Nick Alimonos's Blog - Posts Tagged "publishing"
The Devil's Advocate 4: You *Can* Judge a Book by Its Cover
This piece originally appeared in The Art of Storytelling
The old adage, “You can’t judge a book by its cover” is somewhat inaccurate, IMO. A better saying would be, “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
Either way, people judge things by appearances, at least at first. We do it all the time, though most people are too ashamed to admit it, so as not to seem shallow. The guy covered in tattoos and piercings may turn out to be a caring father, while the clean cut choir boy often ends up a serial killer. You really can’t know the value of something until you spend some time with it. Unfortunately, time is becoming an increasingly precious commodity. If you’re in the business of entertainment, you are constantly battling for eyeballs. One problem in my life (albeit minor) is deciding what to do. What TV show should I watch? What game should I play? What book should I read? Between cable, Netflix, HBO NOW, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc., the choices might as well be infinite. And that’s just television. What about the web? Which of the million+ YouTube videos will be earning your attention tonight? For that matter, why are you even reading this post? Don’t you have better things to do? Walking into Barnes & Noble is no better. There are literally over a million books in print. Sometimes, I just walk out of the store in a daze, having purchased nothing. On the other hand, if Ancient Athens had a B&N, you can be certain everyone who knew to read would have copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey, whether fans of fantasy or not.
This is why we end up judging books by their covers. What choice do we have? I could pick novels at random, or look at the titles, or the synopses on jackets or praise from reviewers, but these are all still part of the cover, and are no more indicative of great storytelling than the picture. When I chose Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, because the title moved me, I was pleasantly surprised by the power of his story. With other books, like The Maze Runner and A Wrinkle in Time, I was not so fortunate. This is not to say that you might not have the opposite experience. My younger self would probably have found Ishiguro a snooze-fest. Now, you might purchase an early edition of A Game of Thrones because you’ve seen the TV show and could care less about the clip art wolf on the front. This is where not judging a book by its cover makes sense. But for those of us without TV shows, struggling to make it in the literary world, we do not have such a luxury.
This brings me to the e-book wasteland. Typically, I can immediately tell when a book is self-published, and admit it, you can too. If you’re a newbie writer, and your undiscovered masterpiece is lurking behind a Photoshopped image of your backyard, don’t expect me to be reading it. To the author whose name isn’t a marketing draw, the cover is everything. A good cover communicates many things about your work: a cartoon drawing is usually kids’ fare, a dragon indicates fantasy, a spaceship Sci-Fi, and a brooding, hooded rogue means big-name publishers have no imagination. But more than anything else, a good cover conveys professionalism. If you cannot be bothered to waste time or money on a cover, it’s doubtful you’ve spent enough time on the writing.
For the past three years, I have labored over The Princess of Aenya. The book represents hundreds of hours of writing, editing, and rewriting, not to mention a lifetime of practice. For me, every character has to be engaging, every chapter intriguing, and every line has to sing. If the reader is not moved in some way by the last page, I know I’ve failed my job. Why should the face of the book, the very thing that might encourage someone to discover your story, be of any less concern?
Your cover art should reflect your writing, and vice versa, because, like it or not, everyone judges a book first by its cover, and only secondly by its contents.
The old adage, “You can’t judge a book by its cover” is somewhat inaccurate, IMO. A better saying would be, “You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
Either way, people judge things by appearances, at least at first. We do it all the time, though most people are too ashamed to admit it, so as not to seem shallow. The guy covered in tattoos and piercings may turn out to be a caring father, while the clean cut choir boy often ends up a serial killer. You really can’t know the value of something until you spend some time with it. Unfortunately, time is becoming an increasingly precious commodity. If you’re in the business of entertainment, you are constantly battling for eyeballs. One problem in my life (albeit minor) is deciding what to do. What TV show should I watch? What game should I play? What book should I read? Between cable, Netflix, HBO NOW, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc., the choices might as well be infinite. And that’s just television. What about the web? Which of the million+ YouTube videos will be earning your attention tonight? For that matter, why are you even reading this post? Don’t you have better things to do? Walking into Barnes & Noble is no better. There are literally over a million books in print. Sometimes, I just walk out of the store in a daze, having purchased nothing. On the other hand, if Ancient Athens had a B&N, you can be certain everyone who knew to read would have copies of The Iliad and The Odyssey, whether fans of fantasy or not.
