Sunday 20 January 2013

a bone of contention

I went to purchase books for my Kobo, and as I was looking at several titles, I came across Beautiful Disaster by Jamie McGuire. As I was looking at it, I noticed that it was grouped in a certain genre of books. I looked at the list a bit more, and noticed that it also had Easy by Tammara Webber, and Slammed, Point of Retreat, and Hopeless by Collen Hoover. They were all grouped in "What to Read after Fifty Shades...". This list also had Bared to You and Reflected in You by Sylvia Day, among others.

This really pissed me off to no avail. I've read the entire Fifty Shades trilogy as well as the two by Sylvia Day and I have nothing against any of those books. I've also read all the other books listed above. They should not be grouped together. And here are MY thoughts:

There are people out there who would say that Fifty Shades is tame compared to other books in that exact same genre that are out there. Yeah, but there is still a lot of explicit sexual material and covers topics which some would still consider taboo. Same goes for the ones by Sylvia Day. And this point leads to my main qualm...Because if someone objected to the content of Fifty Shades, they would more than likely pass judgement on Beautiful Disaster, Easy, Slammed, Point of Retreat, and Hopeless, and therefore not read them. And if this happens, then how will anyone know how great these books are? The books by these authors are intense in their own way, but not in one that would make you need to Google what a flogger is.

What I really want to know is who decided to group them together in the first place. Did these people actually read the books? Did they use a software program to search similar words from the synopses, and if they got, say 75% or more, then they would be grouped together?

If I read one more article, or see one more list that has all of the above authors group together, I'm going to lose my s*** and start snail-mailing copies of the books to: the companies that have these list, the writers of the articles, and any other name that seems to agree with this inaccurate perception.

I guess in the end, and publicity is good publicity, but my point is that people should actually read the books they are writing about, or comparing others to.

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/1307515--publishing-2012-fifty-shades-juggernaut-legitimized-mommy-porn

Vent over - thanks!









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