About books, covers, and marketing.
OK, here’s the plain honest truth. I am turned off by advertising. I am turned off by marketing. And I am turned off by publicity stunts. The heavier a push is to get me to see/read/consume something, the more resistence I have to seeing, reading, or consuming it. It’s pig-headed stubbornness, really. If you get in my face and scream “GO SEE THIS MOVIE! NOW! GO GO GO!” I’ll go find a book.
Occasionally, however, I realize that I have missed something good because I was so turned off by the advertising. I must remember that hype does not equal quality, either via exact or inverse proportion. The hype is completely seperate from the product.
So here are some things that have been very heavily hyped but are nonetheless very, very good. I recommend checking them out. Or adding your own.
Star Wars Episode II: Passes my “fun” test with flying colors. I could do without the clichéd, over-acted, tortured love story. But otherwise it’s a significant improvement over the others.
Harry Potter books: The fanatics all seem like sheep. The books are everywhere. The character is as over-marketed as any Disney product. Don’t let that stop you from reading the books. The books are some of the best childrens’ literature ever written, and the story itself is better than 99% of the other fantasy work out there — for adults or children.
Dave Barry’s novel, Big Trouble: Yeah, I’m tired of hotshots in one field trying to move to another. Madonna acting. Michael Jordan playing baseball. Stephen King writing sci-fi. They always seem like dilettantes. Barry makes a serious go at a novel, though, and actually writes an exciting and compelling book.
I’m sure there’s more, but I can’t think of them at the moment. :-) The point is this: you can’t let marketing judge your idea of a product’s quality. Either way.
