It's been brought to my attention that a lot of my faithful blog readers have been commenting on how they love the fact that I rate the books not only by stars or, in this case, @ symbols, but also by movie ratings (G, PG, PG-13, NC-17, R). And I got to thinking, how nice it would be if publishers started putting Movie Ratings on the back covers of the books they publish! After all, they rate movies like this, and aren't books like movies if you have an active enough imagination?
Now, I realize that publishers would lose quite a bit of money if they sent out books to be reviewed by other readers (not to mention we'd have to get a group of readers together to do this. which would be very stressful), but why not have the author of the book tell the publisher what the movie rating is. Surely the author of the book would know the content of their own work! I sent out emails to four different publishers: Bethany House, Thomas Nelson, Zondervan, and Harper Collins. (I plan of emailing more.) But I'm not sure that just one person can get the point across on how badly we need a way to know the content of a book before we buy it! So if I gave you the link to contact these publishers would you consider contacting them yourself? Maybe if enough people ask for this they'll do it! How cool would that be?
(If the link doesn't work just go to the publisher's website and you'll find a contact button on their page. Also feel free to contact more than just these 3 publishers!)
And here's the gist of the email I sent them. Though if you'd like to come up with your own or want to change it up feel free! This is just an idea.
Dear [insert publisher's name],
I may have found a way to increase your book sales and their ratings. If you provided the potential reader with the content of the book on the back cover, in the form of a movie rating (i.e. PG-13 for violence, language, and some drug use) perhaps the potential reader will pick up the book if they think it's to their liking. This would also keep bad ratings down, if the said reader picked the book up without knowing its contents and proceeded to give it a bad review because they didn't know what was in the book. The author could provide with the book's content so you wouldn't have to send it out to a professional reviewer. Just a marketing thought! Thank you for your time and patience.
Sincerely,
[your name here]
What do you think? Is this stupid? I'm tired of picking books up and getting shocked by what they contain! It's time to stand up against this. Blog about it (copy&paste, or push the button at the bottom of the post linking to the blog), Tweet this (push bottom button), Email this (bottom button), "Like" this (also bottom button), or Google + it (again bottom button). Just get the word out to the publishers that we want more information about the books were thinking about buying before we actually buy them!
(do i sound like an idiot? is this already a lost cause?)
No, it isn't stupid! It's actually pretty cool!
ReplyDeleteI just wish it was on EVERY book.