[bksvol-discuss] Re: A Plea For Romance

Monica:

I truly agree with you. I enjoy reading romance and it really irritates me not 
to see synopsis. I usually try to add some kind of description when I validate. 
I don't understand why it's hard since you can just scan the back of the book. 
That's what I do for the books I submit. 

Grace
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Monica Willyard 
  To: Bookshare Volunteers 
  Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2007 3:04 AM
  Subject: [bksvol-discuss] A Plea For Romance


  I know that by posting here I'm only reaching some of our volunteers. I am 
writing to ask those of you who submit or validate our romances to take a 
moment and write a short synopsis of the book you're working on. If the 
submitter didn't provide a synopsis, the validater is not only free but is 
encouraged to write a synopsis for the book. I have seen 3 books on today's new 
books list with descriptions that say things like "Christian romance" or 
"Harlequin romance." There is no indication of what the book is about, and 
that's not really fair to the author or to our members. It's not happening 
nearly as much in other categories, and it almost looks to me like our romance 
submitters and validaters don't care about their books. I know that's not true 
because they're still being scanned and validated. When I went into the romance 
category, I found literally over 100 books with either no synopsis at all or 
the phrase "Harlequin romance" or "Christian romance" as the description. If I 
introduced you to a friened of mine but I didn't say anything about you, what 
would that feel like? I could introduce you as "just some girl I know" instead 
of actually using your name. An introduction like that wouldn't make the new 
person really interested in talking to you. When we don't bother to describe 
our books to our members, they have nothing to go on to know whether they'd 
like to read the book or not. So after all your time scanning or validating, 
people are probably passing your books by in favor of ones they can learn 
something about. The synopsis doesn't need to be fancy. Something like "a 
romance set in a Victorian castle" would at least let us know something about 
what the book may be like. A great short synopsis might be something like "Lady 
Emily is engaged to a rogue but her heart belongs to Lord Sedrick." Or how 
about "sexy romance set in the fashion world in Paris." You can look at the 
back cover of the book for inspiration and then use your own words to describe 
the book. If you get stuck, try posting to the list and asking for help in 
making up a synopsis. There are a lot of people here who would be glad to help 
you.

  Monica Willyard

Other related posts: