A Sales Lesson from the Publishing World

Earlier this year, there was some news about a rather important individual in the publishing world--  President and publisher of Gotham/Avery Books Bill Shinker will step down on January 31 to do consulting, after what Penguin president Susan Petersen Kennedy calls a "storied four-decade publishing career [that] uniquely includes the founding of two lasting Penguin and Random House imprints: Gotham Books and Broadway Books." (As reported in Publishers Lunch)

The reason that I bring this up is that I recently ran across the following reference to Shinker in the book Putting Your Passion Into Print.  In it, authors Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry note, William Shinker ... has these words hanging in his office: "The man who said 'Don't judge a book by its cover,' never sold a book in his life."

It's a validation of Lesson #20 from The Handbook of Sales and Science Fiction, that a person who is spending money on a purchase does judge book by its cover.  Here's the lesson in its entirety.


The Sci-Fi:  The Cover Art of Sweet, Whelan, Vallejo, etc.  Industry anecdote.

 The Sci-Fi Sitch:  Growing up in small, rural town in the West, I quickly worked my way through the limited science-fiction section of the local library.  So when we would make a visit into the big city, once every couple of months or so, I would bring along the spending money I had earned from chores and splurge on a new book.  (Well, maybe not a big city, but at least a city.  Put it this way, it did have a couple of bookstores in it, which was a couple more than the little town out in our neck of the sticks.)  But deciding just what book to buy could be a daunting task, given the wide selection from which to choose.  One way that I could pick a new book was, of course, to buy something by one of my go-to writers, like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, or Edgar Rice Burroughs.  But what about when I wanted to branch out? 

What I did then was to look at the cover art on the books and authors that I knew and liked, and then searched for new authors whose covers had the same type of art.  In this manner, Boris Vallejo led me from Tarzan’s jungles to Zelazny’s Amber.  Michael Whelan guided me from the red planet Barsoom to the dragon-filled skies of Pern.  Darrell K. Sweet took me from Heinlein’s Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, and more, to a batches of other Del Rey books by other writers.  In other words, yes, I made a habit of judging books by their covers.

The Sales Sitch:  And I’m not the only one.  When someone is being asked to invest money (their own, or their company’s) into a new product or service, they really do want some indication that they are going to get something of quality in return.  And the appearance, the packaging, (the cover), is the most visible and immediate representation of that quality.  When a prospect or a new client sees an outward appearance that is obviously the result of care and attention, something that both you and they can be proud of, they think to themselves, “Well, so far, so good!” before even getting to the essence of the product.  But if their first sight of the product is a shabby, poorly-executed or amateurish “cover,” you have already primed them into a negative expectation.  Even if the product itself is flawless, you’ve already put yourself at a disadvantage.  And when I talk about the appearance of the product, that includes your appearance as well; you are what you represent, and what you look like will influence what your client thinks about your product.

The Sales and Sci-Fi Lesson:  First impressions count, because a person who is about to spend money does and will judge a book by its cover.

The Sci-Fi Skinny:  Boris Vallejo (Peruvian-born American artist, b. 1941) is known for his paintings of larger-than-life brawny warriors, busty barbarians and epic creatures.  It’s a style very well suited for action fantasy, such as Tarzan or Conan, but his work has also graced the covers of some science-fiction as well, including books by authors such as Philip Jose Farmer, Frederik Pohl, Theodore Sturgeon, and some Star Trek novelizations.  Vallejo was nominated for Hugos in 1979 and 1980, and was a guest of honor at the 69th annual World Science Fiction Convention.

Michael Whelan (American artist, b. 1950) started out selling to Marvel Comics, Ace Books, and even Harlan Ellison, and has had a steady and productive career ever since.  He was nominated for his first Hugo in 1978, and won his first one in 1980.  He has been associated with the Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars series, Stephen King’s Dark Tower stories, and has done work for covers of books by Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein.  He was guest of honor at the World Science Fiction Conventions in 1998 and 2007.  He has been inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and has been awarded the Solstice Award from the Science Fiction Writers of America.  And finally, when Darrell K. Sweet passed away in 2011, leaving the 14th and final book in the Wheel of Time series without cover art, publisher TOR asked Whelan to do the art for A Memory of Light.  According to his bio, he “strove faithfully to capture the hero’s likeness and the mood of the series in the Whelan style, while remaining true to Sweet’s vision.”

Darrell K. Sweet (American artist, 1934 – 2011) was, perhaps, more known for fantasy art, such as his work on the Piers Anthony Xanth series and Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time books, than for his science-fiction art, but he did do several Sci-Fi covers, including art for books by Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick, Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle, Frederik Pohl, Alan Dean Foster, L. Sprague De Camp, James P. Hogan and Isaac Asimov.  Sweet was nominated for a Hugo in 1983.