Don’t judge my book by its cover.
For the cover art of my debut novel, I envisioned a mysterious, foggy background with two shadowy figures grasping for each other but remaining barely out of reach. Instead, the publisher insisted on a pink background with an illustration of a baby giraffe next to a Ferris wheel.
Don’t judge my book by its publisher.
Romances ’R’ Us exclusively publishes contemporary romance, but my debut novel is hardly a romance. It’s an important work of literary fiction that just happens to feature a female protagonist, a meet-cute, an enemies-to-lovers storyline, a grumpy/sunshine couple, forced-proximity tropes, and a happily-ever-after ending.
Don’t judge my book by its back cover.
The blurb on the back is misleading. It describes the scene where Briana stumbles into Brad, spilling her half-caff vanilla latte on his shirt. Brad is aloof, and Briana immediately hates him, and then hates him even more when she learns that they are competing for the same job. Brad nicknames her “Baby Giraffe” because of her disproportionately long legs. The blurb highlights the spilling incident as if it were central to the plot, simply because it takes up half of the book. In actuality, my book is a complex meditation on the fragility of life, with the baby giraffe serving as a metaphor.
Don’t judge my book by its lack of an epigraph.
I had a beautifully deep quote by Kant, but the editors made me take it out. They said it was not applicable to the book’s premise of a woman falling in love with a man after bumping into him on the boardwalk while rushing to interview for the job of a Ferris wheel operator. I told them that’s not what the book is about. That it’s an allegory of the human condition, with the Ferris wheel symbolizing how life keeps going in circles and occasionally you get stuck at the top (if there’s a mechanical malfunction or the operator gets fired for falling asleep on the job and the park has trouble replacing him because the top two applicants turn the hiring process into a rom-com) but mostly you just go round and round and when you get off you are still exactly where you started.
Don’t judge my book by its title.
When I submitted my final draft to the publisher, it had a completely different title, an evocative title that said everything yet revealed nothing. My title was like a tidal wave, so powerful that it pulled you right in, yet you felt powerless against it. The title they went with is Meet Me at the Ferris Wheel.
Don’t judge my book by its acknowledgments.
I had so many people to thank for making my dream come true. But the editors wouldn’t let me publish thirty pages of thank-yous to all who inspired me, including my Kantian philosophy college professor, the literary fiction professor whose class I was waitlisted for but gleaned so much from just by reading the syllabus, and Darren Aronofsky. They kept the acknowledgments to my family, friends, and the baby giraffe handler.
Don’t judge my book by its chapters, pages, or every single word in it.
My debut novel had a whole subplot that was an homage to the film Requiem for a Dream, but my publisher refused to include it. Without it, the book has lost its meaning. All that remains is a story of complicated but lovable Briana and Brad, who reluctantly fall in love near a Ferris wheel while competing for the same job, and visit a baby giraffe at the zoo, where Brad spells out “Briana, will you marry me?” in pellets and alfalfa hay. But who’d want to read that?
You’d want to read that? Wow, that’s so great to hear. A feel-good romance is exactly what I intended to write.
