Monday, September 12, 2011

Fans of Twilight will love this post!*

Quotes and praise on the covers of books are undoubtedly important to getting the attention of potential readers. I picked up Lili Wilkinson's Pink at my library one day, and was about to put it down when I saw a blurb by John Green on the back and borrowed it. Lauren Oliver's praise for Fury is what made me want to read it. But there's always a deal-breaker quote: "Fans of Twilight will love this book!", and not because I'm not a Twilight fan.

The only thing you can assume about someone for being a fan of Something is that they like that Something. You can't take a fan of a book and tell them that they definitely will like this other thing, because you can't know that. Recommend it for fans, but don't tell them what they will and won't like.

I find this particularly annoying when it's about Twilight. I definitely appreciate what Twilight did for YA (I might not have even gotten into reading without it), but it isn't the reference for everything that comes after it. We don't need to look for 'The Next Twilight', we need to find new books that are noteworthy in their own right.

P.S. While I'm on the topic of cover quotes, does it seem to anyone else that Lauren Kate has one on every second book...?

*Or not. There's no way I really tell that.