A publishing abstract in readers’ perception

Abstract

The paper is devoted to the publishing annotation genre. The State Standard requirements to an annotation and cases of abstracts are represented. Studying reader's perception of publishing annotations was undertaken in order to identify the reasons for their non-compliance. The readers group of 98 persons with average, undergraduate and graduate education was surveyed. They were asked to answer a series of questions, in particular, to identify: Do they read annotations to editions? Do annotations influence the choice of books? What information do readers want to get from the summary? Do expectations after reading the summary match impressions after reading the book? Results of the survey analysis were supported by readers' reviews on various sites of online stores, allowing us to come to the conclusion: the most readers did not agree with the genre definition of annotations, considered that summaries inadequately reflect books content. To identify the causes of discrepancy between copyright/publishing plan and readers’ perception we carried on another survey. Customers in a bookstore were offered to read a specific annotation and answer some questions. Communicative situations conditioned a mismatch of readers’ expectations and authors plot were analyzed. Such communicative situation is considered to be more significant, when the discrepancy between the authors concept and its understanding by an addressee due to specific features of the individual recipient consciousness type.