by Malena Lott

Fun, frothy, frilly, ferocious, factual, figurative – so many types of books out there and I want to read them all. Wait. I take that back. I don’t want to read them all. Sometimes I think I want to read them all because I get sucked in to the marketing, word-of-mouth and best-seller buzz by books of all genres. But what interests me as an author and marketer and avid reader isn’t how we’re drawn to book – we know enough about title and cover and blurbs and marketing to raise interest and awareness – but about what makes you LOVE the book and come back for more from that author.

David Ogilvy, the great Madison Avenue ad man, calls it a lovemark. So in this case, a literary lovemark – something that makes me put the author’s new release dates on my iPhone calendar and rush out and get it as soon as it’s fresh to the world.

Stay with me here. I’ve thought a lot about it, and the answer is: I don’t know. And that really sucks because if I did know, as an author myself, I could try to put that magical formula to work in my favor. I WANT TO BE A LOVEMARK! In fact, every brand should aspire to be.

But we’re not a brand of coffee, a la Starbucks. We’re talking art here, and art, my friend is subjective. Still, I’m intrigued. After a couple glasses of wine, my list looks something like this as reasons why you love a book, which is the first step in its author becoming a lovemark. To simplify, we’ll start with four characteristics, imagined as a whole pie. Since it’s autumn, we’ll call it a pumpkin pie. Four slices:

1. Author’s Voice
2. Entertainment Value
3. Story
4. Relevance to Self

Now I might find an author I (think) I love because I read one novel by him/her, which caused me to purchase and read the follow-up book. BUT, I didn’t like the second book. Hmm. I guess I didn’t love the author, I loved the way the author wrote that first story. Or in another case I read a story that’s told well and all but I find that it wasn’t great writing or even the entertainment value but because the topics discussed in the books are something I’m interested in – such as grief, which I seem to write about in all my novels – or spiritual growth or zany motherhood issues. You get my point.

In that case, when the next book comes out and the topic is not relevant to me or my life and the other three slices of the pie are slim, then uh-uh. Not a lovemark. To me, #4 is the trickiest, because you could be doing everything else well and the person either did or didn’t love it because of that mysterious factor – the WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME? What trips their trigger?

A writer friend of mine recently said about a best-selling author who she reads religiously, that she can now see they are all set up pretty much the same and have become predictable. BUT she reads them, anyway. #1 and #2 are the bigger pieces of the pie and she’s plenty satisfied with that.

I read JOHN IRVING for his voice, #1, period. I may or may not be highly entertained, but he’s always worth the time and the money for me. The story may not grab me like some of his earlier works (my fave is A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY), but doesn’t matter. I’ll read it all the same. He’s a bonafied lovemark for me.

If an author comes out with a great debut that I love, I’ll be sure and check out the second one and sometimes only then can I know which of those pieces of the pie are what size. I might venture to say Meyer’s fans are a lot of #4 – they want to be loved by someone like the hero – and that Charlaine Harris has a whole lot of #2, highly entertaining. What readers like is subjective and that’s a part of the mystery and fun in art – dissecting and analyzing and feeding the hungry beast. Right now the readers’ appetites for vampires and shape shifters feels like a bottomless pit. They are all topic (genre-related), yet the author’s voice may vary substantially. Who knows what they’ll be hungry for next?

I believe as readers we are always looking for new lovemarks. We’re willing to try new authors because our love of literature, escape and great storytelling makes us open-minded. That’s great for the industry, and for authors, because it means readers are willing to give us a chance. As authors, it may be important to know WHY you are a lovemark for those who’ve embraced your work – but at the end of the day, the most we can do is to do our best.

Because BEbabes wants to make reading fun again for both the avid and the reluctant reader, we’ll try to give you a wide variety of books we think you might enjoy based on LIFE, LOVE, LEARNING and LAUGHING. We hope you’ll find new authors you love – whether for their voice or the story itself – and others that hit you because it speaks to your heart. This is happening right now with me in a book I’ll announce next Monday as a November Top Pick. I like to call those a “soul read”. Speaks right to my soul and leaves me much better for having read it.

(Pictured: (seated) Malena Lott at a signing for her first novel THE STORK REALITY with a pregnant Jana, who read it because it was relevant to her at the time, being pregnant and all. Fortunately, we’ve since become friends. DOUBLE score.) Malena is the author of two novels, THE STORY REALITY and DATING DA VINCI and can be found daily on Twitter. She is the proud founder of Book End Babes, and is loving starting a reading revolution with women around the country!

If you’re a Book End Babe chapter member or an author and would like to contribute a side dish essay on books, girlfriends or entertaining, send it to bookendbabes at me dot com along with a headshot and cover art.

What do you think? Would you agree that you read for one or a mix of the four pieces of the pie we’ve outlined? Does one weigh more heavily to you? What others might you add to that?