This is why we end up judging books by their covers. What choice do we have? I could pick novels at random, or look at the titles, or the synopses on jackets or praise from reviewers, but these are all still part of the cover, and are no more indicative of great storytelling than the picture. When I chose Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, because the title moved me, I was pleasantly surprised by the power of his story. With other books, like The Maze Runner and A Wrinkle in Time, I was not so fortunate. This is not to say that you might not have the opposite experience. My younger self would probably have found Ishiguro a snooze-fest. Now, you might purchase an early edition of A Game of Thrones because you’ve seen the TV show and could care less about the clip art wolf on the front. This is where not judging a book by its cover makes sense. But for those of us without TV shows, struggling to make it in the literary world, we do not have such a luxury.
This brings me to the e-book wasteland. Typically, I can immediately tell when a book is self-published, and admit it, you can too. If you’re a newbie writer, and your undiscovered masterpiece is lurking behind a Photoshopped image of your backyard, don’t expect me to be reading it. To the author whose name isn’t a marketing draw, the cover is everything. A good cover communicates many things about your work: a cartoon drawing is usually kids’ fare, a dragon indicates fantasy, a spaceship Sci-Fi, and a brooding, hooded rogue means big-name publishers have no imagination. But more than anything else, a good cover conveys professionalism. If you cannot be bothered to waste time or money on a cover, it’s doubtful you’ve spent enough time on the writing.
For the past three years, I have labored over The Princess of Aenya. The book represents hundreds of hours of writing, editing, and rewriting, not to mention a lifetime of practice. For me, every character has to be engaging, every chapter intriguing, and every line has to sing. If the reader is not moved in some way by the last page, I know I’ve failed my job. Why should the face of the book, the very thing that might encourage someone to discover your story, be of any less concern?
Your cover art should reflect your writing, and vice versa, because, like it or not, everyone judges a book first by its cover, and only secondly by its contents.
Myths of the Writing Profession
This piece originally appeared in The Art of Storytelling
I’ll never be an Olympic gymnast, but watching these young athletes spin and flip through the air only solidifies in my mind my utter lack of agility. This doesn’t happen to me, however, when I am reading other authors. Instead of intimidation, I feel relief, a boost in confidence. I can’t help saying to myself, "Dang, if this can get published, I know I sure can!" The intimidating thing is never the reality, but what I imagine the competition to be. Which is why, sometimes, a good imagination can be a bad thing. Like when you’re an aspiring writer perusing your local Barnes & Noble’ New Science-Fiction and Fantasy section. The number of titles getting released might as well be endless, and the beautiful covers holding up to 900+ pages can be intimidating. Based purely on the illustrations alone, my mind conjures bits and pieces of brilliantly realized worlds and utterly fantastic stories, and the overflowing praise on the back flap makes these books seem all the more challenging to measure up to.
My biggest anxiety, however, is not that I can’t or don’t measure up, but that the literary world is quite simply saturated. Where does the Aenya Series fit on the current shelf of fantasy titles? Who has time for one more story? Our society is suffering from information pollution and I am not helping the situation by adding my voice to it. I’d wager there are enough decent books to satisfy an avid reader for a lifetime. Quite frankly, we may not need any new publications. My only saving grace is knowing that in most cases, these books are rarely as good as their artwork, and the praise attributed to them is completely overblown.
