carol. > Status Update

carol.
carol. added a status update
Help me understand the description of this book amazon is flogging:
"Lyrical, imaginative, and wholly original, this New York Times bestseller with 8 starred reviews is not to be missed. (redacted)’s award-winning debut..."
Oct 16, 2023 07:33AM

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message 1: by Marquise (new)

Marquise "We're desperately trying to sell you this book we've pre-emptively awarded a prize because the author is one of our favoured, and since we're as original as a newborn AI, we're using these trite praise words in hopes you'll not notice that we don't really have anything good to say other than hyperbole, so... buy this?" :P

(No idea, really, but these empty praise blurbs/reviews are all like that.)


message 2: by carol. (new)

carol. my goodness, I think you cracked the code!!


Left Coast Justin I believe they mean "starred reviews in national news organs of some repute," not the unprofessional but oh-so-good reviews one reads for free over here.

An aside: Since nearly every book published falls into either the 'hard hitting and unforgettable' camp or the 'lyricial and imaginative' camp, how original can it be?


message 4: by carol. (new)

carol. You are probably onto something with the 'starred reviews in national news of some repute' because it appears--to my surprise--there are thousands of GR reviews for this book.


message 5: by Morphing_kashi (new)

Morphing_kashi For a moment I thought they meant reviews of 8 stars and I was thinking "who uses 8 stars as their rating system?!"


message 6: by l (new)

l lol i looked it up and it's seraphina. it's decent. one of her ya fantasy novels is very good though - tess of the road.


message 7: by carol. (new)

carol. Morphing_kashi wrote: "For a moment I thought they meant reviews of 8 stars and I was thinking "who uses 8 stars as their rating system?!""

It's a blurb that makes no sense. Written by a non-writer, apparently.


message 8: by carol. (new)

carol. l wrote: "lol i looked it up and it's seraphina. it's decent. one of her ya fantasy novels is very good though - tess of the road."

From the blurb, I was honestly expecting some hack job. Imagine my surprise when I saw the book had like 38k reviews or something! I think marketers and book-jacket writers should actually know how to write. I think they must be graphic design or business school majors and only write in bullet points.


message 9: by Diane (new)

Diane Wallace Amazon always over do flogging stuff. They push and push for ppl to buy anything...


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