Dear Author » book-covers

Monday Midday Links: More on the DOJ suit, Cover Testing, Fake reviews

Jane — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:00:25 +0000

Experts Consider How Apple E-Book Suit Will Impact Business, Regulation – I’m fairly irritated with the coverage of the DOJ lawsuit over prices. Let me clarify a few things. First, there is no law against pursuing or acquiring a monopoly. Second, there is no prohibition against a manufacturer or a publisher from setting prices and not allowing discounting so long as there is a true agency or brokerage model in place. Third, collusion amongst competitors to raise a price is considered a “traditional restraint of trade” as one legal commenter noted in this link. Fourth, and finally, when Apple set the price floor and ceiling of the digital books, the publishers were not engaged in independent agency pricing.

“What this [lawsuit] basically says is, any form of colluding to protect the producers, or primary sellers, is illegal. And given how poorly we regulate intermediaries, this is a landmark event,” says Clemons. “Given that you aren’t allowed to collude to protect yourself — because that is traditional restraint of trade — and given that we have very limited regulations to control the intermediaries, this is going to put enormous pressure both on traditional intermediaries and on traditional producers, or primary sellers.” ” Law.Com

Say Yes to the Cover: Vote for THE BRO-MAGNET’s New Look! :: The Knight Agency, Inc. — A Literary Agency – The Knight Agency is helping to reboot the cover for Lauren Baratz-Logsted’s very funny book, The Bro-Magnet. I reviewed it positively here. I never liked the cover or the title and it didn’t draw in other reviewers either. Being responsive and taking advantage of the ease digital publishing provides, The Knight Agency and LBL are asking readers to vote on three new covers. I won’t tell you what I voted for and while I don’t love the three new ones, at least two are better than the original. If you vote, you can be entered to win The Bro-Magnet. The Knight Agency

Publishers Weekly seems to relish scathing reviews of self-published books | A City Mom – Correction: Blogger is an attempted self published author who published two books traditionally after beginning to self publish. ~~Self published~~ author wanks on about how her purchased review from Publishers’ Weekly is not giving her enough quotable material to mislead readers. Because of this, PW’s selling of reviews is sneaky! :

“What every author wants from a review of this type is that one line they can quote. I would’ve been happy with something like, “Down at the Golden Coin is a fast and witty read that could have been so much better without Strickland’s ham-fisted dialogue.” Because of course I would quote only the first part of the sentence! But reading the PW reviews in the supplement, every one of them is suspiciously crafted so as to not string together a single sentence like the above. There’s basically no way to get a useable blurb from any of the reviews, even when they do say very positive things. It reeks of sneaky, if you ask me.” Chicago Now

Here’s This Week’s Newsweek Cover on the NewstandsI know I promised to limit 50 Shades references on the blog and trust me, I am as tired as you all of hearing about it, but I can’t blindly ignore what is entering the mainstream consciousness. I can’t decide if this is horribly harmful or whether the more we talk about women’s sexual fantasies, the less shame there will be attached to them. Newsweek

“In an age where women are dominating – in the workplace, at school, at home – why are they seeking to be dominated in their love lives? Recent media portrayals have shown that a rising number of modern women fantasize about being overpowered, while studies are turning out statistics that bewilder feminists. New shows like HBO’s Girls and books like Fifty Shades of Grey are showcasing the often hidden desire for powerlessness. But why? Katie Roiphe examines the submissive yet empowered female in Newsweek. “It is perhaps inconvenient for feminism that the erotic imagination does not submit to politics, or even changing demographics,” she writes.”

Flavorwire » 10 Crazy and Unusual Book Designs – I liked the edible ones but my favorite was the book you could plant and make a tree. Flavorwire

Cockroaches in Chocolate May be Causing Food Allergies | One Green Planet – This may make you refrain from eating more chocolate. It didnt work for me as a dietary aid though. Apparently I enjoy chocolate enough that even the mention of cockroaches isn’t deterring me. One Green Planet

[If] you suffer from a chocolate allergy, you might assume that the cocoa bean is the culprit. An ABC News report, however, points to a different allergen not listed on labels: cockroaches! The FDA deems certain levels of contaminants in foods to be safe, and as many as 60 insect parts per 100 grams of chocolate could be present without being rejected by the administration. This contamination is pervasive across all chocolate brands, as getting rid of them would likely require heavier pesticide use.

