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The new Murakami novel is out and, in true disciple style, I’m all set to read it. Ritual (aka obsession, aka weirdness, depending on points of view) demands, however, that this be done in as relaxed a setting as possible, to fully savour the treat.

So I have dutifully put it aside to read on a forthcoming trip, meaning I now had to fill a Murakami-sized gap to get me through the next few weeks.

Two books in particular had been on my radar for a while, so they were the first to go. Both have been talked about extensively and my interest was piqued.

The first is Emily Lockhart’s We Were Liars, a young adult novel about a patrician American family tearing each other apart on a Martha’s Vineyard-inspired private island.

The second is We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler, one of 13 novels in a particularly interesting year for the Man Booker longlist.

The two are as divergent as books come; however, they had one thing in common that – truth be told – tipped the balance in their favour, at least for this reader. Both promised a “shocking twist” that “the reader will not see coming”.

Which set me thinking.

As a reader, I’d have loved to get to the twist without any forewarning; the shock would have been so much sweeter.

The beauty of enjoying a good book without any indication of what to expect is hard to describe, yet very rare to achieve.

This is because it’s not often that we read a book without a glance at the blurb or publicity information or preceding media coverage.

As a publisher, on the other hand, I realise that the shocking twist carrot is what got a lot of readers to pick up the books in the first place.

Would Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl have achieved its mega-selling (and Oprah-hyped) status a couple of years back, had it not been for the much-advertised promise of jaw-dropping twists? Honestly, I doubt it.

Take the Man Booker longlist. There are 13 titles, all strong and many of them enticing to me in terms of concept and plot.

Yet, I picked Fowler’s book last week, and I suspect the teaser twist promise had a lot to do with that.

Or take, in pop movie world, The Others or Sixth Sense. Would these films have been half as intriguing without their twist endings?

And this presents a formidable dilemma for any publisher. On the one hand, keeping the twist secret would make for a much more delectable reading experience.

Yet, it would also mean many (most?) readers would not get to read the book in the first place.

So, which is it to be? Read the book, albeit with a foreknowledge that something shockingly unexpected will occur? Or not spoil the surprise of a twist, but risk a much lower readership?

So, which is it to be? Read the book, albeit with a foreknowledge that something shockingly unexpected will occur? Or not spoil the surprise of a twist, but risk a much lower readership?

The book industry is in a notoriously delicate situation. So publishers hardly have the luxury of releasing a book shrouded in plot-secrecy, and marketing be damned.

Tens of thousands (hundreds, in Malta) of books are published each year – if a manuscript has a marketing-friendly twist or surprise ending that will set it apart from the rest of the pile, you can bet your last Kindle gift card that the publisher will use it.

Which is not to say we’re as unscrupulous a species as I’m probably making us out to be.

I’ve just been working on a novel where I had a “cordial disagreement” (ah, the elegance of understatement) with the author about what and how far to reveal.

I would have opted for a more obvious, in-your-face “this is what happens at the end” marketing style.

The author was more protective of his baby. I kowtowed to the author’s wishes (aren’t I kind), but we compromised on a more aggressive marketing of other aspects of the protagonist’s character.

Time will tell which was the wiser approach. Commercial interests aside, I’ll be interested to see what happens.

Of course there’s the other side of the coin. If you’re going to bet the farm on a surprise twist, you have to make real sure it’s a damn good twist.

Take the above-mentioned We Were Liars. It’s a great read, only nominally young adult because this not-so-young adult enjoyed it and wouldn’t let go of it.

Yet, the expectations set by all the hype were too high to sustain even for an expert author like Lockhart.

The much-vaunted twist – while effective – was too reminiscent of … no, I shan’t tell you, shall I? Giving out spoilers to a novel is a capital offence where I come from.

But anyway, it was something we’d already found in other stories and, therefore, lacking in that “OMG I would never have seen that coming” factor.

And speaking of spoilers: that is, of course, the absolutely worst part of a final-twist novel.

You can’t really discuss the novel with anyone, on pain of being instantaneously unfriended.

So I’m stuck with waiting till my friends read both the above books.

Meanwhile, there’s always the new Murakami, which ain’t going to read itself.