Much of my advice about book-buying consists of simple rules to guide you along the store shelves. For example, "ignore current affairs books" as they're easily out of date and subject to presentism; "give books of historical interest more weight as their longevity is a quality-assurance filter"; and "read your favourites", pretty self-explanatory.
However some rules can only come about from extensive reading and encountering a few weird animals along the way. One such animal is a particular kind of book, usually non-fiction, that involve a dirty trick on the part of the publisher.
Since these books do not have a name, I'll give them a name: "the bait-and-switch title books".
What the hell are you talking about?
Fair question, so I will illustrate this example with a story. The week the Queen died, I was graduating from a London university. My father came over to the UK watch my graduation ceremony. As a big military history fan, one must-visit for my father was the Imperial War Museum. A visit was duly planned and we encountered several off-duty soldiers killing time before they prepared to haul the Queen's coffin around the capital.
We also encountered a wide-range of British military history literature in the gift shop. One of the books on display was entitled 1914-1918: The History of The First World War. This book was, obviously, a book about World War I. I knew little about the war then and was keen to expand my knowledge. I believed this to be a solid first choice because not only was it single volume, it was also a Penguin Orange Spine book.
For my non-British readers, the UK-arm of Penguin does an amazing job branding its "serious" non-fiction titles by giving them a sleek orange spine. Perennial bestsellers like Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow and all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books are Orange Spine books. Orange Spine books are renowned for their quality and I thought 1914-1918 would fall into that category.
However when I started reading book, I was severely disappointed. It was vague, failed several comprehensibility tests, jumped from topic to topic without warning and was incoherent for a good deal of the first half. I failed to finish it.
So what went wrong with 1914-1918?
The answer was located in an unexpected place. On the copyright page, found at the beginning of every book, I noticed something peculiar about the book's publication history. It stated the book was first published in the US as "Cataclysm: the First World War as Political Tragedy". It was completely different from the UK edition.
I was shocked and then extremely irritated because I believed the publisher crossed a line.
The Rubicon
For those unfamiliar, books are never, ever released as the same product country-to-country. Publishers make their own covers and sometimes change titles to suit the local market. This often makes sense. Sometimes books will come with titles that mean one thing in one culture and absolutely nothing in an another culture. Ditto for covers: French people don't like books with garish American cowboys even if they might like the book.
But I think the publisher pulled a fast one on me with this book. The US title was much more descriptive of what the book was about and the kinds of people who the book was for. Books published in academic presses are often vague mysteries to non-academic readers because academic presses assume readers are abreast with the latest developments in that field. I doubt I would have ever picked up a book called "World War One As Political Tragedy" not because I doubted the author's credentials but because I knew I wasn't close to the intended audience.
But with the UK branding, suddenly this book looked like a general introduction to the conflict for someone unfamiliar.
It purported to be something else and to me. As far as I’m concerned, that's a line publishers shouldn't cross.
Tips To Prevent This From Happening To You
This has only happened to me twice and both books, coincidentally, involved World War I. I say this to stress that you going through my experience is extremely unlikely. But if you are concerned that the publisher might be up to no good, your job is simple: read the copyright page and look at the book's publication history before buying it.
If there's a title change and a pretty dramatic one at that, think twice before buying it. If the book was originally published by a different style of press (like academic or educational) then think twice before buying it. You're looking for clues that the book is anything other than what it is branded as.
Once again for the folks in the back, this is unlikely, but it’s still worth keeping in mind.