21 Cats Imitating Art – As if you didn’t have enough time wasters on the internet Buzzfeed

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Friday Midday Links: A Retrospective of the Amazing Hermione Granger Series

Jane — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 15:00:47 +0000

For any and all prospective employers, here is a list of Borders’ employees who are on LinkedIn. And here is a blog designed to collate job postings that may be of interest to those employees.

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Sad about the ending of the series “Hermione Granger”? A poster laments the end of the series and looks at its strength and weaknesses:

And there we have it: The defining hero of our age is a girl who saves the day with her egalitarianism, love of learning, hard work, and refusal to give way to peer pressure. It’s hard to think of the Hermione Granger series as anything other than flawless. And yet — as fans constantly point out — there is a very big flaw in the series. You know who I’m talking about; it’s He Who Must Not Be Named, but we spell it H-A-R-R-Y.

The character of Harry Potter is an obnoxious error in the Hermione Granger universe, made more obnoxious by his constant presence. It’s tempting to just write Harry off as a love interest who didn’t quite work out; the popular-yet-brooding jock is hardly an unfamiliar type. And, given that Hermione is constantly having to rescue Harry, he does come across as a sort of male damsel-in-distress.

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Paper book sales are down, of course. In the May AAP report, ebooks are now the #2 format for trade books (we here at Dear Author read trade fiction rather than university press works or religious texts, etc).

Category	2011 YTD	2010 YTD	Percent Change
Adult Paperback	$473.1 Million	$576.4M	-17.9%
E-Books	$389.7M	$149.8M	+160.1%
Adult Hardcover	$386.2M	$504.1M	-23.4%
Children’s/YA Hardcover	$198.1M	$211.4M	-6.3%
Adult Mass Market	$185.1M	$264.8M	-30.1%
Children’s/YA Paperback	$163.5M	$192.5M	-15.1%
Downloaded Audiobooks	$36.5M	$31.2M	+17.0%

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Is this something that may be coming for ebook covers? Many of the print first publishing houses are still designing covers with print in mind. Print and digital art is quite different. The new digital movie poster for The Hunger Games is designed for digital viewers in mind. (Sound will start at the link)

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Teleread points us to Piotr Kowalczyk’s use of Phoster, an iThing App, that could help self published authors create covers. As I look at self published books, I think the major difference between even the semi professional ones and the publisher driven covers is that the publisher driven covers have a lot of depth to them. Maybe that comes from actual photoshoots or maybe it is some other photoshop magic. Speaking of needing photoshop magic, maybe the shorts should have been dodged out here?

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From reader Jaye is this wonderful article about the undergarments of women in the 1860s:

It took an hour for Ms. Gist to squeeze into a dozen layers that a lady would have worn in the 1860s—stockings, garters, bloomers, chemise, corset, crinoline or hoop skirt, petticoats, a shirtwaist or blouse, skirt, vest and bolero jacket. By the end, workshop attendees were skeptical that seductions ever occurred, with so many sartorial barriers.

“How did they ever have hanky panky?” asked novelist Annie Solomon.

With great effort, it turns out.

Monday Midday Links: More YA Whitewashing?

Jane — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:00:41 +0000

First up is the non controversial good stuff. New Releases. We have the Coming Soon picture catalog ready for viewing.

The author promo thread and reader open thread are up and running.

We brought back the “recent comments” feature. We took it down because it seemed to be slowing down the site so let us know if you see any difference.

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Forner books suggests that Google is filtering out the search results for torrents.

No Torrent and no RapidShare! And every related search I tried, including my name and other titles yielded the same result. Unless all of the individuals searching on Google have stopped using Torrent and RapidShare in queries, Google has decided to filter those results from the outcome. I welcome the change if it's permanent, though I'm sure some others will scream censorship. While most of the results relating to "free" or "download" will still lead to piracy sites, at least they aren't being presented as a "trusted brand" option.

When I do book links, I search by title and author and often the first page would show a few popular download sites. Now, I don’t see them even by going to pages 4 and 5 of the search results. I don’t really have a problem with this. These torrents and websites still show up by a keyword search of the file sharing website name but not if you search for a book title.

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Phoebe over at ?Interrobangs! notes the cover changes on Across the Universe by Beth Revis, a book about interracial relationships at the YA level. The initial ARC had a person of color depicted but the final copy had all the distinctive features filed off.

