What grabbed me?

The Wall Street Journal tells us how The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo got its’ cover.  And for more cover coverage, Betsy Lerner introduces the nomenclature “Massengill Covers” into book lingo. Then there is this: Conservative vs.: Liberal Women’s Book Covers. Bonus: Publisher’s Weekly covers book cover trends.

Men famed and not admit their biggest screw-ups and mistakes on the Good Men Project.

NYT reports that Amazon says eBooks sales tops hardcover sales.

Eleven most over-rated things Mark Juddery is pretty interesting in his analysis of baseball, Star Trek, astrology and more.

Author and oft-reviewer Steve Almond takes the NYT to task for “trashing my new book” Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life and more. Steve’s a brave guy—perhaps he will next look at the number of men’s books vs. women’s books reviewed by the NYT and Boston Globe.

Agent and writer Nathan Bransford offers a reassuring Top Ten Myths About Our E-Book Future.

I’d have included Boston Globe reporter Stephanie Ebbert’s post Think of the Children even if she hadn’t mentioned my book and even if it wasn’t on a multi-writer blog to which I belong (Beyond The Margins) for the questions it asks: how do readers and writers cope with children in danger?

And in the life sometimes goes the right way department, a headline in USA Today reads: Openly gay Lutheran pastors to be welcomed to church roster.

Above is a book cover (the Portuguese version of The Murderer’s Daughters) I recently saw. Saw as in, ‘here it is,’ take it or leave it–despite the fact that it’s a cover for a book I wrote. Covers, and the authors of the books these illustrations are meant for, don’t always get along. (I liked this one–though I had to ask why the word ‘romance’ was on my very-much-not-a-romance book. Apparently it means ‘novel.’)

Some book covers immediately scream their genre (think muscled men with long hair grasping at maidens with heaving bosoms.) Some seem designed for evoking a mood and when a particular mood-evocation becomes successful, the look multiplies (think of THE HELP with it’s moody birds.)

Few authors have control over their covers—I remember waiting for mine with anticipatory dread, knowing that I’d likely be folded into whatever St. Martin’s had planned. Lucky for me I loved the artwork, but that isn’t always the case.  Authors dream about their covers, sharing the images the moment we have them, and yet, like our newborns, we don’t know what they will look like until they arrive (in this case, by email.)

I thought about covers (great ones, memorable ones, sentimental favorites) this weekend I was reading yet another short story from IF I LOVED YOU I WOULD TELL YOU THIS by Robin Black, a book so good that I’ve rationed how fast I can read the stories.

As I picked it up, I realized it was one of those books that I kept on the coffee table as long as possible—not to show off (no one was visiting) but because the pops of color on black gave me such pleasure. For me, the book doubled (more…)