50 Ways to Lose your Reader

OK, not 50. But I do feel like venting a bit about all the ways that indie authors shoot themselves in the foot. And here are my top three.

I've written before about what will stop me from buying. That was largely packaging issues, though, Cover, blurb, first page, basic competence in the language, and so on. First impressions. Today, I want to talk about content, and some of the ways you can ensure I will never again download anything by you. Even if it's free.

1. Books about murder, pointlessly coupled with food porn. For some reason this always seems to be confectionary and baked goods; it's never Beef Wellington, or Pad Thai or anything. There are so many of these series, and not once have I ever read one that was any good. The one I'm currently reading even has complete recipes at the end of every chapter. For nasty weird American novelty biscuits. I so do not want to read this. Because let's face it, if I were interested in baking, I'd have bought a cook book. Probably one by Nagi Maehashi, because she seriously rocks.

I digress here, but if you buy one cookbook let it be one of hers. It's due to her that I can now make authentic Fried Rice that is as good as, and often better, than you get in a Chinese restaurant. She is a legend.

Be that as it may, a murder mystery is really not the place for recipe after recipe. I feel as if they've been put in just to up the wordccount to justify a higher price for the paperback. There is a reccipe at the end of nearly every chapter, sometimes even two or three, and I suspect the recipe wordcount in this book is higher than the story wordcount. In fact, the story seems like a bit of an afterthought, put in to proved excuses for these rather nasty-looking recipes.

So that's one thing, but it leads me to my next point, which is... 

2. Fiction A La Bandwagon.

Fiction, like everything else, has trends. Fashions come and go in every field of human endeavour. Not just food and clothing, but the big stuff. Architecture. Medicine. Even politics. We're seeing this on the world stage right now, actually. Fascism is making a comeback, almost everywhere. It's disturbing and unpleasant, but it's particularly unappetising in the novel. Honestly, if I read ONE more book about a band of plucky teenagers on a quest to save the world, while meanwhile beneath a mountain an ancient evil stirs, I shall probably throw up my breakfast. That goes double for darkly erotic vampires, hordes of zombies that want to eat your brains, and secret high schools for training witches. Oh, and of course, cupcake bakers who just happen to solve murder after murder. Nearly all of the examples of these things I have seen are in no way original, but appear to be seeking to cash in on the success of people like Rowlings, who actually did do something new. 

There's nothing really wrong, in my view, with having these things in one's work. I wrote about vampires myself in Bloodsucking Bogans, and I even wrote about zombies in my short story Danse Macabre. I don't mean to seem hypocritical here. I won't rule out a book just because it has vampires or zombies. But the question I ask myself is, was the vampire/zombie/dragon/pastry shop/secret school necessary to the story? Or has it been added just to push the story onto one of the current popular trends? Chloe Hammond's Darkly series, and Joseph Picard's Lifehack series are both examples of the former situation, not to mention being both really good reads, but far too many books are just porn, or teenage high school stories or whatever, with a werewolf pack, or vampires or something shoved in. And you can really tell the difference.  

3. The third big no-no for me, and one doesn't see it all that often, is the Soapbox Book. The novel that's been written to push an agenda. Ayn Rand's books are good examples of this. Now I don't mean to diss the activists among us. The late great Sheri Tepper's books nearly always carry a cargo of activism. Her thing was greed, and treading lightly on the earth. Mercedes Lackey, in her lovely Valdemar series, works hard to combat negative stereotypes of same sex relationships. There's nothing wrong with doing this. All novels are, au fond, about people, and good and evil are the parameters within which people interact, and a really good book will in my opinion always be extended at some point into the moral dimension. But Tepper, and Lackey, and others of their ilk, provide a really good story to carry their little cargo of light. A story that has its own presence, its own weight, that could, if necessary, hold its own without the moral content, although I do think that when done well, it enhances a work. Rand, on the other hand, either was unable to write well enough or couldn't be bothered to try, and so her books are a trial to struggle through, even without their often distasteful ideological content.