These are some of the most prominent tools people are using these days to discover (or pitch) their next book, because it’s a fast-fashion, low-attention world out there. I find them, for the most part, useless and exasperating. But not always. This isn’t meant to be a hoity-toity snobbish thing where I deride “the youths” and “the culture” but rather an examination of why I, personally, have found certain of these techniques to be hollow and genuinely unhelpful. The more heavily they are used and relied upon to pitch a book, the less likely I will ever pick it up.
I fully understand WHY these methods are used. The platforms demand it. If you only have a few second, or a few lines, to get something across, it’s gotta be punchy and well-distilled. This is not, in and of itself, inherently wrong. There is a pragmatism to it. “Hooks” exist for a reason. But in the end, it’s utterly pointless to me. It doesn’t crack the geode. It doesn’t tell me what’s really inside. It honestly doesn’t tell me anything. Because it can’t.
Aesthetics
A series of images flash before your eyes to the strains of an evocative violin. For approximate 20-30 seconds, you are inundated with either the gothic, or the mythic, or the epic, or the tragic, each vision coming and leaving the screen before you can even fully grasp what you’re seeing. It’s meant to attract your eye, to tell you “this is what this story will look and feel like.” But only if you enter will you get the full picture.
For marketing purposes, I think this one can be very effective. At first. If someone can put together a beautiful aesthetic for a book, full of evocative imagery, hinting at drama or romance or dread or darkness or whatever it is the book supposedly possesses, they eye is drawn. You see a dozen of these babies pop up on your social media feed and you begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, this book really has something to offer.
So maybe you buy it on aesthetic alone. And one in a hundred times maybe the “aesthetic” really told the truth, and the book really does evoke all those emotions/images. Maybe. But after a while, they will all begin to look the same because it is an effort to capture a whole in a very, very small part. Inevitably it becomes repetitive. Flashes of a beautiful woman, a handsome warrior, dragons, fires, swirling colors, grand castles–it all begins to bleed and blur together till it nearly loses its power to pierce the heart.
Because here’s the thing. If I read a book and I am PASSIONATE about it, I feel all that passion when I communicate my love for that book to someone else. But I can’t necessarily make you feel what I feel, no matter how many cool-looking images I use. The book has to be experienced.
Is the book more than flashy imagery? Is there meat and marrow there? Do the characters have depth and complexity? Will I forget I read it the moment I put it down because it was all nothing more than an aesthetic to begin with? Yes, a beautiful image can draw the eye. Indeed, it should. I grant this. But there must be something more to draw the soul. And if I have been fooled by images too many times before, I will numb myself to them so as not to be fooled into reading drivel again.
I will say that pitching a book by aesthetic is going to be more effective when done by a READER than when done by an AUTHOR. If a READER feels passionate enough about a book to get creative in trying to convince their friends to read it, that is far more tempting. If an AUTHOR does it, all they are saying is “I hope you feel these things. This is what I want you to experience. These are the images that inspire me.” But that says nothing about whether or not they succeeded.
Vibes
Since this one is nearly impossible to define, you would think it the most difficult to communicate. But that’s not really so. What are “vibes”? Typically this means “the feel of.” It has Lord of the Rings “vibes”–aka it feels like classical high epic fantasy, with clearly defined heroes and goals. It has Dune “vibes”–aka Sci-fantasy with complex politics and deep lore. It has Jane Eyre “vibes”–gothic, pensive and romantic.
This one might, for all its seeming vagueness, be the most helpful of the lot. Sure, it requires that you have familiarity with other works whose “vibes” it ostensibly shares, but I’m going to give this one a pass.
It may sound silly, and I may get irritated hearing people say “vibes” all the time until the word doesn’t sound like a word anymore, but if you tell me a book has the “vibes” of Till We Have Faces, I am going to become curious at the very least.
I surprise myself. I expected to excoriate “vibes” and I find it is the one about which I can say nothing particularly harsh. Huh. Wonders never cease.
Tropes
In case you missed it, I ADORE analyzing tropes. HERE IS THE LIST OF ALL MY TROPE ESSAYS! Tropes aren’t bad. Tropes are great. All the great stories adhere to some trope or another. Familiar storybeats warm us, draw us in, thrill us. I am NOT here to complain about the existence of tropes. I am here to harrumph (mildly) at marketing by tropes.
