Hooray for new books!

I also understand that publishers pay a lot of attention to what the head buyer at a certain chain store (used to be two chains; look how well that turned out) thinks of a cover. If they don’t like it, they won’t buy it, and that can mean thousands of copies unsold. But relying so heavily on one or two people’s opinions is going to result in a narrow field of acceptable designs, and can only reflect a certain segment of your readership. In addition, those buyers are very likely not on the selling floor, and are far removed from the actual experience of placing a book in a reader’s hands.

I also LOVE her suggestion of how to fix it:

So here’s what I propose to help save yourselves money: create a group of power-indie handsellers, folks with years of experience who know their business cold and excel at recommending books to readers. You send out a pdf to seven folks, and they give you feedback. The idea of adding yet more voices to the process of designing a book may seem unappealing, but, like listening to other opinions in an editorial meeting, you’re likely to hear some valuable feedback that will end up with a better book, improving sales and beefing up your bottom line, which is what you want and need. Remember, you’re not looking for an intensive critique here. You just want a quick, Absolutely, Passable, or Absolutely not.

Booksellers are in the enviable position of seeing everything that comes out, so we can quickly identify trends and alert you to overused images from the current season. We can tell you things like, “Hey, everyone is doing smoky blue or black-and-white covers this season; those palettes are on overload,” or, “This is the sixth cover design I’ve seen so far featuring a close-up image of a giant key.” Then you can choose to do with that information whatever feels useful to you, even if it’s nothing whatsoever.

Wouldn’t that be awesome?

I’m not going to name names, but I think every agent has stories of a cover that her client hated, but that was finalized because it made the difference between an x-thousand copy purchase from a store, versus an xx-thousand purchase. Or authors who have readers come up to them on tour, saying they loved the book, but hated the cover. The model didn’t match the reader’s image of the main character — wrong race, wrong size, wrong hair color, etc.

It happens. To all of us. Wouldn’t it be great if it happened to fewer books?

Let’s end this on a positive note! (I’m an optimist, it’s what I do.) What are some of your FAVORITE covers? The ones that stand out in a crowd, that made you pick up a book you wouldn’t have otherwise? The ones that perfectly captured a book for you? Please share some links in the comments!

Someone’s been a very bad zombie.

Super-smartie Kate Grable gets to play doctor, helping out her high school football team. Not only will the experience look good on her college apps, she gets to be thisclose to her quarterback crush, Aaron. Then something disturbing happens. Kate finds out that the coach has given the team steroids. Except . . . the vials she finds don’t exactly contain steroids. Whatever’s in them is turning hot gridiron hunks into mindless, flesh-eating . . . zombies.

Unless she finds an antidote, no one is safe. Not Aaron, not Kate’s brother, not her best friend . . . not even Kate . . .

It’s scary. It’s twisted. It’s sick. It’s high school.

Feel free to pre-order your copy now!Or, you know, wait until it’s actually available to pre-order, and then do so! Links to come!

What do you want to talk about? What have you seen that’s interesting, horrifying, thought-provoking, or repelling? Who has cute lolcat pictures to share?

Let ‘em loose in the comments, which I look forward to reading.

All of your cover designs were so great that it was hard to choose just one. Ultimately I had to envision myself perusing the YA section of the book store, not tough since it’s one of my favorite past times, and ask myself which cover would inspire me to pick the book off of the shelf. The winner of our contest looks like a bona fide YA novel straight from Barnes and Noble. And the winner is…

talshannon (aka Xarles Boivin) for PALE! I actually really liked both of the covers. Each one stirs up a completely different concept of what the story might be, which just goes to show how important the right cover is.

Of course there were some very close runners up. HWPetty’s cover for FORCE was compelling and MarcyKate’s TRAVERSE had me giggling.

Thanks to everyone for participating and congrats to talshannon for winning a copy of Alyson Noel’s best-selling novel BLUE MOON! Please send us an email with your mailing address so we can get your prize to you.

CREATE YOUR DEBUT YA COVER

1 – Go to Fake Name Generator. The name that appears is your author name.

2 – Go to Random Word Generator. The word listed under “Random Verb” is your title.

3 – Go to FlickrCC. Type your title into the search box. The first photo that contains a person is your cover.

4 – Use Photoshop, Picnik, or similar (I use Snagit Editor) to put it all together. Be sure to crop and/or zoom in, as desired.

5 – Post it to your site along with this text.

Mine’s above. What’s yours? Link to it in the comments. And just to make it interesting, Intern Jenny will pick her favorite cover to win a copy of Alyson Noel’s #1 New York Times bestseller Blue Moon.

Let your inner artist shine forth!

Authors do not get final say on covers. Often they get no say at all.

Show of hands, here — how many of you writers envision a design meeting where you can share your ideas for the cover of your baby, your manuscript? Yeah, not going to happen. Maureen Johnson and I had an exceptional experience with Scholastic with the hardcover design for Suite Scarlett, including giving our opinions about the model being picked to portray Scarlett on the cover, and the cut of the dress she would wear, but that is the exception, not the rule.

The key phrase you’ll find in contracts is “consultation,” not “approval.” Most publishers do want to try to work with an author to find a cover that everyone likes, but if they can’t get everyone on board, the author’s opinion often weighs far below that of key sales accounts.

Because I’m all about positive reinforcement and optimism here at kt literary, what covers have you loved?