The snake-oil salesmen of the modern age are book critics. How often does a novel come out that you truly can’t put down? And is that even a good thing? You’ll never see a movie trailer claim to be so entertaining that you can’t look away. It’s gotten to the point where true masterpieces, like Frank Herbert’s Dune or Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, need new monikers to set them apart, like grand masterpiece or supreme masterpiece. But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before your read-it-and-forget-it novel goes under the heading of grand masterpiece too, which makes me wonder what reissues of books like Dune will say in the future, super-duper-ultimate masterpiece? Point is, there’s a scarcity of great books in the world, or if many exist, they’re buried beneath the dreck. The reality makes the bajillions of new books seem less intimidating.
Imagination can also hamper a writer's confidence when you add the many ridiculous misconceptions regarding the writing profession. Hollywood would have us believe five year old prodigies can churn out operas, or that masterpieces can be knocked out in one sitting. Even experienced writers get taken in by these myths, like Conan creator Robert Howard, who insisted that each of his works were completed in one draft in a single night of sweat-drenched terror (in actually, Conan went through numerous drafts). And who remembers D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival)? a story about a piece of fiction so incredible, people will commit murder just to get their hands on it? What’s really frustrating is that, even if you don’t believe the myths, other people do, so if you’re not writing like Shakespeare in elementary school, you’re just not cut out for the job (see: my Dad). When I tell people I’m a writer, they either treat me like a genius, or like some delusional hack. They simply can’t conceive of a person who just works really hard everyday at getting better.
I am always annoyed when people ask me, “So, did you get your book published yet?” Honestly, most people have no clue how daunting the task can be. Or worse, they think it’s like winning the lottery, all luck and no hard work. Worse still, if you don’t get published right away, it automatically means you are hack. That’s the misconception everyone has, that there’s some guy in some lofty literary tower somewhere, some wizard of words reading every submission from cover to cover. The truth is, neither publisher nor agent is in the business of achieving or even understanding literary excellence. That’s our job. They’re just salesmen. Their job is to facilitate the sale of books. Typically, the deciding factor is whether your book looks like another book which recently sold well, which explains all the zombie/vampire/bondage/teen dystopias lately. Whether a book is good in some grand artistic sense means nothing to a publisher. For this reason, writers are often at odds with the business side of things. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was a financial failure, but what writer wouldn’t have wanted to have written that book? Often times, great books see a lot of rejection, like Dune, which was turned down 11 times. Question is, did anyone bother reading it before throwing it in the trash? Was it rejected on the basis of Herbert’s query letter, or did someone actually read through it and say, no thanks? Nobody probably knows, but I imagine Dune was way over the heads of most editors. Cinnamon like drugs that make you see into the future? Giant worms the size of skyscrapers? NO THANKS!
At thirty-seven years, I’ve become aware of the hard realities of the publishing industry, and that has only helped to boost my confidence. Ages of Aenya doesn’t have to measure up to Melville or Tolkien, or anybody for that matter. People just have to like it. I am certain a segment of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi crowd will no doubt loathe it, based on what they think makes for good fiction, and I’m prepared to ignore them. Only the fans matter, and if the fans I have represent a sample size of the reading public, then it’s just a matter of time before the Aenya Series is sitting pretty on the shelf with other titles with great covers, making young aspiring writers everywhere feel anxious.
I’ll never be an Olympic gymnast, but watching these young athletes spin and flip through the air only solidifies in my mind my utter lack of agility. This doesn’t happen to me, however, when I am reading other authors. Instead of intimidation, I feel relief, a boost in confidence. I can’t help saying to myself, "Dang, if this can get published, I know I sure can!" The intimidating thing is never the reality, but what I imagine the competition to be. Which is why, sometimes, a good imagination can be a bad thing. Like when you’re an aspiring writer perusing your local Barnes & Noble’ New Science-Fiction and Fantasy section. The number of titles getting released might as well be endless, and the beautiful covers holding up to 900+ pages can be intimidating. Based purely on the illustrations alone, my mind conjures bits and pieces of brilliantly realized worlds and utterly fantastic stories, and the overflowing praise on the back flap makes these books seem all the more challenging to measure up to.
