What's in a cover?
How many times have we heard "Don't judge a book by it's cover"? The metaphor for human beings or the mutt at the shelter is a good one. The analogy of not making hasty judgements simply by the appearance of a package is apt. However, we all do it. Much of it happens within the inner workings of our brains, not necessarily controlled by logic, opinion or even our desire to be open-minded. When you see a book, your brain takes in the data and whirls it around with your opinion, taste and likes vs dislikes in the time it takes to either decide not to pull that book off the shelf or to actually pull it off and see what is inside. Thus the cover is VERY important to the creators behind it.
When a book is published, there is SO much that goes on behind the scene. Obviously there is the writing. There is the illustrating. There is the designing. Let's stop right there on the designing for this piece.
A designer is someone who takes the talents of the author/illustrator and makes it look really good (or not so good). In the case of this book the designer has made both the author and the illustrator look really good (in my humble opinion). There are many decisions that go into the final bound book - things like font selection, negative space, placement of text and illustration, use of ampersand for "and" or not on a title, raster images vs vector images, Typography, grids, CMYK and RGB for color selection, DPI and PPI, bleed, kerning and altering and shaping and the list goes on and on. Look at all we take for granted when we just read a book (or as John Woods would say, "we just look at the pictures").
Then the book is ready to go to press and there are things like the psychological effect of color selection. What color will invite someone to the cover and what color will push that potential reader away? In this case multiplied by the question of what color compliments the other colors in the series? With the forethought of the next (and last) book in the series, what color will compliment the yet unchosen color of the next book?
Much of it comes down to opinion, and lordy, lordy opinions are abundant! You have an opinion when you look at the four covers and likely it is immediate. What happens when the author LOVES one of the color selections and the illustrator LOVES a different one? Well in the case of traditional publishing, not much. But in the trend of self publishing and "involved publishing" likely the designer and the illustrator's opinions will and should win out. After all, they are the dabblers in visual art, the author is just the wordsmith... right?
Well, NOT SO FAST! IN this case, this author has spent years doing "grass roots research". Many a Farmer's Market and Junior League Holiday Mart and Arts and Craft Shows and hundreds of school visits and public engagements and... all that is to say, has talked to tens of thousands of readers. This is the author's newest "baby". Generally speaking the author's name is prominently displayed and thus the author wants the book to represent the work that went into it and the passion the author is trying to convey. However, this author is smart enough to yield to the others because if he could draw, he would... and then the illustrator's wife agrees with the author's choice, BOOM, SET, MATCH!
SO, the selection of the color of the title on the front of a book is something heavily contemplated. While most readers would simply shoulder shrug as they turned away from the cover that wasn't chosen wisely - the author, illustrator, editor and designer all hope that the same person's hand will stretch out to select that book from the shelf surrounded by others and pull it down to review the carefully worded text on the inside jacket flap. That is will then invite the person to open it up and see the words, illustrations and design, all carefully edited. That they will decide the time spent reading this book surpasses the price tag on the same jacket flap or in the case of checking it out at the library, that the opportunity cost vs the other books that could be selected is worth it. That would indicate the time spent deliberating the color of the text on the cover was well worth it indeed.
As the author, I'd love to hear what your first response is. Which cover at the top of this post reaches out to you? Consider it is sitting next to four books below and that it will be joined by one more. You might even already have an opinion about what color the 6th and final book's title should be... please do share, after all if you made it this far in this blog, you might just want to read the next book..
