I Would Love to Be a Writer But I Have a Proper Job

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Video By Caroline Rance, author of Kill Grief ... and be of good cheer, from the reviews on the website it sounds like she's sold more than a hundred books!

The London Book Fair Day Two: on the Subject of Black and Red and White Book Covers ...

Here's the thing:

Of course, this was one of the burning questions at the book cover panel at the London Book Fair. Why do these books want to look alike?

When the audience posed this question, Antonia Pelari, rights director of Scholastic, did not hesitate:

As a publisher you would be mad not to put a book out there with a black and red cover. We did do a black, red and white cover (Shiver) and we did do very well.

Antonia pointed towards market research in which they asked book buyers what influenced their purchase of a book. Was it a review? A poster? A blog? Inevitably the answer was: "I saw it in a bookshop".

But what about all those books for teenagers with headless girls? If covers are supposed to help a book stand out, why make them all look alike? In 2008 I blogged about the trend for headless girls. Here is a sampling of covers (by some mighty fine authors, I might add) that suffer from display the headless syndrome:

Patrick Insole, art director for Walker Books, replied:

In the UK, we are genre-led. I've been responsible for a few closely cropped heads myself. Publishers want to do whatever the publishing conventions in the genre are at the time ... From (the point of view of the publisher) there is a demand for it. When booksellers (tell us), yes it’s just like the one that sold lots and lots of copies. Could (your cover) be a bit more like that one?

But the product doesn't stand out ... why can't publishers try to be different? To this, Insole said ruefully, "It's scary!"

It depends on the willingness of the bookseller to take a chance on a new look. It’s quite hard to take a risk like (designing) a cover that's not like anything in its genre. You might do if you’re bold enough and you put enough effort into the marketing. (But) all too often you try someting different and it just vanishes. Then you have to rejacket it to look like everything else.

Adds Antonia:

We do take risks sometimes. But risks cost. So you have to be very sure of what you are doing.

The London Book Fair Day Two: It's the UK against the world in book cover design

The talk was meant to be about international perspectives on cover design - there were to be two British publishers — Patrick Insole from Walker Books and Jon Lambert from Templar — and Christine Baker from the French publisher, Gallimard Jeunnesse.

But we lost the French publisher due to the transportation chaos - Antonia Pelari, rights director of Scholastic stepped in at the last minute.

Patrick, Antonia and Jon

Despite the exotic sound to her name, Antonia is as British as the other two speakers making the 'international panel' thoroughly UK led. But I thought the resulting event - though not what it said on the tin - was revelatory about the UK market. Illustrator John Shelley blogged very perceptively about it today.

Jon of Templar showed the evolution of this Eragon cover with the author Christopher Paolini very much hands on - changing the key image up to the last minute. But this is an aberration rather than the rule. The author may be consulted but the opinion that counts the most would be "the client". Who's the client? The bookseller.

Patrick of Walker showed the evolution of international covers for The Savage by David Almond and illustrated by Dave McKean. Candlewick, the American arm of Walker, felt that the original cover (on the right) was too "brutal". So McKean came up with the cover on the left which is the US cover.

It just goes to show that violence is in the eye of the beholder.

Here's the French cover - very chic. Said Patrick, "Even though internationally the covers (of The Savage) look different, there’s a family likeness to all the books."

"Sometimes when authors see the covers of their foreign editions, they are a bit taken aback," Antonia said, because the international interpretation may be so far from their own. "What they need to realize is that those international publishers create a cover that will work within their market and nobody knows that market better than they do."

Antonia showed these covers of Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve and illustrated by David Frankland.

On the left is the UK cover by David Frankland and on the right is the Dutch cover. Indeed this Dutch edition didn't do well. The rights have now reverted and been picked up and the cover on the left is now what bookstores are stocking in the Netherlands. "They don't always get it right," Antonia said.

With the British book market contracting slightly in the downturn, overseas sales have become so important to UK publishers that appealing to all markets has become very, very important.

The problem for picture book illustration in the UK of course, as pointed out by Sunday Times critic Nicolette Jones, who hosted the panel, is that we might end up in a "generic place".

She cited as an example picture book illustrations which show cars with the steering wheel in the middle. "We could end up with a generic picture book land where things look a particular way and not at all like real life."

All this talk of covers made me wonder if my own book TALL STORY (out in May ...  pre-order here - I am not ashamed to beg but please don't make me do it too often) could jump through all the hoops mentioned by our panel. So here are some things that were said and how my cover stands up to them.

It is incredibly hard to make children not look sinister and disturbing. 

Hmm. The child on my cover is eight feet tall. But he doesn't look too sinister.

Tall Story Cover

Illustration David Dean. Cover design Alison Godsby

A luxury space like the Barns and Noble in New York (would have room to display your book cover). But the majority of bookstores cram them in – a lead title might be face out but everything else will be spine. 

Tall Story spine:

Yay! I love that the girl with the basketball points toward the cover as if saying, "Check out this book!"

For the sake of the international market, we avoid putting things on the cover that might be too specific - like a big red double decker bus.

Oops.

Tall Story back cover

It's all not necessarily so of course, the panel said. There are really no rules although it might seem like it.

Getting the cover right is - like everything in the book business - all about balancing risk with doing the best you can - Jon Lambert summed it up beautifully:

What we are trying to sell people is a common goal not to exclude anyone from reading a great book. 

An aside about the cover of Tall Story: I LOVE it --  it's so ... 3D! It's so full of story, whether you're looking at the flaps, the spine, the back or the front. And I especially LOVE the big red double decker bus. I'm sure the Philippine Department of Tourism loves it too! Thanks, David and Alison! You rock!