and many have learned to hate the word, but only the people who don’t have one. They look at platform as the most difficult thing in writing. Oddly enough, there are certain groups of people who have an instant platform. I’ll pick on Rachelle Gardner. When did she join Wordserve Literary? Late 2007, I think? How many people are listed as followers of her blog now? While you go check, let me point out that Rachelle has several years experience in the publishing industry and I don’t want to take away from that by mentioning her, but the fast popularity growth of her blog is largely due to instant platform in the publishing industry. Professionals with the same experience level in other fields will not see their blogs grow at the same rate. But new literary agents and publishers can put out a sign on a blog saying, “I’m an agent” or “I’m a publisher” and aspiring authors will flock to them. It helps if they have something useful to say, but it isn’t a r...

I created a living document of Publishing Industry Jargon . It was too long to post here, so I posted it on my website. If you notice anything you think should be there that isn't, feel free to let me know.