OK, here’s the latest book that I read. Sort of.
This book …. sigh. It’s the people who make Pet Promise pet food, which I thoroughly approve of. The book is signed by one of them, actually, and was given to me. By all accounts, it should have been a nice little feel good book.
Yeah, should have been. The (main) problem is, the book was written in two styles. Each chapter was half what happened, and the other half of the narrator talking straight to you about what happened.
But, you see, this is (quoting the cover) “a tale about everyday, ordinary people.’ So when the narrator talks directly to you, he talks like an everyday, ordinary person. But then their editor insisted that this everyday, ordinary person be punctuated correctly. So the parts where the everyday, ordinary person is talking have 3 times as many apostrophes as any other punctuation. Let me demonstrate:
“Now, I don’t want to go lettin’ the darn’d cat out of the bag, but let me tell ya’ this.”
Imagine half of a book written like that.
Simply couldn’t read it. Felt like reading a phonetic script for Beverly Hillbillies. Maybe ok for some (the authors, evidentally) but I couldn’t read it. Fortunately (or deliberately?), it was clearly split in each chapter – the story then the discussion – so skipping was easy. Otherwise, I couldn’t have read any of it at all.
OK, that was style, onto story – How one person discoveres The Cause of organic farming, how 3 people decide to do something about it and then figure out what said something (organic pet food; benefits organic meat producer and organic food buyer-with-pets) will be, and how lots of other people come in to make it happen. It’s split 40/30/30 into those three categories. And since I already know about The Cause and would be more interested in the company, it seemed like the book took forever to get started and then ended just as things got interesting.
And furthermore, though it has the pet food product logo on the cover and in the back, the back of title page includes a long paragraph saying ‘this is a work of fiction; any resemblance to people, places, or events is entirely coincidental.’ Say what?? I’ve bought this pet food, it’s pretty real. On the cover it says ‘Inspired by the true story.’ So now I’m wondering if this book is the hollywood version of ‘true story.’ In the book, they call the pet food ‘Pure Pet’ (the real-life name is ‘Pet Promise’). So did the company change names? Is the story all made up? I just don’t know.
Sounds confusing. If this book is not the companie’s story why is the book covered with their logos and apparently sponsored by the company? And if it telling their story why not make it factual? If it is factual, why the bits about “inspired by” and “resemblance to?” And why would anyone think a fictional tale about how a real product came into being would be interesting??
Could be some wanted to tell the tale while others wanted to keep their privacy and this book was the compromise.
Sounds like someone wanted to write a book but didn’t really know how to do it well… but could do it well enough for it to get out the door.
I think I just half-read the Made-for-TV Book.
No telling why it is as it is .. both of your suggestions are entirely plausible. My current idea is that the company just happened in a nice boring way, and then enough starry eyed gushers asked them to ‘tell their story’, so they got to thinking of what kind of story would best appeal to gushy types.
‘Well, this part about how we finally got 100 letters asking for a product and then got corporate approval to do market analysis is boring … What if we made a story to highlight what’s wrong with mass-produced food – we’d need to have a hero, some ordinary guy .. maybe someone inside the industry .. yeah .. discovers what is wrong … we could slip a lot of details in that way … there’d have to be setbacks – last minute saves … we’ll have a narrator voice, just an ordinary guy ..” et. cetera.