@cstross @jdnicoll The larger the perceived potential market, the more trite and unoriginal the marketing copy. There was academic study of this existing in the 80s about the novel as an art form; you can basically go Jane Austen/Brontes to Dickens/Hardy/George Eliot to Hammet/Sayers as a periods/general social progression and track how normative reading novels was seen to be by the kind of things people said in the ads. (If there were ads.)