I've just recently finished reading a book called The Cuckoo's Egg, a New York Times Best Seller. I can understand why. It's a damn good book. It would have been even more enjoyable, however, had I not read the back cover before I started it.
A back cover blurb should entice the reader to open the book and start reading. If it gives away the entire book, what's my motivation to read it? After all, there are plenty of other books I could read that I don't know the end of. But that's just the start of it.
It's even worse when the people in marketing, in an over zealous attempt to sell a book, pick on some minor point and embellish it to make it seem like the book you're buying is about an event or going to contain something that never comes up. I spend the entire time reading the book waiting for what I read about on the back cover to happen. When it doesn't, I feel cheated as a reader. I'm sure I can't be the only one who feels this way.
The back cover of The Cuckoo's Egg mentions events that don't come into play until page 363. The book only has 399 pages, so I'd say right there, whoever wrote the back cover blurb has failed me as a reader. Why bother reading 90% of a book, only to get to something mentioned on the back cover. That's simply bad marketing. But then to embellish it, to make it seem that was what the book was about, is unconscionable. The book would have been so much better if I'd simply ignored the blurb altogether.

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