Making Negative Titles Work

I learned today that one of the common pitfalls of negative titles is that they usually only express a complaint or identify a problem without offering a solution. And people want solution; they are not going to read pages of some stranger's complaint that doesn't necessarily change their lives. I guess such titles could be categorized as "Anti-" titles, where they do not always contain the word "anti-," but their overall message is simply "I-hate-...the government, the institution, my boss, my next door neighbor etc."

But, of course not all negative titles put off customers. One of the examples that Jeevan gave me was Leadership and Self-Deception, which did very well despite the negative tone of the title. But, I have a feeling that this title probably worked, precisely because it was not an "Anti-something" title, but brought up an idea about the human mind. That is, self-deception describes the mind's act of unconsciously deceiving itself. Despite the possibility that the direct link between "leadership" and "self-deception" might painfully pinch the leader egos, you just can't say that the title is anti something. It definitely isn't anti-leadership (at least, judging from the title alone) and what, anti-ego? Oh please, don't let your ego become so vulnerable that it shudders at the mere word "self-deception." And some modesty never hurts in this world.

Anyways, my feeling might be totally skewed because I admit that not everyone is interested in the workings of the human mind as much as I am, but I have observed a trend in which the public's interest in applicable psychology seems to be growing. At least, for a big number of people in my generation, we don't find an appeal in something that's completely superficial, pre-digested, overdone, or kitsch. When novelty on the surface of things becomes hard to find, we dig deeper in order to probe our thinking in ways that haven't been done before. That's why I believe that the movie Inception garnered its popularity partly for the plot's complex psychological concept (other than the fact that it's directed by the awesome Christopher Nolan and stars Leonardo Di Caprio and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, both of whom are absolutely dreamy....but I won't go there and save you some major eye rolling).

Well, to summarize, I think negative titles work when it's smart about its negativity. The negativity needs to refer to a bigger and deeper concept that is just waiting to be spilled out by the book's content, instead of just showing an opposition to something that already exists.

Conditioning

Deshoda listed the 100 most beautiful words in the English language, and guess what the first word is. Ailurophile, which means, a cat-lover! Yes! Now I just want to put myself in a situation where I can say, "Oh yes, I am an ailurophile." But then, most people probably won't know what I am talking about, because it's such an obscure word. As I was going through the rest of the list though, I noticed that a lot of the words sounded French, like "chatoyant" (I don't know French, so maybe that doesn't sound French at all, but to me it did), "denouement" (which I know for sure is derived from French) and "dulcet." This means that the person who put the list together must have been somewhat fond of the sound of French. I myself think French is a beautiful language and I absolutely love hearing it, but I've always wondered why French is such a popular language. A lot of people say it sounds beautiful, but is there a certain sound in French that is anthropologically appealing to the human ears, or are we conditioned to like French because of France's cultural prestige?

If the latter is true, it means that we have been culturally conditioned to like French. This idea sheds some light on the role of myth-breaking when it comes to book content. Books that break commonly believed ideas and throw the society into delicious controversy prevent us from being conditioned by a certain idea that limits our imagination into a tiny little box created by some guy in a suit. It's a necessary buffer from the invisible ignorance that we put over ourselves, invisible precisely because we think we know exactly what the circumstances are, but we fail to find other equally valid perspectives. And, myth-breaking books are popular, because people hate being conditioned despite the fact that they are tremendously vulnerable to conditioning. We seem to be in a constant struggle against the information that is thrown to us; we swallow them like ravenous kids, but at the same time, we want to throw it all back up and say that we are adults who can resist that tempting, but ultimately boring food. But, let me by cynical here and say that we are still eating without really thinking, and our desire to resist being conditioned by a certain idea is smothered by our too easy belief in what the masses believe.

But, going back to French, even if this is cultural conditioning at work, I still love the sound of it. I will just accept that I am being conditioned, despite the fact that this acceptance might make my previous paragraph hypocritical or invalid :)  But, every time I think that French is beautiful, I can't stop myself from thinking about what I've just discussed.

Picture Talk

It would be completely awesome if one of our books became a documentary. I would think that the movie would definitely help market the book. There are some people I know who don't care for (or dare I say, don't even like) reading, but most people like to watch things, whether it's television, movies, Youtube etc. There seems to be something about a visual or a picture that appeals to our senses a lot more than words, which in a way, just look like black, crawling lines on a white surface.

