The foundation stone of Raconteur Press is the Malta series. It’s what launched us, and has provided me with several important lessons.
Not the least of which is that there are Rules for book covers. The cover of a book has to hit the proper genre tags for whichever genre the book is — if the cover says one thing, but the text of the book is something else, your sales suffer.
Case in point: with the Malta series I was still a publisher in name only. Nobody had sat me down to give me lessons, and I was winging it something fierce — and sometimes when you wing it, you whiff.
To be perfectly clear: these are the covers that I wanted, and I signed off on them quite happily.
Unfortunately, these covers don’t say, “Thrilling Short Stories!” These covers say, “Travel Guide”, and people looking for “Thrilling Short Stories!” aren’t going to pick up a book that looks like it’s got lists of sights to see, and dry advice as to currency exchange rates. Not perzackly “thrilling”.
Once we got our legs under us, and I started to understand that there actually are some rules to this, one of our big projects was to re-issue those four books with more genre-appropriate covers. So, Cedar went to work.
Much better. I confess to squeeing a bit when Cedar showed me the proofs. Those covers have to be seen in person to get the full impact.
For those curious — and there are a lot of you — about the possibility of a fifth Malta book: I have seen a mock-up for a proof for ‘Corsairs of Malta’, but we’re going to need ten butt-kicking good stories about Malta before we even think about slotting that one into the schedule. If we decide to run with the final, fifth volume, y’all are going to have to bring your ‘A’ games to it.
Aren’t those covers pretty, though?
Anyhoo, lesson learned: The rules are there for a reason, and you need to figure out what the reason is before you break said rules.
Ian
Never judge a book by its cover? If you are not familiar with the author's work, then some eye-catching art work on the book cover can get you interested, like whiff of fried chicken while shopping or driving. But, right you are, the cover better match the contents. And perhaps it's better that it be understated than Madison Avenue glitz.
I can't imagine Ian squeeing.