Still More about Book Covers

Barry Eisler was sorely aggrieved this week by the cover his French publisher put on one of his books. Most of us have thoughts about our covers. Few of us utter them, for fear of annoying our publishers, who believe they know best. For most of us, no cover can be as attractive as the book inside, any more than a baby bunting can be as attractive as the baby.

Still, there are good covers and bad covers. My own feeling is that a good book cover is like a good poster.

First of all it should be clearly legible, if nothing else. Believe it or not, this is not true of all posters or book covers. The cover of Barry Eisler's book is at least clearly legible. His French fans will pick it up even though the color is yucky and the artwork conveys no sense of excitement, because his name is on it in large print.

Some wildly successful posters, like this one for a Cream concert at the Fillmore East, cannot be read and understood unless you are stoned out of your gourd. But, whaddya want, that was the sixties.

Secondly, after legibility, posters and book covers should convey a sense of what is on offer. Barry Eisler's book cover fails in this respect, although some say that the French like their book covers deadly dull. The French are said to be an excitable race, after all; it may be that the sight of a garage door and a couple of security cameras on the cover of a book can drive a Frenchman half-mad with anticipation.

Drama is good, if the book is meant to be dramatic. Lovers kissing, killers murdering, dead bodies lying there like a lox, noble cowboys preparing to face the challenges of the West; just as a poster should entice you to go see the show, a book cover should entice you to pick up the book.

We like to think that a poster or a cover would also be reasonably truthful in its enticements. This lurid cover was probably not what Elizabeth Barrett Browning had in mind when she penned her Sonnets from the Portuguese, but, hey,  somebody at Random House liked it.

Third, a good poster (and by extension a good book cover) should be visually simple. Or so my high school art teacher, Mrs. Bockius, used to say. Rest her soul, she didn't live to experience posters from the Fillmore East. I can't imagine what she would have made of them.



I could do a whole other post on spines. The spine of a book might be all that most people ever see of it. What do you go for, when you reach for a book's spine?

Kate Gallison

Not Just Bunnies and Jellybeans

When my children were small they were always losing things -- a shoe, a toy, their homework (like I do now). And I would always chant absently, my familiar refrain, “Don’t worry, it’ll turn up.”

One Good Friday I was shopping with my youngest daughter, Anne. She was five or six at the time. And we passed a church. The door was open, lovely music was pouring out, and I thought piously, Anne should know that Easter isn’t just about bunnies and jellybeans. I decided to stop in for a few minutes, as you are allowed to do on Good Friday. After we had been in the pew, listening to the minister, for about ten minutes, I guess I looked a little depressed. (Good Friday tends to do that to me). Suddenly, Anne leaned over and whispered, “Don’t worry, Mommy, He’ll turn up.”

That night I called our minister, who was also an old friend, and told him the anecdote. He had a good chuckle.

On Easter Sunday as we approached our church all decked out in our Easter best, I glanced at the placard near the front door. The title of the sermon read, “He’ll Turn Up!”

On the way in, the minister’s wife took me aside and said, “He stayed up late last night revising his sermon.” Then she winked and said, “This one’s much better.”

Robin Hathaway

Book Covers: Legibility for Low Vision Readers

For those of you keen-eyed young folks who may find yourself designing covers for large print books for weak-eyed old folks, an excellent resource is the site maintained by Lighthouse International, an organization dedicated to fighting vision loss through prevention, treatment and empowerment. Readable book covers are part of the empowerment that the Lighthouse fosters. The Lighthouse's site explains the principles of accessible type design -- not only what looks good, but what a low-vision person, the sort who reads large-print books, might actually be able to see, even to read.

The Lighthouse offers ten rules for making text legible:

1. Text should be printed with the highest possible contrast. (Black and white is recommended, but colors can be effectively contrasted; see the Lighthouse's instructions for effective color contrast.
2. Type color is important for achieving contrast.
3. Point size: Type should be large.
4. Leading, or spacing between lines of text, should be at least 25 to 30 percent of the point size.
5. Avoid complicated, decorative or cursive fonts. Condensed fonts are less effective.
6. A roman typeface, using upper and lower cases, is more readable than italics, oblique or condensed.
7. Text with close letter spacing often presents difficulties for readers who are partially sighted.
8. Extra-wide binding margins are especially helpful in bound material because it makes it easier to hold the volume flat.
9. Paper with a glossy finish can lessen legibility because many people who are older or who have partial sight also have problems with glare.
10. distinctive colors, sizes and formats on the covers can make it easier to find a book or other document that is buried among similar publications.

