Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

In a number of modern books, usually novels, I come across BOLD text used to highlight the importance of the book. For example:

The Greatest Book ever written about ...

Also (while I am on the subject) the use of caps: THE GREATEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN ABOUT ...

Personally, I do not like this approach to a book blurb. Would it be appropriate to remove this formatting, and even re-write the blurb to a less dramatic form?

I think you're fine on unbolding and decapitalizing. Probably getting rid of language like "greatest ever," too.

Concur.

Eh, I don't feel very strongly about it. If I need to edit a description I'll usually take things like that out, but bold text can be useful in a description sometimes.

Ditto on what Cait said. I will leave it in in a few cases where it makes sense in the description. Example:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/69...

Unless it is explicitly wrong or the description includes reviews or other material that should be removed, I leave bolding alone. There is no rule against it. I will however change all-caps to correct form because no one likes to be shouted at, and that is documented netiquette.

I tend to only work descriptions from jacket/back cover copy of books I own (unless it's truly a mess, but that's another concern).

In those cases, I try to as closely as possible replicate the typography of the actual book as is reasonable. Sometimes this may mean using ALL CAPS or bold. Jacket copy writers can be a tad melodramatic at times.

(I also tend to prefer jacket copy as opposed to librarian-created copy, as good as it is, because I view Goodreads as an attempt to catalog the actual books, warty bad copy and all. But that's yet another issue and open for debate.)

So unless something is in all bold, or the description is entirely in all caps, I would tend to leave it alone unless I have a copy of the book in hand.

Outright "reviews" clearly don't belong in the book blurb; if matches back of book or jacket exactly, though, there's a lot that I won't touch even if bordering on being a review. I think most goodreads members expect the book description to repeat what they would see looking at the bookcover in a brick and mortar store or something the author put in the goodreads entry.

That's interesting Debbie. I put a review when my first book was re-released but I shall bear your points in mind another time. I thought the review made was appropriate because it described the story as well as any blurb I'd written myself. Point taken as an author. As a reader I've not thought of it that way before.

@Diana, that may actually have been okay if was quoting the book-description portion of review and clearly crediting reviewer. "review" as in all superlative comments about how "great" "wonderful" "fabulous" type of comments (particularly where instead of describing book an author goes on and on about how successful the book is and you might have to wade thru several screens of schlock to get to any synopsis of the plot ...).

Not every author or even every indie author, but, goodreads like other book related sites are seeing more and more authors promoting, promoting, and relentlessly promoting who will use any space to do so. Including what should be the book description/blurb that members are trying to read to see what book is about and if they might want to read.

Book product page versus goodreads book data page, I guess. And as librarians I'm sure we are more concerned with "data" and "accurate" than anything else.

Probably doesn't hurt if your book is going out to bloggers, goodreads giveway, etc. if you ask recipients to also comment on and/or suggest any re-wordings for your book blurb--just to get a reader's opinion.

Cait wrote: "Eh, I don't feel very strongly about it. If I need to edit a description I'll usually take things like that out, but bold text can be useful in a description sometimes."

Agreed. Sometimes the bolding is important to the context of the synopsis. For example...

Kate was not prepared for this...


blah blah blah, generic blurb stuff.

But the darkness came anyway...

blah blah blah.

In those cases I would probably leave the bolding alone if it seems important to the flow and context of the synopsis itself. But the all caps I would definitely get rid of.

Ok, so no "official" policy, as such. How about remove egregious bolds, and eliminate caps.
The idea of using the "back of the book", not sure about that. Book back blurbs tend to be examples in mediocrely written hyperbole.

In my experience back blurbs usually contain spoilers.

I notice if a GR book description is horrifically bad, but I tend not to care particularly if it's merely mediocre. I don't rely on them too much.

In this matter I will use the goodsense and tact for which Australians are internationally renowned.

And put another shrimp on the barbie while you're at it.

I don't like bold and all caps(looks too much like advertising) but I don't edit descriptions just for that.