My biggest anxiety, however, is not that I can’t or don’t measure up, but that the literary world is quite simply saturated. Where does the Aenya Series fit on the current shelf of fantasy titles? Who has time for one more story? Our society is suffering from information pollution and I am not helping the situation by adding my voice to it. I’d wager there are enough decent books to satisfy an avid reader for a lifetime. Quite frankly, we may not need any new publications. My only saving grace is knowing that in most cases, these books are rarely as good as their artwork, and the praise attributed to them is completely overblown.
The snake-oil salesmen of the modern age are book critics. How often does a novel come out that you truly can’t put down? And is that even a good thing? You’ll never see a movie trailer claim to be so entertaining that you can’t look away. It’s gotten to the point where true masterpieces, like Frank Herbert’s Dune or Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, need new monikers to set them apart, like grand masterpiece or supreme masterpiece. But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before your read-it-and-forget-it novel goes under the heading of grand masterpiece too, which makes me wonder what reissues of books like Dune will say in the future, super-duper-ultimate masterpiece? Point is, there’s a scarcity of great books in the world, or if many exist, they’re buried beneath the dreck. The reality makes the bajillions of new books seem less intimidating.
Imagination can also hamper a writer's confidence when you add the many ridiculous misconceptions regarding the writing profession. Hollywood would have us believe five year old prodigies can churn out operas, or that masterpieces can be knocked out in one sitting. Even experienced writers get taken in by these myths, like Conan creator Robert Howard, who insisted that each of his works were completed in one draft in a single night of sweat-drenched terror (in actually, Conan went through numerous drafts). And who remembers D.O.A. (Dead on Arrival)? a story about a piece of fiction so incredible, people will commit murder just to get their hands on it? What’s really frustrating is that, even if you don’t believe the myths, other people do, so if you’re not writing like Shakespeare in elementary school, you’re just not cut out for the job (see: my Dad). When I tell people I’m a writer, they either treat me like a genius, or like some delusional hack. They simply can’t conceive of a person who just works really hard everyday at getting better.
I am always annoyed when people ask me, “So, did you get your book published yet?” Honestly, most people have no clue how daunting the task can be. Or worse, they think it’s like winning the lottery, all luck and no hard work. Worse still, if you don’t get published right away, it automatically means you are hack. That’s the misconception everyone has, that there’s some guy in some lofty literary tower somewhere, some wizard of words reading every submission from cover to cover. The truth is, neither publisher nor agent is in the business of achieving or even understanding literary excellence. That’s our job. They’re just salesmen. Their job is to facilitate the sale of books. Typically, the deciding factor is whether your book looks like another book which recently sold well, which explains all the zombie/vampire/bondage/teen dystopias lately. Whether a book is good in some grand artistic sense means nothing to a publisher. For this reason, writers are often at odds with the business side of things. Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was a financial failure, but what writer wouldn’t have wanted to have written that book? Often times, great books see a lot of rejection, like Dune, which was turned down 11 times. Question is, did anyone bother reading it before throwing it in the trash? Was it rejected on the basis of Herbert’s query letter, or did someone actually read through it and say, no thanks? Nobody probably knows, but I imagine Dune was way over the heads of most editors. Cinnamon like drugs that make you see into the future? Giant worms the size of skyscrapers? NO THANKS!
At thirty-seven years, I’ve become aware of the hard realities of the publishing industry, and that has only helped to boost my confidence. Ages of Aenya doesn’t have to measure up to Melville or Tolkien, or anybody for that matter. People just have to like it. I am certain a segment of the Fantasy/Sci-Fi crowd will no doubt loathe it, based on what they think makes for good fiction, and I’m prepared to ignore them. Only the fans matter, and if the fans I have represent a sample size of the reading public, then it’s just a matter of time before the Aenya Series is sitting pretty on the shelf with other titles with great covers, making young aspiring writers everywhere feel anxious.
