Book Covers

[ellenkushner]

I 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.

Comments

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

I just love that site. I'm so proud that they used one of our covers.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize she'd added more! There's a link to ones other folks have sent her, and a few of those made me very happy I have a keyboard protector, because soda went a few times. The best, though, is a real-life story from another author:

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

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I love my cover, but then I requested that they use a single striking image rather than attempt to literally reproduce something from the text.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v280/telophase14/allthefishesnewsub.jpg

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I love my cover

And so you should. Gorgeous! Congratulations.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I think that actually works better. The covers that attempt to show me "what's in the book" just never quite get it right, and in some ways it can potentially be as damaging as seeing LotR on the big screen: it took me months to get Sean Astin's face out of my head when I tried to read Samwise Gamgee, and his was one of the best spot-on characterizations in the film, IMO. If the cover art is any way out of whack with the reader's interpretation, there's conflict, and it has made me feel uncomfy in the past, as though I'm missing something.

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!"

[taraljc.livejournal.com]

I picked up the first book of yours I think I ever read, I'm pretty sure solely because it had a Tom Canty cover.

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!

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes. Tom Canty covers and Bluejay Books publications -- bought without question once upon a day.

[stardustgirl.livejournal.com]

I looooove spoof covers! I used to do some to break the tedium of some of the computer titles I worked on. Bodice-ripper novels are just asking for it though. What a great site!

I found it odd when I first starting doing covers that - at least where I was - author input wasn't given much weight.

[robinrook.livejournal.com]

! Thank you for the wonderfully goofass book cover site, Ellen.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I'm tempted to see if I can send him a mock movie poster I made for the community access television program I do with friends. It's for Mister Smith Destroys Washington.

[rojomojo.livejournal.com]

Ah! forever-sunny Cleveland (between May and September, when it isn't thundering), a great place to escape from. My brothers tell me it isn't too bad now the river isn't burning. But I digress--

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

[ogre-san.livejournal.com]

Oh, marvelous. :)

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

DO IT! DO IT!

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

all of us would go to Burrows

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.

The new ones...are better than the old ones
What?! You do not worship LORD OF THE TUBE SOCKS?!

[madfilkentist]

Excellent covers! I might even buy some of those books!

Have you ever heard the filk song, "There's a Bimbo on the Cover of my Book"?

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I'll give it my best shot.

[rojomojo.livejournal.com]

my wife read your reply and said (about your comments about Delaney) "once a fangurl, always a fangurl." I felt the same way when I met Charles de Lint in Santa Fe three years ago (my wife and I drove from Denver). And then he spoke to her about writing for almost an hour. She had won awards for X-Files fan fic and was/is trying to complete a manuscript. It is good, and much better than Laurell Hamilton's trash.

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

[(Anonymous)]

I hardly ever laugh out loud at anything I read. But this! Oh, man, my sides hurt. If I ever had Cover Blues, they would be permanently cured.

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

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

I'm forwarding your query to Sharyn November <http://www.sharyn.org/children.html> and Holly Black - let's see if they've got any insights.

BTW, Holly has just put up a dynamite page of Writing Resources for the aspiring YA fantasist: <http://www.blackholly.com/writingresources.htm>

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

Have you ever heard the filk song, "There's a Bimbo on the Cover of my Book"?

Nope - why don't you hum a few bars?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

OK; let us all know when/if it goes up!

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

Okay, everyone else is talking about covers and I'm coming in late, but ...

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 ...

[dancingwriter.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link--hysterical!

...

[ngakmafaery.livejournal.com]

...nothing wrong with 'Lord of the Hissy Fit' either...but the new ones are funny, especially the "I Don't Get It' one...

[sdn.livejournal.com]

you can speak to me.

sharyn dot november at us dot penguingroup com

and i think you emailed me once before, maybe?

[ellen-kushner.livejournal.com]

You've got it, basically - but it is also the year of her 75th birthday and my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. We wanted it to be an anniv. bash, but they were a little shy about making a fuss, I guess . . . when she allowed as how she would kind of like her own bat mitzvah, though (and you need to know that my mother is the person who tutored me in Hebrew and has a few adult degrees in Hebrew Studies), I encouraged her and decided to tack on the other family celebrations at the same time. It was kind of a stealth operation: guests at the evening's dinner who thought it was just her bat mitzvah were suddenly confronted by a blow-up photo from their wedding (very cute, if I do say so myself!). My uncle played the Anniversary Waltz, and everybody sang, and it was swell.

[(Anonymous)]

P.S. Happy May Day!

--elswhere (elswhere.blogspot.com)

yabbut

[carbonelle.livejournal.com]

Sharyn November doesn't need to hear it: Firebird Press is the Master of the Cool Covers. Thanks to Firebird's reissue I could finally get teenage boys to read The Ear, The Eye and The Arm. A killer book laid low for years by a khrappe-tastic cover.

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...