Lynne Patrick
Whoever coined the phrase you can’t judge a book by its cover has clearly never had a hand in designing one.
I seem to recall stirring a lively discussion last time I introduced cover designs into Dead Guy’s rich mix, and I hadn’t even entertained the thought that it might be a controversial issue. I don’t plan to revisit old territory – but since cover design, one way or another, has taken up quite a lot of my week, it was sure to spill out on to the screen today.
First there was a cake. We launched our final title of 2009 at the end of last week: Love Not Poison, Mary Andrea Clarke’s second 18th century romp starring the Crimson Cavalier. A friend of Mary’s had made a cake, not only shaped like a book but with the actual cover image on the front. How do they do that? I’d provide a picture if I knew how and had the necessary gadgetry.
Then this week our 2010 covers have been centre-stage. Our front cover images are designed by a wonderfully talented young man called Peter. Covers have to be finished, for a variety of reasons mostly to do with marketing, months before a book goes to print and often some time before the author has produced a complete draft, so sketchy information is all I can offer him at this stage of the process. But he has a knack for taking those vestigial details and getting straight to the heart of the matter. Usually it takes him no more than two attempts to come up with an image that says exactly what we want it to say.
Usually.
Last year’s titles gave him no trouble at all. Roz Southey’s new 18th century musical mystery Secret Lament: easy peasy, set around a stage show, so he created his own take on the classic image of happy-sad theatre masks. Linda Regan’s Dead Like Her was easier still: the plot revolves around Marilyn Monroe lookalikes, so that’s what we got. Blood Money, Maureen Carter’s latest Bev Morriss adventure, has a burglar wearing a sinister clown mask; that was probably easiest of all.
You get the picture. So did we: loud, clear and presenting exactly the right message to potential readers. And so it was with our 2010 titles.
All except one.
Poor Peter came up with idea after idea, I made suggestion after suggestion, and for the first time in our five-year association it just wasn’t working. Until today. This morning I switched on the computer, downloaded my e-mail – and let out the breath I hadn’t even realised I was holding. There it was. The picture that’s worth a thousand words. Deep down I knew he’d get there in the end; it’s just never taken this long before.
And as these little glitches do, it set a train of thought going: what does a cover actually do?
Well, first and foremost, it makes people want to open the book. It strikes a spark, touches a nerve, triggers a synapse. Sometimes it’s just an image; it bears little or no relation to the story, but the eye is drawn to it.
That’s fine in its way, but I like a cover to say something about what it’s covering. A lot of Crème de la Crime’s covers, like the masks, the lookalike, the clown, offer an in-your-face taster of what lies behind; what you see is quite definitely what you get.
Other times it’s more subtle. There’s a story right there in the picture, intriguing, tantalising, posing questions.
For me, when that kind of cover works as it should, that’s the best kind of all.
Now, have a stirred a lively discussion again? Or have I avoided controversy this time?
