it's just so frustrating...
Well, it's happened again. That certain large bookseller (which shall remain nameless) has rejected another friend's book BECAUSE OF THE COVER!!! Ugh, this makes me feel so sorry for my friend -- and so angry!!! When I wrote about this over a year ago, I thought that friend's experience was kind of rare, but since then more and more people have told me how this one company has either delayed their book's release (so that the publisher could change the cover) or simply refused to buy any books at all (even with a new cover!)
It's just so frustrating, having to watch good authors suffer like this. My friend who is going through this now is having her book delayed for A YEAR because of this. It's gotten her doubting herself and her writing career. I mean, imagine how you would feel if a book you were expecting to come out in the fall was pushed back for a whole year just because one company didn't like the cover art, something you didn't even have any control over.
I don't know what the solution to this problem is, especially as other book chains (and more importantly, independent bookstores) go out of business, creating less competition. I mean, I know a company should have the right to sell whatever they want, but when there are so few options out there, this one company's refusal can have (and has had) devastating effects on a book's chances of getting an audience -- and a writer's chance to make a living.
Aargh..
~Coe~
posted by coe booth at 6:46 AM
6 Comments:
Okay that's just ridiculous. Are you saying they rejected it because they don't LIKE it? Or they have some "morale" problem with it...?
Honestly, as much as I sympathize with the author, I have a list of books in Amazon that is called Wait for Paperback. Sometimes it's just because I don't have the budget to buy everything in hardcover and sometimes its because the book is so hideous that I don't think anyone will pick it up (I'm a teen librarian). In a for profit business, that is even more of an issue.
I think the fault lies with the publisher though, not the author and think its ridiculous how little say the author has in how their work is presented. I know artists are expensive, but to draft a few designs and use a focus group of teens and gatekeepers (booksellers, teachers, librarians) to help select would make a BIG difference in their profit margin at the end of the day.
The book I think got screwed over the most by its cover is Dana Reinhardt's A Brief Chapter in my Impossible Life. That hardcover didn't even make sense and it's such an amazing story!
I agree with Keri that authors should have more say in their covers. We may not be designers, but we certainly know the mood and feel of our book, and often the designers are freelance and didn't even bother to read it! They just work off of a blurb/description.
I also like the idea of a small focus group that gives feedback on the covers in the early stages. Im sure this would be cost prohibitive for publishers, but so is a book that doesn't sell well because of its design.
I don't know, Caroline. Maybe some authors might be okay at this, but if you have ever looked at some authors websites, you can see that others should never be trusted with any design task ever. And authors certainly don't know any better than publishers what retailers will like. Even me-- I consider myself a pretty good designer, but if I was going to design a cover for my own book, I'm sure I wouldn't be able to help designing it based on factors that have nothing at all to do with what will sell.
It's just not an author's job or area of expertise.
Anyway, the problem, as I see it in Coe's post, is not that publishers are designing bad covers but that one giant chain has too much power over what reaches the marketplace and what doesn't. Yes, as Keri said, it's a for profit business, but it's messed up that it's one retailer and one buyer that essentially gets to make the decision for everyone else. If a certain inscrutable and capricious retailer decides for whatever reason that it doesn't like a book, the book will never find an audience. period.
what is the solution to this? Shop indie of course, but it's not like there's any stopping the juggernaut.
I, too, think it's wrong that the reading public is presented only with books selected by one or two or a handful of people. But I kind of feel it's our own fault. When consumers so readily support "chosen" and hyped books, maybe we're saying "you pick for me."
If only people didn't judge books by their covers. Sigh. I talk about this with friends and customers multiple times a week. I wish more books were as those I found in the library when I was little: old hardcovers with nothing more than the title and author on the front, no plot summary, just waiting to be opened and discovered...
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