If I ruled the world...

[ladyofastolat]

When I am supreme ruler of the universe, the following things will be declared illegal forthwith:

- Books with one word titles. Exemptions will very probably be granted when the word in question is sufficiently unusual, but common words are right out. Calling your book by a word ignored by most search engines (such as "it") shall lead to punishment more dreadful than any man has ever dreamt.

- Authors who insist on spelling their name in an unexpected fashion. If your readers are going to ask for you as "Susan" then you will jolly well be forced to spell your name "Susan", not "Soozun". (Made-up example to protect the guilty.)

- Books that appear to be called on thing - e.g. "Let's talk about recycling" - but actually secretly call themselves something else - "Recyling", which happens to be in the "Let's talk about" series - and don't bother to tell anyone.

- Vacuous celebrities with no talent who still manage to get themselves publishing deals, which they use to "write" books telling 6 year old girls that beauty is everything.

Actually, on second thoughts:

- Stupid, idiotic, poorly designed search systems. Once they're banned, I might even allow the others to become legal again. Except for the last one. There's no excuse for that.

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

- Vacuous celebrities who no talent who still manage to get themselves publishing deals, which they use to "write" books telling 6 year old girls that beauty is everything.

Hear, hear... I would like to be astonished at the ease with which publishers fling money at these people, for erratic rewards, but you can see why they are considered a worthwhile risk. I sort-of admire the ghost writers who churn out the 'autobiographies', the children's books etc., which sustain the celebrity's 'brand image', but am desperately sorry for them and for our society.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Books in the same genre by two different people with the same surname, both of whom appear to employ the same cover designer. You wouldn't believe how often I've picked up a Susan Hill, thinking that it's a Reginald Hill.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Books released in a different market, with a new cover and a new title and a different writeup, that appear to be different books but are in fact, the same book.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

When an author backs out at the last minute, and the publishers get someone else to write the book.

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Good books with appalling covers and writeups written by someone who has clearly only glanced at the last page.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

Agh, yes. I saw a book today in which, according to the blurb, the entire point was that the heroine was far from beautiful in a world that prized beauty above all. So what do we find on the cover? A very beautiful girl. I did much mental ranting about how this reflected an appearance-obsessed society (presumably publishers think that plain girls don't sell books). However, it's probably nothing to do with any nasty agenda, but is just the usual situation of cover illustrators not bothering to read the book. (Though it's probably not their fault. They're probably writing to a lazily-written brief.)

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

Argh! that winds me up. It's bad enough that so many heroines are described as so hawt 'n' sexay, or only possessed of flaws that aren't flaws ("her lips were too full for beauty") even when we are in fact imagining them so they don't have to be played by Hollywood starts to be marketable. But if a rare book actually allows the heroine to be ordinary or even plain and the cover shows the usual bodice-ripper beauty... argh. Argh.

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

I think it's both, though. Yes, the immediate cause is badly-briefed cover artists, but the fact that their default image of a 'heroine' is beautiful nonetheless bears witness to an agenda (conscious or not) by both publishers and society in general.

[torkell]

- Stupid, idiotic, poorly designed search systems

I'll support your ban on those. Whatever happened to simple systems that worked and did useful things like tell you if a copy is in your library without having to look at the book details? Horsham's 15-year-old system (seriously, it still runs on Windows 3) can do that, why can't modern ones?

[phoebesmum.livejournal.com]

May I just mention in passing the frustration of working in a science fiction bookshop and trying to search the database for a series called 'V'? (I solved the problem by re-christening it 'V: The Series', which at least meant I could find it, if no-one else.)