Don't want to talk about cancer today, except to give a quick update that Dr. J doesn't know WTF is happening with me.
What I do want to discuss is this fascinating blog called the Book Design Review (a NYT blog? apparently so). How have I missed it? As with many things I stumble upon, this one came via a random read of another favorite blog, VQR, whose January 29th post is a nice rumination by Jacob Silverman on the state of the art of book covers called "Judging Covers." It interests me as a reader, as a writer, as an advertising and marketing professional, and as someone who has worked with a talented designer named Kevin Flores to design a book, cover included, by a fabulous writer named David Maizenberg. It's still available on Amazon, at twice the original cover price. (We're out of print.) The cover graces the top of this post.
Book cover design is of eternal interest to me -- the psychology behind the design (or lack thereof). The last book I bought because of the packaging was Michael Chabon's "Maps and Legends" -- I love Chabon, knew it would be a good read, but the cover was a layered gem, and the heft of the book (attributable to paper stock, not page count) felt substantial and very appealing. It's really a beautiful book, but you have to see it in person to get the full effect. Feels mysterious and layered, like an elaborate pop-up book does when you're six.
Meantime, having logged in fifty books for my MFA program's annual First Novelist Award, I can report that, while it's apparent I can and do judge a book by its cover, I'm even quicker to judge -- and abandon -- a book with a goofy title. Holy mother of God, what were these publishers thinking? It would probably be untoward of me to list the worst offenders here; I'll wait until this year's award has been decided before nailing them semi-publicly.
Book covers and titles... two mightily important elements authors rarely have much control over. Too bad.
Chemo tomorrow, then off for two weeks. A dream.
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3 comments:
I love that cover. You and Kevin did an amazing job. I should have used a pseudonym more fitting such a brilliant cover. Maybe something like Stone Blood Masterson or LeIron Fritz Skelton or something. I also probably shouldn't have permanently deleted 60,000 some words of prose. Then again, some logorrheic individual once claimed that a writer must first expel a million words before he writes a word actually worth reading. At this point I've expelled more than a million words when it comes to law, intellectual property, biotech and so forth, so maybe I can begin to write about something more dramatic, like love, or murder, or dastardly intrigue. But its such a struggle. If I write about biotech, maybe it will help draw attention to some worthy startup company, which in turn will come up with a proper cure for cancer. That's the conceit anyway. The conceit in fiction is different, but its all about a cure nevertheless.
Oh, I would really love to hear what makes a title really bad! I know you can't use specific examples, but maybe you could say something in general??
(And I am thinking about you, E, and sending you all the best, if that can be sent.)
E, time to post something new, its been awhile.
Thinking about you.
D.
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