Just looking at myself, I have a sort of a film running through my head all the time. Whatever I write, I see everything in moving pictures first, which I translate onto the page in words. And when I hear or read something, I translate the words into pictures in order to comprehend it. This, of course, happens both unconsciously and simultaneously. If this is a common way of thinking, it could explain why people are so attracted to pictures. Not only do people like moving pictures, but readers also love illustrations, especially when they are reading something dense. But, I am not a psychologist, so I won't get further into speculations.

Now that the digital book market is booming, we have the opportunity to incorporate more visuals into the books. But, no matter how much I like pictures, I would still like to keep my text. There are some things that can only be enhanced or explained by words. For example, take this comic by Dagsson below.

Source

Other than the fact that this comic is hilarious, imagine that the words "Anarchy in the UK" weren't there. It really wouldn't be funny at all, because the words on the bottom make up the punchline. And it still wouldn't be funny if the punchline was expressed by another picture instead of words. You see? People say a picture speaks a thousand words, but there are some things that can be adequately expressed only by words. So, in other words, the collaboration of words and pictures is important.

Why Authors Might Need to Read Their Own Books

It is possible that a writer could write a book on how to live a certain way, but fail to live that way himself. For example, an author could have written about how to be more considerate of others, yet he could be a complete jerk to the people in his life. Hypocritical? Yes. But, also very odd. In the self-help genre, how is it possible that authors write about something that they fail to practice? It's either the author doesn't know what he's talking about and his practical techniques to live a certain way is completely bogus, or, he knows a lot only in theory. This question gives rise to a more interesting thought about the reason we write what we write about. The answer probably depends on the person, the situation, the book genre etc. (the same old "it depends on..." type of an answer, the answer to every question in life that can't be answered in a single sentence).

But, I have a little theory when it comes to self-help books, or at least a book that endorses a certain characteristic or quality to have in order to be an "improved" human being. The author writes about how great a certain quality of a person is, because he admires that quality. But, you usually admire a characteristic that you don't have yet wish to have, or one that you are currently working on to achieve for yourself. (Unless, you are rather conceited and admire only yourself.) This automatically creates that break between that author's "how-to-be-an-improved-person" book and what he practices in his real life. He unconsciously hopes to achieve in his own life what his book achieves as a text; he writes that book, because it is a form of his ideal.  Now, this is just a theory without a single scientific or statistical basis (please don't talk to me about math or science. I might start weeping.) and it can't apply to everyone. And I am sure a lot of authors truly live out the messages of their books. But, I hope that it would be a worthwhile tool of introspection for the authors out there.

Talking to, but not talked to.

I recently rejected a book proposal sent possibly by an inmate (you can supposedly tell, because everything's handwritten in pencil), and it felt really weird sending a handwritten rejection to him/her. Here I was, rejecting someone locked up in a tiny box for who knows how long. But, it's not really pity or sympathy I am talking about here. The person could have committed a horrendous crime, which would probably scare me more than make me pity the person (although, I wonder if that makes me an uncompassionate person, but let's not get into ethics at this point) and I would probably have rejected the proposal anyways even if it wasn't sent by an inmate. The point is, it just felt like I was sending a note to a wall; I would never be able to hear the person's response to my rejection, a response that I would be able to hear if I had called the person. Sure, I can imagine how he or she would react after receiving my response, but that's just my imagination, a mental picture created solely by me. In other words, the real response can't really come to me. Maybe, it's the fact that an inmate is locked up in a cell. I imagine a concrete box with a small barred window, and my handwritten rejection just bouncing off the sharp corner of the box.

People nowadays lament their relationships that seem to be comprised of only one-way communication. They complain, "People just won't listen!" I have a feeling that the concrete box image is also suitable for this type of a complaint. But, just imagine how more alienating it would feel if it wasn't that the other person didn't listen, but that the other person couldn't listen and you couldn't listen to him/her? The one-way communication that comes not from someone's stubborn intention to not listen, but from unchangeable circumstances into which people are coincidentally thrown seems more tragic.

Steve was right!

