Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
If others are comparing your work positively to someone else that is great.
It is the authors that compare themselves to big name authors that annoy readers.
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It's only in the recent world of unfiltered mass self e-publishing that I have come to see this as a problem.
In the old BPH world, I always saw it as simply the publisher's way of clarifying the genre for me. "If you like Star Wars..." or "for fans of Tom Clancy..." was simply, like appropriate cover art, a way of quickly finding books I might like.
It's only in the ocean of dreck we swim through now where such phrases immediately make me think "I know Star Wars, sir, and you are no Star Wars."
I don't mean to say that BPH gate-kept books always lived up to the comparisons, anymore than a great cover meant a great book. Only that it didn't seem inappropriate, or boastful, or like a mark of unoriginality.