Book Covers
Apr. 14th, 2005 08:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerI know I haven't posted anything serious in a while - I keep starting these brilliant little essays and leaving them half-finished because you won't believe what's been going on around here: 2 bouts of flu, 3 trips to NYC + shows in various towns (including my parents' 50th in Cleveland, which - thrift, Horatio, thrift - we combined with my mom's belated but wildly successful Bat Mitzvah), and 1 possible property purchase & sale . . . More soon, but meanwhile, please consider Book Covers. You know how the illo on the cover never seems to match what's inside the book, and how mad that makes you? Like, you want the cover to be the perfect illustration of your favorite scene, and it never is? - like, the heroine is a busty blonde on the cover but a 12-year old mixed-race Latina/Af-Am in the book...? (or the hero is a brilliant sociopathic swordsman but on the first draft of the reissued cover his sword is all limp and droopy.... but what of that?)
My first boss, Jim Baen (then) of Ace Books, explained the need for all this when I was a fiery young editorial assistant. He said that a cover is not an illustration but a marketing tool, designed to make people scanning book racks pick up the book, and that's all. Cause once your hand is on it, you may then flip it over to read the copy on the back (which I wrote a lot of back then!), and that gets you about 50% closer to buying the book . . . . I grant you, this does not explain why most covers are so offensive I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole; but then, if I were a typical buyer of anything, the world would be a different place, now, wouldn't it?
But enough merry persiflage. Here is the website that will cure your Cover Blues, now and forever. Really.
My first boss, Jim Baen (then) of Ace Books, explained the need for all this when I was a fiery young editorial assistant. He said that a cover is not an illustration but a marketing tool, designed to make people scanning book racks pick up the book, and that's all. Cause once your hand is on it, you may then flip it over to read the copy on the back (which I wrote a lot of back then!), and that gets you about 50% closer to buying the book . . . . I grant you, this does not explain why most covers are so offensive I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole; but then, if I were a typical buyer of anything, the world would be a different place, now, wouldn't it?
But enough merry persiflage. Here is the website that will cure your Cover Blues, now and forever. Really.
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Date: 2005-04-14 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-14 05:58 pm (UTC)Hi, I write romances, and I thought you'd be amused by a real-life cover disaster. One of the perks of writing for a small press like Hard Shell is that I can give suggestions about what I want my cover to look like.
Since my novel Star-crossed is about slavery and freedom, I asked for a man's manacled hand reaching for a star. Dirk Wolf created a gorgeous cover exactly as I'd requested, but as I studied the picture, I noticed the breast shape of the star and the unfortunate position of the man's fingers in relation to it.
After dubbing the cover, "The Galactic Grope," I requested that the hand not be so close to the star.
Decide for yourself if I have an overactive imagination.
http://marilynnbyerly.com/marilynnbyerly/firstcover.html
Whoops. ;D
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Date: 2005-04-14 06:09 pm (UTC)http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v280/telophase14/allthefishesnewsub.jpg
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Date: 2005-04-14 06:13 pm (UTC)And so you should. Gorgeous! Congratulations.
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Date: 2005-04-14 06:55 pm (UTC)And the other element is that covers can and do date a book, sometimes more quickly than people realize. Some covers just scream "mid-eighties! the hair! the hair!"
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Date: 2005-04-14 07:35 pm (UTC)For years there, I went straight to the Canty covers first, because after I read Thomas the Rhymer and the other fairy tale series novels, I figured out that the books in that series weren't the only fab fantasy novels with Canty covers...
That said, Baen covers always made me go "What the...?" for their unabashedly pulp cheese factor (and there was just always something about the fonts they chose for the titles). But I could spot a Baen a mile away. Marketing at work!
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Date: 2005-04-14 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-14 09:08 pm (UTC)I found it odd when I first starting doing covers that - at least where I was - author input wasn't given much weight.
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Date: 2005-04-15 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 07:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 06:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 05:31 am (UTC)The new ones on this site are better than the old ones. But being one of the male gender, I can recall when my hormones tried to rule my body continually (aka adolescence) and our high school's closest bus stop (if you stayed after for sports or other sundry high school activities) was at Southgate Shopping Center and all of us would go to Burrows and look at the covers of paperbacks and read the blurbs on the back. No one ever bought then, of course. At least in public with other guys around. Kind of like some of the old yellow-spined DAW atrocities. It doesn't seem to be so bad as it used to be in the SF and fantasy covers, romance there is no hope for. But I think the old back cover writers now work for beer ad agencies. rojo
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Date: 2005-04-15 07:19 am (UTC)Omigod - I'd forgotten Burrows! (Now we see why I will never write my memoirs....) We used to go to a small bookstore on Coventry (name also lost in the mists of time) (Coventry was Cleveland's kinda 2-block Greenwich Village in the 70s), where we bought all the Ballantine Unicorn Fantasy titles - and I still have Samuel R. Delany's THE JEWELS OF APTHOR from then. Boy, I loved all his stuff. I can't believe I know him now! Anyhow, yeah, I remember the DAW yellow spines, but you're right, I don't think we ever bought any, either.
What?! You do not worship LORD OF THE TUBE SOCKS?!
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Date: 2005-04-15 05:52 pm (UTC)I remember Coventry only too well. But by the time that was really popular, I was lost at Kent State. The last time I was in Coventry, I saw Mr. Stress Blues Band, about 8 years ago-still playing and still an ass after all these years. Even funnier was his guitarist recognized me in the crowd, because he was one of my better drinking buddies in high school. rojo
...
Date: 2005-04-17 09:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-15 07:24 am (UTC)Have you ever heard the filk song, "There's a Bimbo on the Cover of my Book"?
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Date: 2005-04-16 06:56 am (UTC)Nope - why don't you hum a few bars?
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Date: 2005-04-15 10:13 pm (UTC)Can I just say, though-- if covers are a marketing tool, who on earth are the people who design childrens' hardcover novels marketing to? Because it's sure not kids. I know, I know, kids don't buy hardcovers, adults do. But kids *read* them. Or would, if the covers passed your old boss's test. I see tons of great childrens' and YA books doomed by lovely, tasteful, boring covers; can't get the kids to pick them up no matter how much I rave.
Seriously, who can I speak to about this? It's driving me nuts.
--your cousin elswhere (elswhere.blogspot.com), a/k/a The Grumpy Librarian
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Date: 2005-04-16 06:55 am (UTC)BTW, Holly has just put up a dynamite page of Writing Resources for the aspiring YA fantasist: <http://www.blackholly.com/writingresources.htm>
yabbut
Date: 2005-05-19 01:08 am (UTC)It's librarians wot buy most of the hardcover kids & teen fics and we need to stand firm on the covers-O-cr@ppulance the way we did some years ago about indexes in children's nonfiction. Review standard needs to include: But the utterly unappealing cover makes this title a likely shelf-sitter. Buy only to fill a desperate subject-gap or where you have the time to hand-sell. Otherwise, wait for the paperback reissue
That might make a dent or two...
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Date: 2005-04-19 03:29 pm (UTC)sharyn dot november at us dot penguingroup com
and i think you emailed me once before, maybe?
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Date: 2005-04-16 10:35 am (UTC)Why was your mother bat-mitzvahed at this late date? Please tell more. I'm assuming that she wasn't bat-mitzvah originally because girls weren't when she was 13, and I know there has to be more of a story ...
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Date: 2005-04-21 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-16 04:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-01 09:12 am (UTC)--elswhere (elswhere.blogspot.com)