Monday, March 7, 2016

You can’t judge a book…

Annamaria on Monday

Here are the beginning lyrics to old R&B song:

You can't judge an apple by looking at the tree,
You can't judge honey by looking at the bee,
You can't judge a sister by looking at the brother,
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.
Oh can't you see, oh, you misjudged me.
I look like a farmer but I'm a lover,
You can't judge a book by looking at the cover.

Caro’s post last week about strange titles made me think about how, a few times, my publishers changed the titles of my books.  Most of the time, they turned out to be right.  But there have been a couple of instances when the publisher tried to get me to change the title and I refused:  Notably for my best selling book every—Never Work for a Jerk.  They wanted me to call it HOW to Work for a Jerk, because they thought that a more positive spin might be more appealing.  I debated the point.  And I won.

On the other hand, I have almost never won a battle about a cover.  Almost. 

Generally, publishers, not writers, get to choose the cover art.  Sometimes we are happy, sometimes not. Except for folks like James Patterson and Mary Higgins Clark, authors have little, if anything, to say about book cover design.

This rule is not confined to fiction. My nonfiction went through similar choices. Never Work for a Jerk started with a jackass in a business suit, a splendid choice in my estimation.


But the paperback publisher thought the design too staid. They came up with something much more lively.  I doubt Dell was right about that, because when Barnes and Noble acquired the rights for their own edition, they went back to the jackass cover.



The foreign rights publishers had their own ideas.

         


Only once did I try to influence what a nonfiction book looked like. Both my agent and I tried our very best to put the kibosh on the cover for Monster Boss. Except for the fake tear, it looks to me like the cover of procedures manual on water heater repair.  But the publisher would not budge.  Would this catch your eye?



 

When it came to my novels, I was thrilled when saw the original cover for City of Silver. I had dreamed what it might be many times. During the long years of looking for an agent for the book and then waiting while it worked its way through the publication process, I imagined what the published book would look like. I had, in my mind's eye, the cover of a favorite history used in my research.  When my editor asked me for cover ideas, I sent this image of the whole dust jacket, including the spine and the back cover:


The final design for the novel surpassed all my expectations. It was totally beautiful to me, perhaps because it was my first novel. But it really is a lovely physical specimen of a book. (By the way, its interior is also a knockout. The front pages and the chapter beginnings are all designed to look like a seventeenth century book. What a gorgeous touch!)


Then, when Felony and Mayhem Press acquired the paperback rights, Maggie Topkis, the publisher, thought the original cover too staid for what she considered a lively story. She decided to replace it with a cover she thought did the story justice.



When I first saw the new design, it was so different from its predecessor, I was nonplussed. But everyone I asked liked it a lot.  And I knew that Maggie had had twenty years experience as a bookseller, which meant she had watched what readers reached for.   Sometimes the most aesthetically pleasing is not the most alluring to potential book buyers.

 


Invisible Country’s cover is a knockout.  It never made it into a paperback edition, so here is the only cover it’s ever had.

With Blood Tango, I had a fright on my hands.  The originally cover artist never completed the job.  His replacement came up with this:



It looked to me like a cheesy romance cover.  It said nothing about it being a historical novel, nothing about the darkness of the mystery or the glamor of the historic character who is central to the story—Evita.   I put my foot down.   In the end, they sent me a different cover, with a historic picture of Buenos Aires.  I showed it to my daughter.  She liked the photo but said the cover needed a woman on it.  She was so right.  I asked them to insert a blonde woman in the picture and to give her a red dress.  They did. 



 Then came the African series.  Africa is the MOST photogenic place on earth.  Have you ever noticed how travel companies that deal worldwide always have images of Africa on their promotional materials.  What’s on the walls of photographic equipment stores world wide?  Africa!  An alluring cover was a foregone conclusion. 

I loved the original cover of Strange Gods.


But once again, I am thrilled to say, Felony and Mayhem acquired the paperback rights, and Maggie went for a more striking cover image.


She also created great fanfare for the paperback’s launch last weekend at Left Coast Crime, including a Strange Gods t-shirt and making the Strange God the official cocktail of convention.  Needless to say, I was thrilled about that!

And now we are aiming to launch the second in the series, The Idol of Mombasa at Bouchercon in New Orleans in September.