As Courtney Milan noted in the comments at The Book Smugglers blog, it wasn’t just the photoshopping, but the race assumptions made by the choice of stock cover art:

Now that I've read the book, which by the way is amazing, what upsets me about this cover is that when told the protagonist is Not White, they reached for a stock photo of a black man.

Which Elder clearly is not.

He's brown, yes-a combination of a lot of races from Asian to black to white-but he's not black. There's even a point in the book when he does see a black woman, and he thinks to himself that she looks different: darker skin, kinky hair.

HELLO. There are, like, billions of people in this world who are neither black nor white. Some of them even have more than one race! Setting aside for now the problematic photoshopping (and I do that only because others have talked about the troubling implications), the choice of stock implies that all people of color can be lumped into one monolithic group. There's White, and there's Other.

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Christina Dodd has some musings about being a published author for twenty years. A few of them include admonishing readers to not write mean reviews and not letting professional envy inhibit you:

From my vantage point, everyone in publishing is doing better than I am. From everyone else's vantage point, I'm doing better than they are. The truth is somewhere in between -’ and an author who's published is not going to get any sympathy at all from an unpublished author who's written for ten years, finished three manuscripts and has twenty-five rejection letters. Believe me. I know. I was that author.

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My Big Fat Cover Rant from Heather, The Galaxy Express

Guest Reviewer — Tue, 18 May 2010 10:00:40 +0000

Allow me to tell you a story.

Recently, I had the honor of premiering a cover for a science fiction romance book on my blog. The cover for R. Garland Gray's Darkscape: First Heir excited me because it had a combination of SF and romance elements that hit the right balance. Naturally, I'm thinking, this is pretty sweet because we're one step closer to establishing an identity for science fiction romance covers.

When I pointed out that the current covers for the works of Linnea Sinclair (Rebels And Lovers) also possess a quintessential science fiction romance "feel," Ms. Sinclair revealed in the comments that her covers would be soon changing, and not necessarily in a good way:

They ditched that look as–and I quote–they don’t want any tech on the cover. Okay, here’s the actual quote from Bantam to me: “…we want to go a bit more mainstreamy the covers, and even less techy, so as not to scare off any readers who might not think they’d like SF, but would still love your books.”

If that wasn't bad enough, author Jessica Andersen (Demonkeepers) had her own cover woes to share:

I have the same thing going on with my series (paraphrasing): “We’re losing the pyramids and going more mainstreamy so as not to scare off any readers who might love your books but don’t think they would like the Mayan mythology and 2012 stuff.”

All of which made me realize that while I'm all for homogenized milk, I'm not so keen on homogenized romance covers.

What's going on here? What do the above situations with authors Sinclair and Andersen mean? Is the economy a factor? I can only hope that it is, because otherwise I'm about fit to be tied over this new development. Reading between the lines, it seems like "so as not to scare off" might be code for "we're cutting costs."

Do cliché/clinch/man titty covers cause more sales or are they simply correlated with sales? If they really do cause sales, then for heaven's sake, put a hot, half-naked man on every romance cover regardless of subgenre because then authors might actually be able to make a living from their work! Seriously. Why hold back if profit can be that lucrative?

On a related note, I discovered an interesting experiment at author Ellen Fisher's blog. Ms. Fisher has re-released a few of her books on the Kindle (contemporaries and a science fiction romance). Her book Isn't It Romantic? originally had a cover featuring a wedding couple. Despite the romantic image, sales trudged along like the proverbial tortoise.

Then, she blasted it with a man titty makeover.

You can view the two covers here. This is what she had to say about the results:

And then there’s Isn’t It Romantic? It limped along most of the month, not doing terribly, but not doing really well, either. Finally I gave it a new sexy cover, and boom, up went the sales.

(Cover images might not be the only factor as Ms. Fisher priced her books at .99 cents. But the jump in sales occurred after the cover change, not the price change).

So if the current economic challenges dictate the royal man titty treatment, or a variation thereof, I am resigned to it because that is reality, after all. If authors sell more books as a result, great-but, um, only as long as we can return to covers that reflect subgenre content when the economy improves. If, indeed, that is the reason for such a turnabout.

