Fulfilling Your Promises

A reader buys a book with certain expectations on what it's about. They base these expectations on the book's cover, the title, the back cover description of the book, what they've heard about the book, and by what they've read on your first few pages. If the author fails to fulfill those expectations, then the readers will be angry with him or her and probably won't buy other books by the same author.

I just read a mystery book. The back cover says the book is about the hero finding out why his wife was killed. The title is the name of the road where his wife was killed. The first few chapters describe the crime scene and launches the search for the wife's killer. The cover shows a hand which is green with moss (or something) and is barely sticking up out of some water. Since the crime happens near a river, I expected another dead body to be found in the river.

Were these expectations fulfilled? Nope. At the end of the book (which ends on a cliff-hanger), the man who ordered the wife's murderer is still free and a threat (on the last page, he's shooting a gun at and about to kill the hero). We still don't know why the hero's wife was killed. No green-covered hand is found in water (as the cover suggests). And a lot more unsolved side-mysteries have been brought up and not resolved.

So what was the book about? Well, the hero and his friends solve a mystery which they think is the reason behind the wife's killing, but it isn't. While a mystery is solved, it ultimately had nothing to do with the wife's murder or any of the current conflicts. The book didn't fulfill the promise.

If the title had been the name of the property were the solved mystery was located and the cover and back copy copy focused on that mystery, then the promise would have been kept...to a certain degree. I'd still say that something in the first few pages needed to hint that, while a murder starts the book, this isn't the murder that's going to be solved.

So be careful to know what expectations your title and first pages raise so that you can fulfill them and keep your readers happy.