book packaging

TRX
October 5, 2013
I think I bought my copy in the late '80s. I've read it maybe three times.

There are some things I could legitimately criticize as far as story flow and plotting, but the book has survived half a dozen cycles of brutal culling, which happens when books overflow the available floor space. (the shelves are, by default, full) Knight Moves has managed to stay on the shelf when other books, including some by WJW, have gone off to the used book store.

So, whatever failings it might have, the writing is good enough. I vaguely remember seeing it around for quite a while before buying it.

Generally, there are three main factors that influence my purchase of a book:

A) whether I've read the author's work before, and liked it.

Selling point: since I don't have enough money and/or time to buy all the books I want, I have a sort of virtual rating system based on the percentage of an author's work that I liked. Some writers, all their stuff is pretty much the same. Some are very uneven. WJW is *very* uneven.

B) the blurbs on the back and the front page. I'm kind of picky about that. If I flip the book over and there's someone's picture taking the whole cover instead of text trying to sell me the book, it goes back on the shelf. If I open the front cover and the first page only gushing reviews by newspapers I've never heard of, it goes back on the shelf.

Selling point: There's a lot of room for fail here, particularly with the author portrait and newspaper blither being so common nowadays. That sort of thing tells me "this book is so bad, nobody at the publishing house could be bothered to tell me what it was about."

Occasionally I'll finish a book, look at the blurb again, and wonder if they put it on the wrong book, but since that's both after the sale and after consumption, it's a wash.

C) cover art. To the best of my knowledge I've never bought a book due to its cover art, but I can think of many instances where I've put one back on the shelf after seeing it. Who was it, Signet? Used to use photographs of dolls and GI Joes back in the 1970s? At least *all* of their books looked like that, "paperback trash" to most people.

Really bad cover art tells me the publisher cared so little for the title that they put forth the absolute minimum effort. Come on, people. Even a plain solid color and block letters are better than the editor's niece's crayon scribblings.

From discussions elsewhere, I know that some people are influenced almost entirely by cover art, which means bad art has an even higher chance of losing a sale.

I know an author usually has no control over "packaging", ie cover art and blurbs, so a novel going into the usual sales chain is beyond his control. However, when he's able to flog etexts on the web...

To anyone who hasn't read Knight Moves already, it might as well have been written last week. It's brand new. If it's not selling and others are, the problem is marketing, not the book.

I can tell you one thing. I found the cover art hideous, and that delayed my purchased for a very long time.

TRX
October 11, 2013
I admit I'm probably way off on the end of the bell curve for the cover art. Somewhere along the way I missed out on all those graphics cues that are so obvious to the picture-thinkers.

Thinking back, and looking at the cover art again, the combination of "digital clock" text and curly-haired centaur fairly screamed "fantasy novel: subgenre techno-fantasy." It's a genre I'll read on occasion, but I'll buy any likely-looking hard SF by preference.

There was a sign on my town's Main Street for, oh, 20 years that I remember. It showed what was clearly the "dove" symbol, not quite as common as the "fish" symbol, which is ubiquitous here in the Bible Belt. And it was just before several churches. I didn't really see the point since all three churches were clearly visible as you neared the sign.

One day I noticed the sign was gone, and mentioned it to someone. He said, "yeah. they moved the library, so they took the sign down."

"So? What does a 'churches ahead' sign have to do with the library?"

After some confused discussion, I found out that the "dove" was supposed to be a book, laid open, with its pages curled back, indicating "library." Even if I interpret it as a "book", a stylized shelf of books would be a more appropriate symbol.

Apparently the dove so absolutely, clearly meant "book" that there was no need to put any text on the sign. I fail to see what the point was, since the library was visible from where the sign was, and why an illiterate would need the library anyway. It was the only public building with an icon sign.