Things Book publishers do that annoy you - A thread

[gangweedfan]

What are some things that book publishers do that annoy you? For me its putting the words "A Novel" on the title of a book that you can already easily tell is a novel. Even more annoying is when a book has a preface or forward by some nobody college professor that ends up spoiling the book before you read it.

 

[Justtocheck]

I wish modern books either came with feaureless covers or had smaller fonts. Why the fuck should old farts know what I'm reading? If they are feeling curious they can go read their own books. I kinda get the feeling many people like to flex what they read in public. Yuck.

 

[SSF2T Old User]

Explicitly publish misinformation because the author did not bother to do any research other than watch a shitty youtube video.

 

[Not Really Here]

Sell ebooks on their own websites at the same price as on Amazon.

 

[Fromtheblackdepths]

When the cover art doesn't show a scene from the book or anything relating to it.

 

[waffle]

I pretty much universally hate novel cover art.

 

[trekkor]

Putting the poster of an adapted movie on the cover of the new print of the book it was based on. They always look like shit and I am convinced if you gave people the option to either get that or literally any other edition cover art they had before, people would always get the latter. It's even worse if the movie ends up being shit, then you're stuck with getting that one (if you don't know how to order an older version online ofc).

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Putting the poster of an adapted movie on the cover of the new print of the book it was based on. They always look like shit and I am convinced if you gave people the option to either get that or literally any other edition cover art they had before, people would always get the latter. It's even worse if the movie ends up being shit, then you're stuck with getting that one (if you don't know how to order an older version online ofc).

This kills me. I lost my first edition copy of The Ring and all new copies have the recent movie poster so now it cant go along with the sequels on my shelf.

 

[AbyssStarer]

Printing dumbass labels onto covers that look like stickers and including quotations of reviews onto covers.

 

[Synthetic Smug]

Put labeled cutaway illustrations across the trench of perfect bound softcovers.

 

[Megaroad 2012]

Printing dumbass labels onto covers that look like stickers and including quotations of reviews onto covers.
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Why those obistrips on Japanese books are the best. Doesn't obscure the covers.

 

[Baguette Child]

I think my biggest peeve is just quality control; Even at the softcover level, the care taken to ensure books are properly printed and bound has been slowly but noticably slipping in the last 15 years. Now some softcovers I get in are barely centered and fall apart with very little handling.

I understand that with a declining market some corners have to be cut, but there are limits for fucks sake.

 

[Zodiac]

Don't know if it's publishers or the author doing this, but how they have been designing cover art lately annoys the crap out of me. It feels insanely minimalist and half of the time I have no idea what the books supposed to be about based on it. I used to be able to just tell based on the cover alone. Probably a ploy to get you to pick up the book, but it does the complete opposite for me.

 

[Dom Cruise]

By far the worst thing is still using an author's name after they pass away on stuff that they never wrote or had any hand in at all.

You see this with Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy and most sadly for me, Michael Crichton and there's tons more.

It's always "famous author's name" and some no name in smaller text who actually wrote the book and their goal is to just try to imitate the author's style, which for me is just really lame.

When an author passes away just let their body of work be what it is, don't overcomplicate things by adding a bunch of junk they never wrote.

 

[Reverend]

Using social justice warriors to proofread books in order to point out "problematic" content. Young Adult novels are literally a barren wasteland of garbage tier books that are being sold because the author is not:

1. white
2. Male
3. Christian

When did those things ever matter in a fictional story?


Also lack of reversible/removable covers.

 

[Fandom Trash]

I'm not found of when publishers decide to change the covers of a book once it gets turn into a movie. I would rather not read a book with the cover of some famous actor/ actress and instead read one with a nice simple design.

Or for YA books where a majority of book covers tend to be pretty girls in dresses...despite the book having nothing to do with anything of the sorts.

 

[Jimjamflimflam]

"Now a Major Motion Picture"

Slapped across the front.


Also not just related to book, movies as well but "based on true events" when its clearly not. "Inspired by" should be used when its written with the events in mind and based on when its a factual retelling.

 

[Shield Breaker]

When the cover art doesn't show a scene from the book or anything relating to it.

Ah, the Darrell K. Sweet book of cover art.

 

[TungstenCarbide]

Publishing shit.

Trying to force a book into a particular, very specific genre so to make its marketing easier, even asking the writer to completely cut scenes that wouldn't appeal to the target demo. That is a extremely risky move, since if you market the book to the wrong demo, it won't sell.

Spoiler: A few examples

Italian author Giuseppe D'Andrea wrote a horror/fantasy book called Wunderkind. In his intentions, it had to be a Lovecraft-inspired urban fantasy for adults. His editor was like: "Oh, the main character is a kid, so we'll market this thing to kids, and we'll break it into a trilogy". They published the first two books, but they sold so badly that they never printed the third one, that had just the digital edition (here publishers do that to books and writers they don't trust).

A writer I know told me that her editor was very anxious about the target of her last book: she wrote a love story between a female tourist who goes to spend her holidays in a small town, and the local doctor, with a dash of "village comedy", but her editor wanted to market it to teens because a minor character, a teenager, has a couple of scenes throughout the book.

 

[ducktales4gameboy]

It irritates me when the back cover of a novel doesn't have any actual information about the book beyond a one-sentence blurb that gives the vaguest idea of the theme and the rest of the space is filled with contentless praise from reviewers nobody's ever heard of.

Spoiler: pseudo-offtopic

I know this is kind of going outside the lines but the two absolute banes of my existence can be summarized simply:

looseleaf binding
digital access codes