In my head, as well as online, I live in a world of published, soon-to-be-published and want-to-be-published authors. (In real life I live in a world of teenagers and dog paws, but that's for a different blog.)
I'm in the last category above, but that doesn't stop me from thinking one day about my book - be it hard cover, trade or mass market paperback. It won't matter to me. It won't matter to me if people call it women's fiction or chick lit, as long as they buy it and read it and like it -- and then buy copies for their friends.
But I think it will matter to me what the cover looks like. Not only because I'll feel like I've given birth to it, but because the book buying public does judge a book by its cover.
It seems that only those best-selling authors have cover approval. New authors and most others can have their fabulous agents get them the right to see the cover, and even consult on it -- but since publishing is a business and publishers want to sell books, and covers (along with titles, imo) entice shoppers to pick up a book and only then do they flip it over and read the back cover copy, which leads to reading the first page, which leads to plunking down the cash or credit or debit card -- publishers have the final say.
Have you ever given thought to what you'd want your book cover to look like? Sometimes I see a bright cover which I think would say "humor inside." Other times I see photographs of hands which would indicate relationship story. What do you see in your head when you picture your book on the shelves? If you've published a book, did you like the way the cover represented what was inside the book? I also know that if you publish in hardcover that often the cover changes when the paperback comes out. I find it interesting how covers change, target different demographics and reveal different things about books.
As writers, we must, must, must read in our own genres and others. What draws you to a cover? What keeps you away?
Please tell us what you think. Anything.
No judging here!
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Judging a Book by its Cover
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5 comments:
As an artist as well as a writer, covers matter to me. My friend Ami McKay had her novel The Birth House published--the Canadian cover different from the American different from the Scandinavian (or was that Dutch? anyway) different from the paperback...
I want my cover (should I ever be so lucky as for this to be an issue) to be intriguing, and something that a man might pick up too. I want to be read by men and women, so hot pink won't quite work.
If only our covers made us all happy!
I've loved some of my book covers ... and while I haven't had a hand in designing them, I've always had approval over them. Not a contractual thing, just that publishers are usually pretty nice about it. They don't want you to hate the cover of your book!
The cover for the hardcover edition of "The Incredible Shrinking Critic" was gorgeous ... but it looked more like a "diet" book when it was really a memoir. The cover for the paperback, which came out last fall, is also fabulous, but in a totally different way, designed for a totally different marketing campaign.
The only one of my covers I really hated was the American edition of Quentin Tarantino: The Man & His Movies. They superimposed two round photos where QT's eyes were, as if reflected in his sunglasses were scenes from his own movies ... or that scenes from his movies were playing inside his brain after gunshots removed his eyeballs? Very hard to reconcile this cover with anything approaching logic or taste. Not helped by my having Keystone Kop agents at the time.
But the British version of the QT book, also from HarperCollins, had a spectacular cover. It was mostly white, with the black and white figures of the characters from Reservoir Dogs sort of walking across the cover, and red blotches of blood dripping from the front right around the spine to the back cover. Now, THAT was a nice cover!
I have to agree with Marta. I want a book cover that would appeal to both men and women. The more people draw in by the cover, the better.
But honesty, I never realized that book cover design could be an issue until I read Amy's post. I naturally assumed I would have the final word over the cover. In fact, I already have the photo picked out that I would like to use for my dual memoir (a beautiful photo of my mother on the front steps of Willowbrook).
This would explain why I've looked at some book covers and thought, "what's wrong with this author?" or "That's absolutely brilliant!" I suppose this aspect of publishing a book will be it's own little adventure. I guess I have something to look forward to.
I've been happy with my covers so far. All the editions of White Line Fever have been some variation of Lemmy's face. The only thing important to me is that my name is there! You can see the cover at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/White-Line-Fever-Autobiography/dp/0806525908
I should like the cover to Sparkle's book - I designed it. While I think I did a pretty good job for someone who is not a professional graphic artist, I'm not married to it - if someone else came up with something better, I would be okay with that, as long as the color scheme was flattering to her fur. You can see what I did here (note that I added after the fact that the book is "award-winning"):
http://www.cafepress.com/designercat.81428163
For my memoir, I dunno - something red and black and all heavy metal-y would be okay, I suppose. I'm not that picky about my wardrobe, either.
Being in Paris for 5 months and only having access to British-run bookstores, I was able to see the covers of British editions of books, in addition to remembering their American versions as well.
For whatever reason, I preferred the British versions. I think they were more artistically conscious, maybe more inviting. In any event, despite the horrible exchange rate and inflated prices, I blew way more of my limited student budget on books than I ever should have. Score one for the British publishers, and their enticing cover choices.
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