LOVE That Cover, Baby!
Posted on | June 15, 2006 | Leave a comment | Print This Post
If you’re a published writer or soon-to-be published writer, then you know how important a great cover and copy are. I don’t want to start a debate about great writers with lousy covers (or, as is sometimes the case, lousy writers with great covers), but I’ve been in sales and marketing long enough to know that, well, for the vast majority of writers, you need to give good cover.
To my publisher’s credit, they asked for my ideas and actually took a lot of my suggestions, which I appreciate. But when I was shown the mock-up and it was prefaced with, “We all love it! Everybody here loves it! The entire editorial team loves it! Your agent loves it! Your mother loves it!” I was kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. I mean, it doesn’t exactly leave room for conversation about what works and what doesn’t, you know? And since this is my first book with them, it was unlikely things were going to change so you can guess my response. “OMG, I love it too!”
My high-octane enthusiastic response took a good part of the previous night to muster up. My sleepless night went like this:
“My character would NEVER wear those shoes.”
“It’s pretty, but it won’t sell. I don’t want pretty, I want something that’s going to move my book off the shelves. Show me the money, baby!”
“Where’s she going? It looks like she’s going on vacation. Running away from home. Leaving her husband. But she’s not married! Did they even read my manuscript?!”
“James Patterson hires his own cover designers. I KNEW I should have done that.” (Note to reader: this is a fantasy land comment since we all know what writer’s first advances tend to pay these days)
“Are her toenails painted? I hate that color.”
And so on and so on.
Am I crazy or what? (That was rhetorical, please do not answer). But despite my business background and having had more than my fair share of creating ads, brochures, website and what not, the truth is I am too biased to look at this cover objectively. Which any other writer could have told you, but instead of taking their sage advice, I chose to torment myself with a barrage of “what-if” thoughts. Writing may be bliss, but it’s also business. The marriage of the two shows up in the cover, among other places. No matter how lovely the inside of the house is, if the book hasn’t got curb appeal, not a lot of people are going to take a look.
This cover has curb appeal. So thanks, Berkley. Now we just wait for the open house in February 2007 and see what happens.
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