Yes, I rather agree about a couple of blank pages - a breather, as it were - though I guess it would actually depend on production. Though I was rather pleased by being told it should be 3-3,500 words 'because that fits nicely into a 16-page signature'. Something delightfully basic about having the same constraints as Caxton.

Emma

What exactly is a sixteen page signature?

(Sorry to be so ignorant!)

Vanessa

A signature is what you get when you fold the huge sheet of paper that goes through a printing press down into the wodge that gets bound into a book. In the old days if the folded edges on the three non-bound sides didn't get trimmed the reader had to cut them open with a paperknife. My great-aunt, forbidden to read Adam Bede because it was too improper, decided she would read anything she could without cutting the pages. Which was almost all of it, with a bit of ingenuity.

How the folds go - and therefore how the pages are arranged on each side of the sheet - is mathematically quite complicated, and depends on which kind of folding machine you're using too. When I was finding out about it - I may well be very out of date - the two usual ways were rather charmingly called 'work-and-tumble' and 'work-and-turn'.

With the big web presses no doubt it's different, but it still holds that, maths being the elemental stuff it is, book pages have to be calculated in multiples of 16, just as computers are, which is why sometimes you get blank pages at the end, or fillers like ads and so on, and sometimes you don't. The thing typesetters try very, very hard to avoid is the text of a novel just extending into a new signature, which means a good deal more cost. I'm interested that HarperCollins think the extra cost of a whole extra signature for this 'PS' section is worth it.

Emma

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I'm amused that the US hb of TMOL has 'rough cut' pages - the fore-edge is specially trimmed so that it looks like those old hand-cut pages. It looks and feels rather fab, though the top and bottom edges are as clean-cut as any other book, and if you look at the fore-edge end on you can see that it's also machine-done.

For me, it wouldn’t influence whether or not I bought the book, but it would, if it was interesting and insightful, and I enjoyed the book, It would predisposed me to pick up another book by the same author.

I'm reading The Angel Makers by Jessica Gregson at the moment (excellent book btw), and it has a two-page book group reading guide at the back – which I didn’t dare look at too closely in case it gave away the plot before I read the book. Thought that was quite an interesting idea which I've never seen before. You're all going to tell me 95% of new novels have them, aren’t you…

Dee

if it was interesting and insightful, and I enjoyed the book, It would predisposed me to pick up another book by the same author.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is really what they're after, more than persuading the reluctant to buy it: building a constituency for that author.

But I think a reading group guide is perilously close to telling me what to think about the book, and I'm not sure I'd fancy that. And yes, it would make me nervous about actually handling it, in case I read a spoiler by mistake.

Emma

I wouldn't be surprised if this is really what they're after, more than persuading the reluctant to buy it: building a constituency for that author.

It’s as good a reason as any.

I've finished that book now, so have read the guide at the back. It’s a series of questions – eerily like exam questions – asking for what can only be subjective and speculative answers… but perhaps that what a reading group is all about.

Dee

asking for what can only be subjective and speculative answers… but perhaps that what a reading group is all about.

I guess it probably is - they're about stimulating discussion, I imagine.

Headline got some reading groups to put together questions about TMOL, which was interesting. Most were about things I'd spent time thinking about, even if they implied the possibility of answers when all I'm ever doing setting out possibilities. But they came up with one which hadn't occurred to me, which I thought was fascinating, and rather thrilling once I'd banished a twinge of intellectual guilt that I hadn't explored that avenue in the book.

I put them on my website, and sent them to Morrow as the basis of their reading group guide too...

Emma

I suppose some of this stuff is for the die hard fans. Thanks Sarah for the insight. I think Gaiman is pretty candid on the whole (when he's not sucking up to the King family), and I'd feel the same. We're all sensitive about our work, and having something included we're not 100% about might grate.

I think the soundtrack idea is silly myself. I mean, I don't listen to music and read at the same time anyway. I find both pleasures deserve full attention, and don't like to combine my arts much. There's building a picture for the reader with words - that's writing. With music? Other people's music? Silly.

JB

And yes, it would make me nervous about actually handling it, in case I read a spoiler by mistake.

The same goes for things like the Penguin Modern Classics editions of great books which are riddled with footnotes and marginalia and have helpful explanations of all kinds scattered throughout the text. I still haven't forgotten how annoyed I was when reading The Go-Between (which I still rate as one of the best books I have ever read) and my eye was caught by an academic note pointing out that the passage I was just reading "foreshadowed ****" where "****" was a shocking event at the end of the book. Admittedly, no one reading past the first couple of pages of The Go Between is likely to be under any illusion that things are going to end happily, but knowing the exact details of the tragedy early on really detracted from the reading experience.

I won't deny that a lot of the annotations were really interesting - but I'll never read a book for the first time again in an academic edition.

Griff, I agree. I want my notes at the end, so I can't see them unless I want to. I usually read them all at the end of the book, which serves the 'don't want to finish it yet' function quite nicely.

Oscar and Lucinda was ruined for me by the acknowledgements at the beginning, which made it clear Oscar's father was based on a real character I knew a certain amount about. I spent the first section of the book wondering which bits of the fictional character were real and which weren't, and how much Oscar corresponded to the real son, and so on. It so undercut my getting absorbed in the story that I never got any further, and I've taken it to heart as an Awful Warning to all historical novelists.

Emma

I've read a few HP ones with that section at the back and I like it a lot. If I've enjoyed a book, it's an added bonus to find out what makes the author tick. I think there was one I didn't enjoy that much (Katherine Harrison - can't remember the name) and I still enjoyed reading about her at the end. Mind you, I'm a big fan of the author photo too. Feel quite cheated when there isn't one!

I recently read William Burroughs' Naked Lunch, and appreciated the PS section in the back. Some of the information about how the book came to be helped understand why it was so bizarre, and bloody difficult to read.

When I've finished a book I really enjoy, I often look it up on the internet. All sorts of things spring up. After I read Bret Easton Ellis' Glamorama, I found all sorts of websites that had been set up, ready for a film adaptation, that has still to happen after being indefinitely suspended after 9/11.

Mind you, I'm a big fan of the author photo too. Feel quite cheated when there isn't one!

I know of one poet who fought his publisher to the death to keep his photo off his cover. He feels it makes people have preconceptions about the work (and not because he's plug-ugly, because he isn't.)

Some of the information about how the book came to be helped understand why it was so bizarre, and bloody difficult to read.

Yes, that's interesting, and I can imagine it would really help. I don't think my PS is as helpful as that, but then I don't think TMOL's difficult to read. (But then authors never do, I think. It's all too blindingly obvious to oneself!)

Emma