I don’t care how good your book is, I want a summary!

Mrs Fireshaper and I got Borders gift cards for Christmas (one of the few GCs that I actually ask for due to the fact that Amazon.com accepts Borders gift cards for anything on their site) so last night we to get supper out and run to the bookstore for a minute or two. I had been eying a book on ASP.NET and saw that Amazon had it for $20-something new and wondered how much more it was at the Borders brick-and-mortar store, so Amadeus was put in his crate and off we went.

The reason for writing this post wouldn’t become evident until later into my story unless I cut to it now so I will. What is the deal with publishers (or authors or whoever is responsible) not putting a summary of books on the back cover anymore? I couldn’t tell you how many books I picked up that looked interesting from the cover or title and when I turned it over (or looked at the jacket sleeve if it was a hardcover) there was just “praise” for the book or a bio about the author. How am I supposed to know what the book is about if I can’t read a summary of it? Are we supposed to blindly buy books now, or do publishers, or whoever, think we are such informed consumers now that we know exactly what a book is about before we go to the store?

I don’t know about you but I tend to go to the bookstore, not because I know which book I want to get, but because I want to SHOP for a book, which usually means picking up the book, reading a summary of it, and then deciding whether I want to purchase it or not. But when there’s no summary of the book how can I know if I want to read it or not?