I enjoy browsing Lousy Book Covers for fun, also to make sure I never do these things, but today I came cross the following little icon (?) in the upper corner of a book. Knowing full well this could just be an utterly meaningless, one-off aberration, but also acknowledging that readers seem to be shifting the manner in which they engage books... What's a "readers's guide" in a book. For the love of Cthulhu, please let this not be some new trend where authors are now "guiding" readers as to how to engage their work....
So, I just took a brief look into this. According to writerswin.com, it means adding questions at the end of your book for book clubs to discuss. Apparently, including the reader's guide is "marketing genius," as it puts "the subliminal thought in a reader’s head that this is a book their book club would enjoy." So... yeah. Looks like this is a thing. Hopefully it doesn't become a popular thing.
I've been seeing this for quite a while now... maybe I'm just more prone to reading "book club" style books?
Is manga read in "backwards" Hebrew style? If so, it would need its own unique reader's guide. I suppose that makes sense. A little pretentious, but most book club books are. Which is fine. I've read a fair number of them too.
Interesting, I've seen quite a few books with questions in the back lately, but I assumed that they were added somehow for the overseas market. Book clubs make sense, although they sound like horrible things honestly.
Well now there are books that are taking after Chick Tracts? I agree that this shouldn't become a popular thing, cause I doubt things like my works would ever wind up at a book club. Thought that was only reserved for high end NY best seller types anyway. IDK...
I know they are still printing them, well new ones. I watch Jake & Hugo read/poke fun at them, and they have over 100 videos of them going through a ton of them.
Chick Tracts. Jack Chick was an evangelist of the... rather intense persuasion, who was convinced that there was a very narrow interpretation of the Gospel (I've got my diplomacy filters turned up way, way past eleven right now) that constituted Christianity. And he published cheaply printed comics called "Chick Tracts" that explained why everyone was going to Hell. https://www.chick.com/m/reading/tracts/readtract.asp?stk=0061
