Ah, yes, covers. I can't even count the number of times I would take a book, put my hand over the cover, and say, "don't look, okay? because if you do, you'll think this book is crap, and it's NOT, so, I dunno, tape something over the cover but you HAVE TO READ THIS." Which usually made people laugh, and then they'd be more intrigued about buying...
But bad covers, basically, require hand-selling. Otherwise they're just ignored, because bad covers are ugly and turn people off, so much they won't even look at the rest of the book.
I think, myself, this is why all thriller/mystery covers pretty much look identical. It's safer. Same for most romance books. So I don't really fault those publishers who stick to tired trends in book covers: it is an advertisement.
It's also why, as much as I'd like to ever have pretty covers myself, you'd never hear me publicly snarking about cover design. It's an incredible art, and a complex one... but I can still look at a cover and tell you what will (or won't) sell -- there are some rules, once broken, that undo any other cover-goodness.
I actually liked Waldenbooks -- most of them were mall-based, and franchises, which meant they were often working in a symbiotic form with other local bookstores. Most Waldens just never seemed that big, so they had to cooperate. Hell, until Cerberus really hit its stride in the mid to late 90s, we must've had ten or more major franchises in the US: Waldenbooks, Crown, B Dalton's, and a bunch of others I can't recall right now. Whoosh, all gone now, swallowed whole. Pity.
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Date: 19 Feb 2009 07:43 am (UTC)But bad covers, basically, require hand-selling. Otherwise they're just ignored, because bad covers are ugly and turn people off, so much they won't even look at the rest of the book.
I think, myself, this is why all thriller/mystery covers pretty much look identical. It's safer. Same for most romance books. So I don't really fault those publishers who stick to tired trends in book covers: it is an advertisement.
It's also why, as much as I'd like to ever have pretty covers myself, you'd never hear me publicly snarking about cover design. It's an incredible art, and a complex one... but I can still look at a cover and tell you what will (or won't) sell -- there are some rules, once broken, that undo any other cover-goodness.
I actually liked Waldenbooks -- most of them were mall-based, and franchises, which meant they were often working in a symbiotic form with other local bookstores. Most Waldens just never seemed that big, so they had to cooperate. Hell, until Cerberus really hit its stride in the mid to late 90s, we must've had ten or more major franchises in the US: Waldenbooks, Crown, B Dalton's, and a bunch of others I can't recall right now. Whoosh, all gone now, swallowed whole. Pity.