Take a look at that pic of the cover. Looks nice, right? It's not. Let me explain to you what's so very, very wrong about it.
First, take a hardback book. On the face of the book, place this image:
Place nothing else on the cover of the book save that image. Set the book aside.
Now go get your dust jacket. For your dust jacket, cut it in half. (I think the term for this is "belly band," but it's been a while so I'm not sure. For sake of ranting, I'm using that term.) On your belly band, place a detail of this image:
But I don't want you to use as much detail as you did for the image placed on the other cover. For this one, I want you to use barely the guy's face and his shoulder. On top of that you will cram the book's title, the deck and author's name.
Now go get your book and place the belly band on the top half of the book. Sell it, and see what happens.
What happens is I've had this book in my possession for one hour, and already this crap pseudo dust cover has fallen off four times! The very first time I touched it, taking it out of the box and opening it up, the belly band fell off. Clearly, the band is not going to stay on this book, so I may as well go ahead and throw it away now. But when it falls off I'm left with a cover that looks like a junior high school history book from the 1970s but lacking a title or author.
On top of that? This book is about the exodus of slaves throughout the British empire during the American revolution. The book is specifically about the experiences of the slaves, okay? You know what happens when the belly band falls off? What happens is you're left with a cover containing neither the title of the book, nor the name of the author of the book NOR A SINGLE IMAGE OF A BLACK PERSON ANYWHERE ON THE COVER OF THIS BOOK ABOUT THE EMPIRE'S SLAVES. So are we now at the point where publishers don't want to put pictures of black people on the cover of nonfiction books about black people? What, the nonfiction people are taking their design cues from the genre publishers, now?
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Curious, I took the book in its natural state sans belly band around to folks in my very multicultural day job. I held the book up and asked each what they thought this book was about. They all said it looked to have something to do with the American Revolution. When I told them this book is about British slaves in the American Revolution, every single one of them was like get the fuck outta here! Then I'd hand the book over so they could see for themselves.
Guess what, designers? People DO judge books by their covers. I thought you all knew that. I *know* you know that, because that's why you do everything in your power to not make McCarthy's westerns look like westerns. (Just to pull a random example from top of head.)
Oddness! The shipment this book came in also contained a book about the Chinese in 19th century America, and Hochschild's new one about the men who designed Britan's anti-slavery campaign. Hochschild's book manages to have imagery of white AND black people on the cover. Amazing, huh?
A whole bunch of people were drinking the Stupid the day the design for Rough Crossings was approved and implemented. I hope several somebodies at Harper Collins got a reprimand.
My usual approach for dealing with an ugly or inappropriate cover is to take the dust jacket off and toss it. But in this case doing so leaves me with something even worse. I'll either have to use clear packing tape to keep the belly band on, or I'll have to scrawl the title and author on the cover with a Sharpie, along with a bit of commentary. Maybe I could make a paper bag cover, like we did when we were in elementary school...
Grrr.
Update! Updated a couple of hours later to add links to the other books mentioned. Did not realize I'd failed to do so because I was drive-by ranting.
Also wanted to add this bit....The novelist in the cubicle upstairs (my day job is filled with interesting people...there's also a Planet of the Apes expert upstairs in a different cubicle) noted the obvious expense Harper Collins put into Rough Crossings. The belly wrap is embossed and has raised letters. Getting the wrap cut to this special size probably cost them more than cutting a standard dust jacket. There are full color, glossy plates inside in the book. Somebody (or institution) got paid for the use of the image on the wrap, somebody (or institution) got paid for the use of the image on the cover of the actual book. This all points to serious thought being put into the design of the book, and not insignificant amounts of money being spent to pull it off. But nobody thought about the obvious.
You know, since I've been teaching myself Photoshop and Illustrator** maybe what I'll do is make a cover based on the image on the belly wrap. I'll do a full cover, front/back and the flaps, print one copy on nice paper and put it on my copy. I'll even match the font if I can! I think it's some form of Times New Roman. I know I won't be able to match the font color, but I can come close.
** Code for I click on things and wonder why it's not working and so I look it up in the Illustrator guide and/or Comicraft book and then click something else and then it crashes and then I go fuck it go get some Reisling and/or Jim Beam until I feel better and then I go back and try again.
