All We Ever Wanted Was A Blog

They say “don’t judge a book by its cover,” and after seeing what publishers in assorted countries have done with mine, I now understand why. It’s hard to imagine that they all belong to the same book.

There’s the rather Victorian Italian cover (with a different title, since the American title didn’t work in translation).

And then there’s the more iconic and sly American cover, with nary a distressed lady in sight. This one got a fair amount of praise (though, oddly, also provoked Janet Maslin to lump it in with a “chick book” story in the New York Times.) 

My American publishers stuck with this cover for the paperback — although they changed the font to a serif font, added a number of quotes and a pink “bestseller!” medallion.

Here’s an early (and fairly generic) Dutch cover….

…. that got scrapped in favor of a version of American sundae cover with a more whimsical font.

The British hardback cover, very American Beauty …

… And then the paperback British cover, which went in a completely different direction. (You can see a flower theme evolving here - trust me, the book doesn’t have anything to do with flowers.)

There’s the German cover, which feels modern and sophisticated. I like this one because of the graphical feeling to it, and the way it’s divided into sextants.

… And the American Large Type cover, which, frankly, I just find perplexing. Are those Faberge eggs?

Authors love to complain about their covers — women often (rightly) argue that they’re being pigeonholed with covers that denote them as “chick books” and ethnic writers bemoan the “exotic” henna-tattoo-type covers that sell them as the next Salman Rushdie-Khaled Hosseini-Jhumpa Lahiri. It’s the rare author that says they’re thrilled with their cover — probably because most have absolutely no say over the finished product.

What I can take away from my own experience is that each cover was designed by publishers who had a specific demographic and marketing plan in mind — and they weren’t always the same. I’m sure they know better than me the tastes of the readers in their individual countries, but the wide spectrum of “tone” on these covers is still very curious. At the least, it provides an interesting glimpse into the minds of marketing departments around the world.

There’s at least one similarity between them all: My novel wasn’t written as a “woman’s book” - despite the fact that it has three women as characters — but it’s clear that across the globe, the marketing is being geared towards that gender. (And no wonder - women make up the majority of fiction readers.) Food, flowers, women in bikinis, women in pretty dresses, and bright colors like Tiffany blue and pink and purple — these, apparently, are considered lady-friendly imagery, no matter what country you live in.   

Tell me - which is your favorite? And for those of you who have read the book, which one do you think most aptly captures the content?