I can't help but speculate about why publishers would go to the trouble of stripping out the visual elements that make a subgenre unique. Don't we find these visual cues helpful when shopping for books? Who are the readers who quake in their shoes at the thought of seeing a starship, dragon, or ancient ruin on a romance cover? As long as the characters and overall design featured on the cover clearly convey romance, what's the problem?

Then I started wondering-I know romance readers have diverse tastes, but does that extend to our feelings about covers?

Would you rather have a cover that attempts to capture the story, or do you prefer covers that deliver a hard sell of the fantasy lover and/or the romance, regardless of whether or not it accurately represents the book’s content?

The answer might even be both, depending on whom one asks. Smart Bitches posted snippets of conversations overheard at the 2010 RT BookLover's Convention. Check these out:

"I love covers that have elements from the story. I like covers that have context."
"I like covers that show the man's chest, in jeans, with one button undone."

During my quest for answers, I perused a cover survey conducted by The Book Smugglers. It, uh, uncovered a few interesting points:

According to the results of this survey, folks literally aren't buying the whole "similar covers sells!" That is, they personally do not equate a book with a similar cover to a book they have previously read and enjoyed. However, survey responses also indicate that these same readers believe that *others* DO make this association with covers – as noted by the consensus response that readers find cover "cliches" do inspire a sense of familiarity and thus sell."

My head is still spinning-’do similar covers drive sales, or not? But then I read this part:

-readers that responded to this survey rather see covers as the artistic embodiment of a book and thus should be accurately representative of a book's genre, tone, and/or characters. This answer took the clear majority at 62%.

In this economy, I can't afford to care about romance book covers. I've read mediocre stories whose books have amazing and highly representational cover art as well as wonderful stories with astonishingly bad or generic cover art. I understand the key role covers play in marketing books even as I have stopped relying on them when making purchasing decisions.
What are your thoughts? Are "artistic" and "mainstream" romance covers mutually exclusive? Or is there a happy medium?

WTF Cover Poll

Jane — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:32:43 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

I’m of the opinion that this looks like a 10 year old and I feel dirty looking at it. Angie James posted it on her twitter and wanted to know what the genre was. I guessed wrong. What about you?

Monday Night Links of Ebook Opinion

Jane — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:45:20 +0000

Ars Technica has a fabulous (but lengthy) post about ebooks and the evolving publisher response (mostly not helpful). Ars is waiting for Apple to take up the mantle of ebooks like it did with music. I think it won’t. Apple’s focused on gaming and why not? Video game sales were about the only entertainment item that was up last year.
From a different perspective is Lavie Tidhar of Apex Magazine. Her argument is that the lack of a future proofed format and the fact that paper lasts longer than bits and bytes means that print isn’t dead. Print books aren’t dead. It’s the print publishing model that seems to be on its last legs. [Thanks D Cross]
According to this article in the Guardian, staying away from Revolutionary Road because it looks too depressing (and for the record, the book is super depressing and therefore the trailer is being true to the story) is the only way to live a happy life because if you are seduced by happy endings you are bound for real life disappointment. [Thanks Bec].
Jessica from RacyRomanceReviews ordered a Kindle. It will be delivered in 5-6 weeks. She debated between Kindle and Sony but ultimately choose the Kindle because of the wireless feature, ability to annotate, and that she could return it if she didn’t like it. I know that SB Sarah has become increasingly irritated with Sir Fusspot as she has nicknamed her Kindle.
And in the ultimate wardrobe malfunction, Comcast gave viewers a 10 sec peek at a porn channel during the SuperBowl.
Someone is imagining covers of movies made into books, sixties style. I love it. My favorite might be Shaun of the Dead. [Via Scalzi]

Cover Identification

Jane — Tue, 13 May 2008 09:00:21 +0000

Given that the 2007 Cover Contest voting is underway, I thought this would be the appropriate time to post my cover post. Because this is an image heavy article, you’ll have to click the “more” link to read the entirety of the article. I’m talking about trends in covers and cover identification today.

There was about a year in which it appeared Avon historicals were all getting similar treatment. They all had this painterly look (broad brush strokes). It wasn’t my favorite look but it was very distinctive. I thought that the point of the look of the line was that if you liked one book that had a painterly cover, you would like these other books with the painterly cover.

