Wait...Free??

I have some news that will rock your socks...

You're looking for one last book to read during the summer months or for that new novel to spark an idea for your own work. Maybe you're wanting to research new authors and their ideas, or maybe you're wanting to expand genres and styles so as to learn more widely-spread themes and types or to integrate fresh verbage and stylizing into your own opposite genre (verbage is totally a word).

It doesn't matter. When readers and writers alike hear the words 'free book'...the universe spins to a halt while all their heads whip in that direction.

And you know...sometimes it doesn't even matter what type of book. I know that I get goosebumps whenever I hear that someone is giving away books, or when I hear about a really great deal. I never get suckered into that coupon/on sale mentality where you stock up on stuff just because it's on sale, whether you need it or not. But if I come across some cheap books or free books...I'll take a look. Ok, I can't stop myself from looking. I literally can't. It's like going into a bookstore and not leaving with something tucked under your arm. That has happened to me on occasion, though the memories are hard to bear...my pillow is still wet from my tears.

Well, maybe some dramatization was employed with that last sentence there...

Author Jack Vance is currently promoting a book of his by giving an e-copy of it away for free. You can check it out here and download it without any forms to fill out or information to give away. Huh, well why not, eh? Especially with a summary that goes something like this:

"The starship Explorator IV is destroyed after entering orbit around the planet Tschai. Adam Reith's scout ship is en route to the surface when the attack occurs, and is damaged in the explosion; Reith crash-lands and is separated from his ship. He finds a world full of violence, where four non-human races rule: the Chasch, the Dirdir, the Wannek, and the Pnume. Humans are present, but dominated by the other races. In this volume Reith sets out to regain his scout ship, and makes his way to Dadiche, ruled by the Blue Chasch and their human servants. Along the way he finds loyal friends, and challenges social inequities with the same aplomb that he rescues fair maidens- like the lovely Ylin Ylan, Flower of Cath."

The novel is the first of four, and really, giving away the first of a series is pretty smart. If you become hooked, you will have to get the ensuing novels. Tricky, of you, yes...I'm on to your plots. And their effectiveness...will I ever stop being pulled in to your novel-producing ploys?

Probably not...and I'm not exactly sorry...

Now, I'd not say this summary is very well written. I'm still intrigued by the idea of the novel. I mean, well, it's free. I'm not going to be very discriminating here. And who knows, I might have a new favorite author out of it. The immediate and potential pros outweigh the potential cons. But I'd work on that writing there, for three reasons.

One-- you never want to use over sized words in a summary, such as "inequities" and "aplomb". Although there are plenty of people who will know what those words mean, there are also plenty of people who won't. If it's not used in every day conversation or one of the first synonyms for the simplest version that comes to mind, don't use it. You'll only turn off the potential audience as you give the impression that your book will be too hard to read.

Two-- oh my goodness, the use of punctuation. Commas are used in this summary like they would be if someone were speaking, implying dramatic pauses and inflection. That is not what commas are for. And it seems as if whoever wrote the summary decided to try and use every type of punctuation possible. In the space of a few sentences, all of these symbols are used . : ; , -  and none of them incredibly effectively. Your overuse punctuation can be just as important as your lack of it, so be aware.

Three-- it makes this book sound less intriguing, as the first opening of it did to me, and more like a science-fiction mello-drama. The first pitch I read was this:

"Tschai is about the adventures of Adam Reith, who after a crash landing on Tschai, a planet orbiting the star Carina 4269, 212 light-years from Earth, tries to find his way home. Tschai is populated by three mutually hostile alien species and the displaced native Pnume; and various human races, some of whom live as slaves or clients of the aliens. Each of the four novels relates Reith's adventures with one of the species, and is named after that species."

Now this is much simpler, easier to get a handle on first time around, and much more interesting. It's not chock full of really hard to pronounce names and a whole book's-worth of planets and alien races to organize, nor is it stuffed with unwieldy vocabulary and punctuation. Short, simple, to the point. Like (drumroll please) a query letter should be. Summaries and queries should be one and the same-- you're pitching your product to a potential buyer, and you don't want to scare them off. You want to hook and reel them in!

I'll download this book and give it a whirl. Any caliber of book is good to read-- as writers, we should be reading all the time. Good books, bad books, indifferent books: they teach us something with every sentence. Even bad books will have good sentences to learn from, and even good books will have bad areas to contemplate. And if nothing else, if you can't look at a book and think I want to write like this! you can at least think I don't want to write like this, but what did this book have that was marketable? Every book can be learned from.

Except Twilight. But that's another story entirely.

This offer expires August 31st, so I'd jump on it now-- it costs you nothing but storage space.