- and you don't want it to end, so you go back and read the beginning, or the blurb, or the adds for other books (that dates me) or whatever, so you don't have to leave that world just yet?

In a Women's fiction group thread that Katerina started, I recently said this, and then I wondered what other WWers felt?

"My US publisher asked me to put together material for a 16-page section at the end of the paperback of TMOL called PS, which is basically anything you like about the author, and how the book came about, and a bit called 'Read On' which is like an informal, chatty 'Further Reading', or can just be pure entertainment: '5 movies that make my life worth living' or whatever. When I did mine, most of the first two sections were cannibalised from other things, but I warmed and expanded them and slanted them more towards TMOL...

If UK paperbacks had a section like that, would it be nice, do you think? Or would it just be annoying, because what you want is to stay properly in the book, not be given website-type material."

Apparently HarperCollins UK does to the same in some pbs: has anyone encountered them, and what did they feel about it?

Emma

If UK paperbacks had a section like that, would it be nice, do you think?

- Oh, Emma, that's such a difficult question! Because it entirely depends on the book. If I don't like a novel, then I wouldn't much care to have the backgroud filled in. If I absolutely totally loved it, had lived in it, believed the characters were out there alive and still struggling, then I'd also hate to know how the novel was written because, as you say, it would destroy the illusion.

There's probably a middle ground where I've admired a book and, especially if it's something with a historical or foreign background, I'd like to know more about its genesis. One example that springs to mind is The Man Who Ate the 747 which is about record breakers. I was keen to know which records were for real and which invented for the plot.

However, the spectrum outlined above is entirely personal and may even vary depending on my mood. I suppose, if there are details in the back about the author's journey, we don't have to read them if we don't want to. Though I should imagine that to write that kind of addendum would be as brain-grindingly hard as composing a synopsis.

AS you say, they already do, certain teenage imprints do, and I think also adult commercial fiction. Quite often they also print the first chapter or so from a forthcoming, similar novel by the same publisher, in the back of the book.
I quite like it, as a gimmick.

<Added>

I do think, when they print that 1st chapter from related book, that it would make me want to buy/ borrow that book (of course, given that I'd enjoyed the first novel). It draws you into reading it in a very smooth, convenient way; much easier than browsing in a bookshop because you haven't got time pressures, for example.

They've done that with mine, put the next chapter in. Yes, I like a sneak preview too.

I've seen the PS thing on a few UK paperbacks - my copy of Douglas Copeland's 'Girlfriend in a Coma' has it, and my friend Tash's book, 'The Harmony Silk Factory' has one. Personally, I love them - although I did really like both books it came with, so I guess that plays its part. And I have always liked background info on books, bands, plays etc.

I'm not sure whether it would help sell a book though, so I can see publishers perhaps being a bit wary of it - effort for no return. But then, considering most authors will do a lot of it as part of their press stuff (interviews, related books), perhaps they lose very little by including it, and for geeky readers like myself, it's a pleasant little bonus.

It's a publisher-led idea, at least for Morrow (aka HarperCollins US), so they must think it works. All it costs them is one more 16-page signature which isn't much, at least on a book the length of TMOL, and me an evening re-hashing some stuff into 3,000 warm and wonderful words. Money for jam, I'd say, unless it irritates readers, and it doesn't sound as if it does in a serious way. You can always ignore it, after all. The publisher is seen as providing 'value added', but I suspect it does more for me as an author than it does for them as an imprint. I can't see people actively choosing to buy a book because it has this stuff, over a book that doesn't, but maybe I'm wrong.

Emma

I've seen them in a few books, and like them a lot. Always read them if I liked the book. They're a bit like miniature websites on paper, aren't they?

I think on some level readers nowadays expect to learn more about authors. I know I'm vaguely disappointed if a writer I enjoy hasn't got a website, or if the website is very minimalistic and offers nothing beyond a blurb for the book. What I like best are lists of favourite books, and Q&As à la the Proust questionnaire - such a quick, fun way to 'get to know' somebody, without the uncomfortable awareness that you're being told things you shouldn't really know. (Somehow, stuff about the actual writing process and how autobiographical a novel is often fall in the latter category, in my opinion.)

Ema, I think you're right, I don't see a book with extra material as having 'added value', but going through the material definitely makes me feel 'closer' to the author (if that makes sense) and more likely to look for their books in the future.

<Added>

Emma... though Ema is a lovely name too

It's the literary equivalent of getting a DVD and finding in the menu there's an 'extras' section all about the shooting.

I hadn't thought of it like a DVD but it's true.

Emma

I can't see how it would hurt. Sometimes there's an interview in the back of books. Neil Gaiman is rather fond of them, and even suggests reading group topics. Philip K Dick also writes the odd afterword, but in terms of putting your influences down, I'm not too sure about that. I'm not sure what readers would make of it.

Interestingly, John Connolley's new novel comes with a CD soundtrack to his works. I'm not sure how I feel about that either.

JB

Neil Gaiman did say in an interview that he wasn't sure about the 'DVD extras' for Anansi Boys- that he'd gone along with the publishers' suggestion to 'reward' those who bought the hardback - but felt rather ambivalent about the 'deleted scene' that was included.

I think he said because having taken the decision with his editor to take it out because they didn't feel it worked - he didn't really want it in with the notes.

I can see that - I like DVD extras but quite often if you do view the deleted scenes you can see why they didn't make it to the final cut?

Sarah

suggestion to 'reward' those who bought the hardback

That's an interesting thought, to see if you could persuade more people to buy the hardback now by adding extras.

Or would it risk making the pb appear to be poor value, being minus the extras?

Emma

I don't know - the interview was in one of the BFS mags in 2006 - some time after the event - I think 'Anansi Boys' came out in 2005 so probably the 'extras' was a new idea at the time?

Neil Gaiman was one of the very first authors to have a blog so tends to be fairly innovative - I don't remember quite how the interview went but it may be he did express concern as to whether the PB buyers would feel short changed? He was quite candid about not being sure if he liked the 'extras' idea or not.

Sarah

Going back to your original point Emma, about finishing a terrific book and not wanting it to end, I know how I feel when that's the case - I want to stay in the book, nurse it for a while, keep it with me, which for me at least means any adjuncts would serve only to pull me away from that. So I'd probably ignore them. Or maybe go back to them at some future date. Or not.

I do like the 'extra bits' on DVDs, but I rarely watch them at the time I watch the movie, precisely because I want to stay in the fictive dream.

Zoe

Hmm. Difficult question. As Lammi says, I think it does depend on the book.

And as Zoe says, anything that 'insists on itself' at the end of an involving read in which I feel I have 'struck up a relationship with' the book, would be very intrusive, and break whatever magic place I am in.


If the book is 'competent enough', but I don't really sink in, then it wouldnt matter either way. I would have read for the plot, and little else. (viz: Da Vinci Code)

If the book is actually not very good (in my eyes) then I would almost certainly want to read whatever the author has to tell me about him/herself. And it would also be interesting to get a few pages, in this case, of justification by the publisher.


So

If it's a book Ive loved, then I would want there to be recognition of the power of fiction by the insertion of a few blank pages before this marketing suite...

but that's just me.



Vanessa