Now this one youtuber did an EXCELLENT video (LINK) talking all about the good, the bad and even the historical of trope-pitching. She makes great points about using tropes as a filtration system when you are positively INUNDATED with books to choose from. And if they all look and sound kinda the same, people will use whatever tools they have to try and find the books they think they will like.
Granted. AND YET.
Here’s why, despite understand the WHY behind trope-marketing, I still get frustrated with it. It makes me sigh deep sighs.
Let’s take an extremely popular trope: enemies-to-lovers. I get the appeal of the trope. Okay…okay, I’ll make a confession: in theory, in theory, I LOVE THIS TROPE. But have I ever bought a book which was marketed solely based on this trope? Absolutely not. And I doubt I ever will.
Because it’s all in the execution. And I almost never see this one executed well. I have learned to flee from the trope when I see it mentioned because I am certain to be disappointed. It cares about the flash and the flare–the mere idea of the trope–but is hollow underneath.
Having written about this extensively before I’m just going to repeat myself a bit. This is from the intro to my trope list post:
“Try making a trope list for Middlemarch or The Brothers Karamazov and see how far you get! And if, by some miracle, you actually can extract a few clear tropes, tell me if that list gives you even the faintest notion of the true nature of the work.
Tropes are fun, but they clearly have their limits. Thinking in terms of tropes gives us mere dots on a graph so that we draw the slope we think exists and hope it hits the desired trajectory. But it is all so desperately inadequate.”
So it isn’t that it’s wrong to market to tropes. It just doesn’t answer the questions I want answered. Are the characters deep and complex? Is the prose beautiful? Are the themes strong and do they come to meaningful fruition? Did it make you think?
But you have to pause and reflect to answer those questions. But if you feel rushed, and if you can only ever tolerate a fast-pace, a story that skims the surface from trope to trope, the cliches filling in the blanks for you, the names of the characters going out of your mind the moment you put the book down? These questions go unanswered.
Trope-marketing isn’t wrong. It just skews towards that kind of hurried experience.
As in all cases, the reader must be discerning.
And, as in all cases, this form of pitch works far better coming from a READER than from an AUTHOR. Authors, you can tell us what you were going for, but only a reader can tell us what you actually DID.
Premise
*Deep Breath*
THIS ONE IS THE WORST. It makes me so angry, I will not even attempt to be eloquent about it. I do not care how cool or unique your premise is. Your story premise could be the most awesome idea in the history of humanity, and if you gave it to me in a single sentence pitch, it would sound fantastic.
I will never, ever buy that book. The flashier the premise, the more gun-shy I am. The cooler the idea, the more likely the story falls woefully short of it.
I have been burned. Burned bad. Let me never waste my money on premise again so long as I live.
I have seen the absolute coolest, most amazing premises crumble to dust in an author’s hands.
And this one chaps my hide in a way that vibe, aesthetics, and tropes never will. Because it’s such a tragic waste. The aesthetic might just not connect with me. The trope might just not be my favorite. The vibe might be a little off.
But you had gold in your hand and you squandered it because you didn’t do the work! You wanted the gold to shape itself into fine form, rather than you having to smelt it, get the dross off, and work it and finesse it and turn it into something worthy of the material. You thought you could get by on premise alone! YOU CAN’T!!! It doesn’t work like that!!!!!
Okay. I’m working myself into a frenzy. Let’s calm down and write a conclusion.
In the End
The point is these things don’t have to be bad, and it’s good to have a sixty second pitch, or a quick way of trying to explain to someone why you think a book is worth their while.
But the common flaw is that they give you an impression only of the barest surface of the story, and that isn’t the part of the story I’m most interested in. These things are like the author’s pinterest board. All concept. All sketch. No indication of true and final art.
Just vibes.
It’s almost like they’re telling me the story they wish was there. Whether it actually is there is anyone’s guess.
Tell me you walked away stricken with rich and compelling thoughts. Tell me you lingered over beautiful lines. Tell me the characters were so real that you wondered how the author rendered them so. Tell me you were filled with longing for you know not what. If you tell me that, all the vibes, and all the tropes just don’t matter anymore.
J. L. Odom 