Truth In Advertising Can Be An Awful Thing

The struggling writer, no less than his peers in the corporate world, has a hard go of it these days.

It is a day and age of constant measurement, steely-eyed performance reviews, and merciless evaluations of whether or not a product or service has been delivered as promised.

The internet will light up with messages so negative that it is visible from Mars if the neighborhood carpenter so much as leaves a single nail head awry.

The very lad down at Shoe-o-Rama shoe store is measured daily on his productivity on the salesroom floor.

The attorney and doctor and accountant are rated at the end of the transaction, and publicly so, for all the world to see.

And it doesn’t stop there. The consumers don’t just want to fire off a few quick rounds of dismay and leave it at that.

They want their money back.

It is only a matter of time before they come for the writer, and I only wish to sound the warning shot. It is best to be prepared in these matters.

We can picture the author under ordinary publication circumstances having called in some favors from his friends, who duly provide a positive few words for the back of his latest paperback.

“Dazzling!”

“Pulse-pounding suspense!”

“Breathtaking!”

“A tour-de-force! The author weaves a spellbinding barnburner!”

“Gut-wrenching thrills and heart-tugging emotion!”

Well, and so on. 

It doesn’t hurt and each contributor surmises that maybe the fellow will do the same for her some day. Besides, what’s the harm?

Well, this is exactly the point I wish to make: is the day far off when the reader calls up the author and has a conversation much like the following?

Author:  Hello?

Reader: Yes, is this Rhett E. Devonshire, author of A Scarlet Embrace?

Author: (pleased that someone not only knows he is a writer but actually seems to know of one his works. Though it takes him a while to recognize one of the many names he writes under.) Yes, yes it is, come to think of it, what can I do for you?

Reader: Yes, you see, I spent a hard-earned $11.99 on your book and I feel I have overpaid. I’d like to get some of that money back.

Author: Back? 

Reader: Yes.

Author: Why do you feel that you overpaid?

Reader: It says here quite clearly on the back that this is a modern masterpiece that can be read on at least four levels: as a breathtaking indictment of our times, as a pulse-pounding adventure story, as an unlikely love story that will leave your heart soaring, and as a hard-hitting no holds barred survey of the Professional Table Tennis Circuit.

Author:  Yes, the reviews have been quite kind.

Reader: Well, my breath was never taken away.

Author: I see. Not once? Not perhaps while your mind was elsewhere and you weren’t rally paying attention to your breathing?

Reader: No, I was observed by a medical professional the whole time. It was entirely a non-breathtaking period of time, this time that I spent with A Scarlet Embrace.

Author: I see. Anything else?

Reader: My pulse….

Author: Let me guess: it never pounded.

Reader: Not only did it not pound, it did not skip, jump, surge, or race. It ticked along at just about the rate that it always does.

Author: I suppose you have a note from your doctor on this matter?

Reader: Yes, I certainly do. I am a man very careful in my purchases.

Author: I can only assume that your heart also did not soar as you regarded the love story?

Reader: Not an inch off the ground. Nor a millimeter if you are more comfortable with the metric system.

Author: Is there nothing you liked about the book?

Reader: Oh, I never said that. I very much enjoyed all the parts on the Professional Table Tennis Circuit. Those rang true as can be. I really learned something. So I don’t want all my money back, you see.

Author: Money back?

Reader: A man can’t be expected to pay for goods that never seem to come through.

Author: What do you propose?

Reader: I spent approximately $12 dollars for this book and found only one fourth of it as advertised, I think a fair reckoning would be for you to refund me the other 75% in the form of $9 dollars. Here is my address.

Author: Hello? Hello? You’re breaking up. I can’t seem to hear a thing you’re saying.

Well, and so the long afternoon wears on.

The author makes plans to never pick up the phone again, the reader engages the services of an attorney, and the whole process goes downhill from there. Though it started pretty danged downhill from the get-go.

Under these circumstances the author’s friends will soon  no longer be willing to come through with the glowing recommendation for fear of being pulled into litigation on their own account, and start to limit their comments to assessments quite a bit on the less-enthused side:

“A fine effort. No, scratch that. An effort.”

“Good enough, I suppose, but don’t quote me.”

“Page-turning? Well, I had to turn the pages to read the book, didn’t I?”

“Printed with perfectly fine ink and written in English.”

"A book.”

The exclamation point is nowhere to be found, and the substance of the comments have the same zest as three-day-old oatmeal, a flattened and oil-stained cardboard box on the floor of the garage, or an abandoned parking lot in a deserted industrial part of town with great cracks in the concrete and yellowed newspapers blown flat by the wind against the rusty chain link fence.

It may well be a more realistic time in publishing, but it is also a less exuberant one.

The times they are a-changing, my friend, and, the person who sounds the warning is never viewed kindly.

But don’t let that enter into your thinking when you turn in your evaluation of how humorous this humorous essay is.

Some things are beyond words and better left unsaid.