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This really only works for cheap commercial genre-material. This doesn't work for quality works of literature.

Which leads back to the original point.



Given that you see a jacket with a buxom woman in a skimpy dress being embraced by a leprechaun with Fabio-pecs, would you assume that this fact has no predictive value with regards to the question "Is this, in fact, a quality work of literature?" No, of course you'd assume it is pulp, which is why people whose business is selling quality works of literature don't package it as pulp.

Most of us are not in the business of selling anonymous writing written by people of no particular expertise which is designed to have a shelf-life of twenty minutes and yet we spend extraordinarily amounts of time producing things in a cover which says exactly that. We should, instead, devote more of our limited resources to creating work in the cover that says "important things you should act upon immediately from the people you trust more than anyone in the world about this topic."


Only if it's true, though. If you try to sell pulp in a package more suitable for serious litterature, you won't reach readers who are interested in pulp and you will upset people who seek serious books.

I think the real problem you're trying to address is the lack of confidence of programmers into their own writings; their bullshit detector is too sensitive when placed too close to the source.


Ah, but I can tell the cheap genre material by the cover. So it works, after all :)




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