This post is a whole lot of shameless self-promotion.  MIE’s rules allow us one such entry each year.  I forewent my turn at SSP in 2015 because I had no new book last year.  I collected on that rain check today.   I will have more to say about The Idol closer to the launch date.  

20 comments:

  1. Annamaria, your covers are a travelogue in themselves, and look stunning. Maggie has a wonderful eye for things like that, doesn't she? And congratulations on your LCC launch party!

    I've had some weird covers, and some great ones. And some of the ones I thought were weird worked better than the ones I thought were great, so I'm very much aware that the author (well, *this* author) is often not the best person to judge these things.

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    1. Thanks, Zoe. I am very proud to say we share a publisher. And I have to brag that Maggie is creative about promotion and willing to try new things and work at it in a way most publishers are not. This is a whole new world for me!

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  2. I have the blonde in the red dress version of Blood Tango and I love that cover!!

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    1. Thank you, Caro. I was happy with it too. Did you ever see the trailer my brilliant daughter made based on the cover art and the theme of the book. That woman in the red dress can dance!
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMKFFOhQ5WI

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  3. The only thing I don't like about these covers is that I can't get Idol yet! Maybe I could get a sneak preview for ITW when the time comes?

    We've had lots of fun with covers too. There are the Madagascan Baobabs that grace the cover of out Italian version featurinbg evil cat's eyes at the bottom. Very striking, but not really appropriate for a hyena. Then there was the cover showing the Kalahari desert featuring a Waterbuck. Hmm. Maybe not. I have to say they changed that one!

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    1. Michael, I will see that you get the ARC asap. We are still working on the last edits, among them fixing my mistake about snakes, which Stan kindly pointed out. He knows a lot more about snakes than I do, despite my close proximity to Wall Street.

      And A Waterbuck in the Kalahari might have made it into Caro's list of stupid titles!!

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  4. I always liked your covers, but I'm a bit miffed at your distancing yourself from me in quoting, "You can't judge a sister by looking at the brother."

    It's not as if I'm a Madagascan Baobab or something.

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    1. And I did offer to wear the red dress for the cover photoshoot.

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    2. Bro, Though we both may be handsome, if I resembled you more, I would be a foot taller and laugh at your jokes. And I certainly would never have made that mistake about snakes.

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  5. I'm laughing so much I'm crying! Touché, Annamaria!

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  6. Loved the original cover of Strange Gods, but I also love the direction the new covers are going, although I must say that the "tree limb" on the Strange Gods cover really did need "edge lines" like they've put on that "swatch" on The Idol of Mambasa." On Strange Gods, the flat, un-edged "tree limb" just looks unfinished. But that's the only criticism I could come up with. Using it as a common style element for the series' covers is great. Looking forward to reading Idol, as I enjoyed SG a lot!

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    1. Thanks, EvKa. I like your comment and will remember it and pass it along. And thanks for your kind words about the book. You should come to New Orleans and visit with us all. Failing that, I have just found out that the Historical Novel Society will meet in Portland in June 2017. So watch out!

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    2. Cool! I can't make N'oeans, but Portland I can make. With a little luck and a little effort, maybe we'll get some face time next year. :-)

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  7. Nice tour through your covers. Publishers can get it very right or very wrong. I've seen so many of both, and when I worked as an editor I had designers reworking covers before even showing them to the authors.

    I'm unfamiliar with the content of your books, Annamaria, but I like your current covers. What I'm now having trouble getting out of my head is a vision of Jeff in a red dress...

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    1. Barry, if you're having trouble getting that vision out of your head, just imagine what I went through getting out of the Spanx I needed to fit my butt into that dress!

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    2. LOL. Now I won't be able to sleep for a week. ;) On the other hand, I do have a scene in Tokyo's gay quarter in book #4. Any interest in going undercover?

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    3. Now we are into an area where our sibling-hood shows. :)

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  8. No need to apologize for sharing those great book covers! We want to know what you're working on, and based on both title and cover, I think it looks very intriguing.

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    1. Thanks. Sujata. Mombasa is exotic, and I imagine even more so in 1912. I will be blogging about its background history from time to time in the coming months.

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  9. I LOVE the new cover, and cannot WAIT to read THE IDOL OF MOMBASA. I adored STRANGE GODS, and I'm so, SO happy the series is continuing! Put me first in line for a copy at Bouchercon!!

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