Having said that, it appears that Avon is moving away from the granular art cover as the batch of summer arcs had more of the glossy, clean edged finished. Julia Quinn’s fall releases (which feature an overlapping storyline) have a more realistic cover look, maybe playing off the Jane Austen craze. In comparing the two, I prefer the painterly cover.

At Berkley/Jove/Signet/NAL, the art is distinctive per author rather than per line. Each author’s books have a distinctive look so that a reader liking Nalini Singh’s book need only remember the type of cover – chest with tattoos and wild cursive font – to identify with another Singh book.

Meljean’s signature look changed in her last book, likely in an effort to increase sales. The first three books had a softer tone featuring a couple. Her February release, Demon Night, sported a darker, edgier look with man titty and no woman. The font, however, remained the same.

Pocket, Bantam, and Warner seem to follow the Penguin path in creating a certain cohesive look for the author with the covers, rather than being line specific. Kresley Cole’s books covers have evolved from the classic paranormal clinch to a slight comic book feel to book 3 to the lone man titty with this spring/summer’s back to back releases.

Michelle Rowen’s books feature a type of cartoon cover. It has the feel of a cartoon cover even though it does not have the look. Honestly, Rowen’s covers don’t encourage me to buy her books. I bought them because of word of mouth.

This trend toward comic realism is carried out in the repackaging of Jennifer Estep’s novels. I understand that these covers want to convey fun and lighthearted reads but without the retail death that must be inflicted with a cartoon cover. Frankly, though, I like the old comic/cartoon cover than the realism.

For me, the realism covers often speak of movie tie-in books. Julia Quinn’s above book reminds me a bit of an Austen movie book. When I saw CJ Lyon’s book, I thought it was a fan fiction/tv tie in for Grey’s Anatomy and passed. TV tie-ins never seem to interest me (although they do appear to be good sellers). I can’t tell with the Quinn book whether they are intentionally trying to invoke the Austen feel or whether it is simply happenstance. I’m leaning toward the former.

Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of the stepback cover. I think it is needlessly wasteful and I don’t particularly like the scenes inside the cover that often have nothing to do with the story. There’s an overabundance of filmy curtains in these stepbacks that never seem to make an appearance in the pages of the book. Covers that I haven’t liked included many of the Avon contemporary books which often look very dated to me.

The covers of Aphrodisia books or even this upcoming Ellora’s Cave hardcover are so explicit. I had to laugh when I saw the cover of the Penthouse Letters in comparison.

One book cover that really caught my attention was Erin McCarthy’s Fallen. When I took it out of its package, I literally gasped out loud. The color is this old gold and the back has alternating light gold and dark gold wide stripes. The angel looming in the back is both ominous and sexy. The green is striking offset to the more muted colors of the angel and the background.

I also love Sherry Thomas’ covers. These are the dreaded stepback but the initial cover is quite lovely. I appreciate the there is a lone female on the cover and wonder why the covers can’t be more female centric. I suppose the answer to that is sales.

Readers come to associate certain things with types of covers. I never found cartoon covers to be offensive, for the most part, and even thought some were cute. I certainly thought Estep’s old covers captured the essence of her books quite well. At some point, however, we readers decided the whatever was beneath a cartoon cover wasn’t worth our money. The pink covers of the chick lit books with purses, shoes, and flirty skirts also seem to have a negative connotation.

Man titty tells us its a romance. Nearly fully naked man titty tells us its a erotic romance. The running couple tells us its a romantic suspense. But will these covers go out of style once we’ve read our glut of romantic suspense? Covers, I think, both lead and reflect our reading tastes. I’m interested in hearing what you readers like in terms of covers. Do you notice that you gravitate toward a certain cover and why? Do you like the broad brush strokes in the Avon covers or the trend toward realism? Do contemporary covers seem to struggle for the right balance more so that paranormals or historicals?

2007 Cover Cafe Contest Open

Jane — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:00:07 +0000

The Cover Cafe 2007 contest is open for voting. There are seven categories and ten finalists per category. Go on over and vote for the best covers in 2007.

Kate Spade Covers Your Trashy Novels

Jane — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:49:05 +0000

Don’t like the covers on your books (me neither)? Kate Spade has some downloadable covers for your books. I don’t know if they will last or whether they fit a paperback as they use hardcovers for examples but they are free. On Kate’s summer reading list is one that Jayne read and recommended: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion.

Via Styledash.