A Funny Question
There are so many wonderful conversations you get to have once you’ve sold a book and there are certain questions I could answer a million more times and not get tired of, like people asking how I sold the book. (It’s not some great story but I worked a long time on it and some part of me still can’t believe it was actually bought by a publisher, so retelling that story is always a pleasure.) But here's a question that always puzzles me:
People always ask me if the girl on the cover is me. Maybe it’s because she has reddish hair and I do too, but she is clearly a teen whereas I am on the older side of 35. Plus our faces don’t look alike, though maybe at a glance if you just see the hair and see that she’s tall you could think she’s me? Or maybe people think I handed the design people at Harper a picture of me when I was a teen and asked them to put it on the cover? I guess that's possible but then has that ever happened? It would be cool to see some of my favorite authors as teens, though in my case it would really date the book: when I was the cover girl's age I had a bad perm and wore Flashdance sweatshirts (I'm sorry to have to admit this but there it is). But I really have never heard of an author being on the cover of her book unless it was a memoir or possibly a cookbook.
So now I'm wondering, has there ever been a YA or MG book where the author's photo was used as part of the cover design? And to other authors, do you ever get this question?
#daphne
posted by daphne grab at 11:53 AM
13 Comments:
I get a lot of enthusiastic "so this is an autobiography?" And then I feel like I let people down. "No. Um. Its really fiction. My life is nothing like this."
I'm on the back cover of my book and I got to pick the artist for the front cover, but that's where it ends. A friend of mine was curiously mistaken for the girl on the cover, and even that was a little shocking. She was all "no... I didn't know Jill before she wrote this and I'm ... way... too... old..."
I theorize that people want to believe somehow that your book IS you.
But I bet no one asks Stephen King if that's him on his cover, or how awful it must have been, that whole year he was trailed by that spooky clown thing, and why all this stuff keeps happening to him-- the mad prom queens and the out of control dogs and everything.
Maybe its just a YA phenomenon.
For my new book cover, which has a photo of a guy and girl on it, I've been asked many times already where I found the photo, and who the couple is. I always explain that it's a stock photo and that a designer did the cover, but it seems that a lot of people think authors do their own covers. Baffling!
And, of course, I ALWAYS get the question from CASSIE WAS HERE about whether I am Bree and if I had an imaginary friend when I was 11. FICTION, people, FICTION.
I get asked by teens all the time if the picture on the cover of TYRELL is really me. I mean, yeah, both Tyrell and I have braids... but, um, he's a teenage boy!
It's just like Jill said. Teens have a hard time understanding that you're not writing about yourself. I say it all the time on my school visits, but they keep asking questions that suggest the story is about my life somehow, which couldn't be further from the truth. I think for people (especially kids) who don't write fiction, it's hard to understand what it's like to make up stories in your head.
And Caroline, kids definitely think authors do their own covers. Kids ask me all the time why I didn't show Tyrell's face, which leads me to telling them about the job of the writer vs. the job of the publishing house. Well, for KENDRA, I actually did chose the cover, so I guess sometimes there's an overlap...
:-)
It's not technically YA, but Mat Johnson's photo is on the front cover of his graphic novel Incognegro. Here's his story about it:
http://www.niggerati.com/2007/07/icognegro-cover.html
SERIOUSLY! people always ask me if the ALFA girls are people I know, my sister, etc. so random.
i can't believe how many people assume my book is my own story when it couldn't be more different. and you're right jill, i suspect it is a ya thing. i love the image of people sympathizing with stephen king over things like that car of his that went crazy though :-)
lisa, that is really fascinating and i love that his daughter was scared of him with the new mustache!
coe, i think you're right about teens and i love that you get asked about your cover design choices on TYRELL!
I don't have a cover yet...okay, or even a contract! But I do have two cover stories.
The first isn't really a story, but just kind of cool. A friend of ours moved to NYC this year to pursue acting. Her first job was a print job for a cover of MARY INGALLS ON HER OWN - A new Little House Book.
The other is a story that Graham Salisbury told at a conference I was at once. For his first book, BLUE SKIN OF THE SEA they had a painting commissioned and then at the last minute they decided they wanted to use a photo. Since the book is set in Hawaii, they looked through a bunch of stock photos of Hawaii and chose one. It is of a church in the jungly hills of Hawaii. He was pretty surprised when he saw the cover because it turns out, it wasn't just any church, but the church that Salisbury's grandfather had helped build!
Which reminds me, I haven't read any of his books in a long time and I really should. He's fantastic.
Francesca Lia Block's photo is on the cover of her book Blood Roses (http://btobsearch.barnesandnoble.com/Blood-Roses/Francesca-Lia-Block/e/9780060763855/?itm=2&btob=Y)
Jacqueline Wilson is a very popular British children's author. Her semi-biographical book, Jacky Daydream has an illustration of her as a child on the cover, drawn by popular illustrator, Nick Sharratt.
I get that question a lot too, and it always baffles me. Do people not get the idea of fiction?
They used Amber's picture on the cover of Ghosts of Albion: Accursed.
In defence of readers of fiction, many authors DO use autobiographical elements in their books. An old boyfriend of mine's father wrote a series of mystery novels where the main character was a father in the suburbs of Toronto with a wife, a son and a daughter. It was no stretch to see the obvious there. If the author is especially well-known it's easy for readers to draw references from events in novels to events in the author's life (helllo, Hemingway). And as Hollywood has shown us, movies seem better (and maybe sell better but I'm not going to spend all afternoon on IMDB to find out) if they are "based on a true story."
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