‘Never judge a book by its cover’, but despite this aphorism, much effort goes into designing an appealing cover and coming up with a compelling title? Why? Well, obviously those two elements influence the book browser to be attracted to your book and potentially buying it.
Many other factors are, of course, entailed in the whole complex process of promoting and selling books: a wide audience reach in communicating your book to the public, these days mostly through social media; positive reviews in prominent mass media; the reputation of the author; word of mouth recommendations; many other less visible factors. But there is no doubt that an attractive cover design and a memorable title has a place in affecting the buying process.
This proposition may not hold for all well-selling books, currently or historically: What compelled people in the 19th century to buy a copy of Oliver Twist, or Tom Sawyer? Peruse the shelves of any library examining 20th century titles and few covers jump out at you. ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ seems a captivating title but the original cover design telegraphed little invitation to me, but then, by 1941, Hemingway was a prominent literary figure.
My favourite cover design, and title, which I referenced in my last blog post, is rather esoteric, yet provocative, and contains, for me at least, a sense of humour:
In my own writing history – now eight books in the last ten years – the cover designs were given a lot of thought, and more so as I gained increasing confidence in my writing and publishing endeavours. I must say, the titles came to me relatively easily, and I am grateful for the positive feedback I’ve had on my titles. I admit, they largely ‘just came to me’ – in almost every case before I had even written the book, the percolation of the book an extension of the title.
Cover design took more effort and highly depended on the interaction between me and the designer. I’ve had three designers for my eight books, the last five of which more attractive than the first, rather conventional covers. The titles may have been evident at the outset but the cover design came midway, or later, in the writing of the book. Book covers are intended to summarize in an image, the theme of the book, draw some connection with the title, and together, hopefully, invite the prospective reader in. In most cases I was very pleased with the covers of my books, but, it has to be said, I’m quite unsure whether the covers made any difference in the sales of those books.
For my truly devoted readers of this blog, here’s a little history of my books, covers and titles:
| The Dynamics of Management (2015)(Subtitled, Managing the Intangibles of Influencing Others) Any time you have to use a subtitle it suggests the title itself may have missed the mark. On the other hand, most academic books use subtitles, perhaps as shorthand for what the book is all about. The DoM was my first book, and took ten years to write, and as the cover seems to project, a sober and serious book indeed. I was pretty tired of the project by the time we needed a cover and left it to my graphics designer. She always said she was a text layout specialist, not a graphics designer and perhaps by the time she had struggled through all the graphs and charts and footnotes in the text she was sick of it too. But it wouldn’t be fair to put blame on her for the cover design. In fact, the contents, while cerebral and somber enough, also contained some humour and lightness, not just lecturing. So if I were to do it over, I’d likely move away from the dark blues to something a lot lighter. We tried for some sense of balance, highlighting the tightrope motif but I think we missed it. |
| The Maxim Chronicles (2016) This is a memoir about the family dog, Max, who entered the Jordan family and became a champion. This too has a subtitle, ‘A year in the life of a Standard Poodle’, which I loosely borrowed from Peter Mayle’s wonderful comedic memoir, ‘A Year in Provence’. I was trying to signal that this wasn’t just some boring treatise on Standard Poodles but about family dynamics and a wry narrative of the tensions found in perhaps any family not always on the same page. The designer is the same person who did The DofM and in retrospect, we failed to bring out the humour in the narrative. I guess I thought any book about a dog was likely to become a best seller, and besides, the browsing potential customer only had to thumb through the book to find the amusing lithographic illustrations there. Hmmm. |
