Putting a face on your protagonist--good or bad?

[D.R.]

Should an author put a photo/image of their novel's protagonist on the cover of their book or elsewhere in their advertising? What are the tradeoffs for writer & reader?

http://drshoultz.blogspot.com/2014/06...

[D.C.]

It depends on the quality of the image, and to some extent on the type of book. I think you want to be very careful about the image. A good one is probably a plus, a bad one worse than a simple generic cover.

[Angela]

As a reader, I feel that a book cover should reflect the story. I'm guilty of judging a book by it's cover. It should capture the attention/interest of a reader. I will look at books, see a book cover that I like, read the blurb, and the look inside feature. I don't necessarily, need to have a frontal view of character, but it does make a more appealing visualization for book and character. Does that make sense? Cheers!!!

[G.G.]

I think it depends on the story. For example, your book 'Better Late than Never' was a fine cover for its story. It's when you get into books all about lust that you need to be careful. Each individual won't have the same criteria as what is sexy/handsome/gorgeous etc. So in a case like that, when you need the readers to actually 'fall in love' with your protagonist/antagonist I think it's risky to put a face to them. It's better to let each person imagine the hero/antihero/meanie the way they want to. So in these cases, if you actually put a face, I believe it would be wise not to put it too clearly. For example, the face could be hidden by shade, or by a hat, or even sunglasses. Anything that can still leave room for imagination.

(EDITED: You also need to think about it for series because it might not be always easy to find the same face for the next book.)

[Martyn]

I think it's a bad idea, at least in my genre (suspense fiction). I prefer that readers make a composite of what they think Katla looks like than if I rob them of their imagination by providing some image of what I think Katla would look like.

[Brenda]

Remember too that the faces in a photograph belong to a real person. Yeah, slap Angelina Jolie's picture on the book cover. Watch her sue you.
If you must do it, get a signed model's release from the person whose image you are using. Or find people who you know will not sue you. I took the photograph that became this book cover: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
The cover model is my son. As they say in Doonesbury, he was fed, not paid. And now he can put 'cover model' on his resume!

[G.G.]

Well, there are models and models of course. Places like CanStockPhoto or Shutterstock just to name a few do have pictures with models, which you can use without being sued.

[D.R.]

G.G. wrote: "I think it depends on the story. For example, your book 'Better Late than Never' was a fine cover for its story. It's when you get into books all about lust that you need to be careful. Each indiv..."

Great point on the series. Continuity on the cover might be difficult.

[Micah]

I'm not all that keen on using characters directly related to the story on the cover. I generally don't even like characters described in the book in detail. The sparser the details (just give me the important details or anything unusual, and don't keep going over costume changes like it's some kind of fashion show), the more my mind fills them in. Slap a picture of Harrison Ford on the cover and all I see when I'm reading is Harrison Ford. Doesn't matter if it's the protagonist or antagonist.

It's a situational thing (word of the day), though. For example, on Dan Simmons's Hyperion novels they used images of the Shrike. That was fine because it was hard to describe that in the book. Having some kind of image helped in that case.

[D.R.]

Brenda wrote: "Remember too that the faces in a photograph belong to a real person. Yeah, slap Angelina Jolie's picture on the book cover. Watch her sue you.
If you must do it, get a signed model's release from t..."

Absolutely. Purchasing the rights to any cover is paramount. Love the idea of using someone you've fed, but not sure my son would go for the idea.

[Jen]

Personally, it depends on genre, though its never my preference. If you have to show a face, I don't want a full frontal. Keep it mostly in shadow, or obscured in some way, because what's beautiful and appealing to one person will disgust another.



This is about as much face as I can take - and I actually really liked this cover...

[Brenda]

My son was in ROTC at the time, and was in far better physical shape than nearly everybody I know. So he was an ideal candidate.

[Dannie *migraine in 5..4..3..*]

My problem is when the pictures on the cover never match the characters in the book. I expect the image to be at least close to a character that will be named and important to the story. When it's not, then I'm left wondering who this other guy/gal is that never showed up in the book. (Especially obvious when the image is a person with practically a buzz cut and the character has three feet of long hair.)

[Brenda]

Oh, now that you can blame upon art departments. They are famous for not letting the artist actually read the book before doing the cover painting. There are so many stories of this type that it would bore you to hear of them.