The holidays are over. I’m back and work trying to get ready for the buying season which starts next week for me. The store itself slows down in January, but I’m preparing for one of the busiest times of the year. This will be my first full season as the Head Buyer for the store. I’m taking on a lot of new publishers and sales reps. I’ve got piles and piles of catalogs. I try to get ready as best as I can, looking up sales and author information. There’s only so much I can do ahead of time of course. I can make an opinion based on catalog copy but often it takes the sales rep talking to me about the book to make up my mind.
Right now I’m looking at the Putnam catalog which is a member of the Penguin Group. Here I am in the Avery medical/health section and I flip to the page of The Gut Flush Plan: The Breakthrough Cleansing Program to Rid Your Body of the Toxins That Make You Sick, Tired, and Bloated by Ann Louise Gittleman. There are two things wrong with this title. First, The Gut Flush Plan? Really? Maybe they were thinking that with such a vile sounding title people might pick up the book? Second, the subtitle is way too long. I know it’s a health book, but really. It’s not that I have anything against the subject matter of the book. Gut Flush Plan. Ugh. The words just shouldn’t be put together like that.