| The Hallelujah Chorus (2017) Having the bit firmly between my teeth I was already into the sequel to ‘The Maxim Chronicles’ even as it was at the printer. I thought the title pretty clever: Hallelujah was her name, and this was the refrain of the Maxim Chronicles. If you look closely at the cover, you’ll see music notation: you might guess what the notation is*. The subtitle on this book got me into some trouble with Facebook and Amazon. I had to persuade them that ‘bitch’ is a perfectly suitable word for a female dog. I wonder how many female readers missed that point too. But the photo of that beautiful girl on the front cover was bound to draw in readers, and I wasn’t completely wrong. The picture of the girl on the back cover provided its own story. I sold more than 50 copies of The Maxim Chronicles (though most of those to previous readers of my weekly newsletter) and at least as many of ‘The Hallelujah Chorus’ through conventional channels, mostly to family and friends, and a few through the veterinarians’ office. (*if you guessed Handel’s Messiah, good for you.) |
| Amitié (2019) As of this post, only four copies of this book in its final form exists, and two of those are in my hands (one in my library and one in inventory). Two beta copies were read by my volunteer editors for a total of three who have actually read this book. This is my only book that is in hard cover with a dust jacket. Patti Moran, designer of my previous three books, was persuaded to do the design over many objections. She claimed to be a layout designer, not an artist, and didn’t believe she could render a drawing that would capture an image of the main character in this novel, Amitié. But then I found some drawings on Patti’s website that she had done in high school… I think the cover is brilliant, but despite that, without relentless promotion, the book lies unprinted, unsold and unread on Lulu.com’s servers. (Maybe a sticker on the cover – Explicit Content – might boost sales.) |
| Travels With Myself (2020) One follower of my blog posts remarked, when reacting to the cover of this book, where did I get my ideas for the title (and for that matter, other titles)? Mostly they just come to me, (out of some deep recesses of my mind), as I think happens with most creative types. In the case of ‘Travels With Myself’, the obvious stimulus is my journey halfway around the world to find myself – and hence the cover design too. I also borrowed from John Steinbeck, ‘Travels with Charlie’, or was it Graham Greene, ‘Travels with my Aunt’? I think a closer examination of the full cover will reveal many aspects of the nature of this memoir – much more than a travelogue. |
| The Treasure of Stella Bay (2021) I liked the concept of the cover of TWM so much I resolved to use the same idea for TSB. I had the idea of showing the bay, and the protagonist himself, 12-year-old Alex Jorgenson, in his little motorboat. The bay was too big a vista to be captured adequately on just the front cover and so my artist/ designer, Katy Dockrill, and I agreed on a wrap-around design that hints at many themes in this novel. It’s a beautiful piece of art, depicting the village of Stella on the far shore; but what is that rock in the foreground? The astute reader (or maybe it’s obvious) will surmise there may be more than one treasure in this story. I knew what I wanted in this cover and that meant finding a real artist (as compared to my previous designers who insisted they were not artists) to do the original artwork. And I think this artwork is brilliant. I think I should take some credit though, as it was my idea which Katy somehow absorbed as through intuition (and maybe google maps); we went through a number of iterations to get the image right, and the colours. (To be completely open, Katy credits her partner, Jeffrey Primeau with the text layout.) |
| My Story, Mostly (2022) This is my favourite title, if not my favourite book (though it’s close). Many have noted the ambiguity of the comma and Mostly. MS,M is an autobiography, so isn’t it all truthful? Well maybe, if memory can actually be relied upon. That said, it is mostly my story except for all the parts of my 75 years I was obliged to omit. It’s also in part my brother, Steve’s, story, and certainly my wife of 50 years, Marlene’s, who is no longer alive to tell her own story. The designer of this cover, and ‘Travels with Myself’, was the reliable and accommodating, Melodie Wakefield, of One Fish Creative. |
| Alex’ Choice (2024) This novel, sequel to ‘The Treasure of Stella Bay’, narrates some of the issues a young person has to deal with when he/she struggles through high school then goes off to university, working his way through life’s challenges, relationships, disappointments and dilemmas. I almost called the book, ‘Almost on His Own’ but I think ‘Alex’ Choice’ is better. The artist/designer of this cover, as TSB, Katy Dockrill, captured my ideas in only a couple of drafts, with Dunning Hall in the background and Alex on the corner of University and Union on graduation day, reflecting on the choices he had made, and has yet to make. |
And there you have it. Eight covers and their titles, each having its own story.
I have four (or five or six) more projects on the hard drive, or in my brain. They have titles but no covers, yet.
Doug Jordan, reporting to you from Kanata
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