I was a little surprised when I found out that Steve sometimes doesn't read the entire book manuscript that he is editing. He told me that he does this for some manuscripts, not only because of time constraints, but he can also know what the draft is like just by reading the first 20-30 pages. Of course I believed him, but I wondered if it was just a Steve thing, something that he has acquired the ability to do because of his long experience in book publishing. But, now I can say from my experience that Steve was right about this!

As I was working on my second manuscript review, I realized that for both times of doing a review and just reading the drafts for Author Days, I pretty much grasp in the first 20-30 pages the core aspects of the book that are either good or need improvement. After I set these aspects as my foundation, I pretty much encounter examples throughout the book that fit these aspects. Despite the fundamental flaws that stay throughout the entire manuscript, I have to say that most drafts do get better as they progress. Why is this? I am assuming that it must be pretty difficult to start a draft. Once you are in the midst of an idea, it's easy to write, because the you are swimming in the complexity of that idea, re-arranging its different components as you write them out. But, how do you start about bringing an idea to the table? There might be two big mistakes people make to deal with this problem. They either dumb the idea down for the sake of clarity, because they are afraid that readers won't get it, or the introduction starts off too broadly, vaguely, or with too much complexity crammed into a tiny amount of space. A professor once told me that the introduction is the last thing she writes when she's writing a book. This must be her attempt to start from inside her head and coming out with what her head contains, all wrapped up nicely, instead of opening a door to her own head and being smooshed by an avalanche of her ideas that are trying to burst out.

Walking Through Mud

It is extremely painful to read something very simple for a sustained period of time. You would think that you would be able to breeze through common sense, right? But, oh no, how I have underestimated you, simplicity. Having to read something that is so obvious yet so painstakingly spelled out for you is like trying to walk through a mud pit. Sure, you are walking, but you are pretty much dragging each step and that single step tires you out twice as much as walking twenty steps on grass. But, common sense that is pre-digested for you (if there is anything to digest, that is) and phrased in slightly different ways seems to be the only thing that people are bothered to read.

Then, has the intellectual capacity or at least the intellectual willingness of the masses been smaller than I thought? Has it shrunk through time, because of the hectic pace of life?

Take, for example, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (non-fiction, right? I think...). Now, other than the fact that the book is dry as sand, it's not too much of an easy read. But, wasn't that book a trade book for the masses? It sure wasn't a textbook for academics. I can't say for sure whether it was popular or not when it was first published, but if most literate adults could digest that sort of a book, shouldn't people now be able to read a slightly not-so-simple book as well? (Seeing that more of us are educated now than during Franklin's time.)

Maybe, it's a time thing; we are just too busy. Yep, I understand. But, instead of trying to read an entire easy book in a couple of hours, couldn't we read a portion of a harder book in that same amount of time? Are we too impatient to not be able to finish a book? This seems to be a willingness issue, our unwillingness to challenge not only the way, but just how much or how deeply we think about the world.

Marketing the Writer Persona

I was reading an article on The Millions about making the media presence of the writers as a vital component of marketing their books. Talking strictly about fiction as the article also seems to do, I agree with the writer of the article on the idea that online presence makes the author into a flat character, like a celebrity whose facade doesn't reflect his or her human complexity, or even the complexity of the book. Just imagine that you are reading a wonderful novel, but from your head, you just can't erase the author's completely corny profile picture on the book's website that manages to reduce the core of the book into a single catchy message. Okay, fine, fiction writers probably don't have reductive websites for their novels, but there's a certain pleasure in going through the threads of a complex novel and perhaps trying to create an image of the author from those complexities. The author stays as the vague, mysterious weaver of words. We might have their biography, but we cannot make them into one dimensional media persona, someone who simply becomes a profile picture to which we automatically connect the book.

Okay, so that's fiction. Now, non-fiction has more danger of having reductive websites with snappy lines like "Do more in Less Time." And I am all for selling the authors and what they stand for in their fields, because non-fiction audience doesn't have the time to be exploring the complex maze of narrative fiction. However, I wonder if this marketing strategy turns the authors into a commodity. Not in the sense that they are disposable commodity; they probably won't be considered a commodity if the books are bestsellers and the authors become so famous and popular in their field that they attract hundreds of speaking opportunities. But, commodity in the sense that they simply become a cover picture for that "message" they stand for in their books and no longer human writers.  They lose that human complexity, and soon I start to see them not as writers, but as brands.

And think about it. Would you rather be human or the label on the Coca-Cola bottle?