If you think about it, these rules make perfect sense, the more so if you're over forty and have begun to notice vision changes. The book cover above was the cover that the large-print book publisher put on Irene Fleming's first book, The Edge of Ruin. The lady's face is sort of pretty but the text is nearly illegible.  I can't imagine anyone with low vision pulling this off the shelf. It's mighty hard for them to see.

Kate Gallison (Irene Fleming)

Don’t Know Much About History

Today I move over and make space for a new and up-coming mystery writer, J.J. Murphy, a fellow Mystery Writers of America/New York Chapter member. J.J. is an award-winning health care writer in Pennsylvania. After the birth of twin daughters, as an escape from toddler television, he started writing MURDER YOUR DARLINGS, a historical mystery set in New York City in the Roaring 20s. Dorothy Parker finds a dead body under the famed Algonquin Round Table. Along with her best friend Robert Benchley and other members of the Round Table, they have to find the murderer — preferably before cocktail hour — and before the killer turns the tables on them.

I can attest that the first in his Roundtable Mysteries is witty, face-paced, and lots of fun.
— Annamaria Alfieri


History was one of my worst subjects in school. So, it’s comical that I’m now writing a series of historical mysteries. (Then again, it’s not only a historical mystery series, it’s also a comical mystery series. I guess it all works out.)

Still, I’m not talking about the history you might associate with musty schoolbooks and boring high school quizzes. No confusing Spanish explorers, such as De Soto and De Leon. (One of them searched for the Fountain of Youth, and one of them was the name of a car.)

The history I’m talking about is Prohibition-era New York City. The Roaring 20s. The Jazz Age. Flappers, bootleggers, speakeasies and Tin Lizzies. (Lots more fun than the Treaty of Ghent, right?) The people I’m talking about are acid-tongued writer Dorothy Parker and her fellow editor Robert Benchley. They were two founding members of the famed Algonquin Round Table — a group of quick-witted writers and editors who gathered daily for lunch at New York’s Algonquin Hotel.

I’m really enjoying this history. And I love it most when the past intersects with the present. Here’s my favorite historical factoid: One of Dorothy Parker’s favorite speakeasies was a place called Tony Soma’s. It was located on a quiet street of brownstone townhouses in midtown Manhattan. Tony’s and all the surrounding houses were knocked down to make way for Rockefeller Center. So today, you can almost draw a straight line between the humor of Dorothy Parker and that of Tina Fey at “30 Rock.”

And a bonus factoid: Tony Soma was the grandfather of Academy Award-winning actress Anjelica Huston (on her mother’s side).

For me, I guess the old saying holds true: Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. Now I’m happy to repeat it to anyone who’ll listen. Just don’t ask me who discovered the Hudson River. (I’m joking, of course. It was De Soto.)

— J.J. Murphy

Website: www.roundtablemysteries.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/RoundTableMysteries
E-mail: jjmurphy@roundtablemysteries.com

Letting Go…

. . . of your characters is not easy. Right now I’m working on my first stand-alone novel, Trace. Until now, I’ve always written series novels, and I’m experiencing a strange sensation. I’m reluctant to let my characters go. The reason is—I know this time it will be for good. There will be no second or third book in which we will meet again and share new adventures. This makes me sad. There are at least three characters who I’ve become fond of and I keep thinking up new chapters to write because I don’t want the book to end. This is not good, because the book is getting too long, and everyone knows short books are in. Have other writers had this experience? Do they miss their characters, like old friends, when they are gone?

The three characters I like best are: Eric Palmer, a widowed orthopedic surgeon and single parent; Benjamin, his ten-year-old son; and Gertrude Bloom, his mother-in-law (Ben’s grandmother). These three form a family, of sorts, in which irritation, exasperation, admiration, and love mix in equal parts.

Eric is trying to fill the role of two parents while pursuing a demanding career; Gertrude, helps out, but her well-meaning efforts sometimes look like butting in; Ben blithely lives his life, unaware that he is an object of concern to his father and grandmother Of course, Eric also has two women interested in him—a social worker and a police chief--but I’m not as fond of them (I’d rather keep him to myself.)

Now, the fact that I like these people is no guarantee that other people will—my readers, for example. I can only hope. But, if they do, I suppose I could turn a stand-alone into a series, if there was a demand—that is. Who knows?

Robin Hathaway