About that woman in the smoke on the front cover...
What woman on the cover? Look carefully inside the smoke
that extends up from the title (Figure A). Reaching up from the smoke is the torso
of a naked woman, as seen from behind. You saw that? Good for you!
But...did you know:
Originally, there was a curved line overlying the area where the woman's
buttocks would be located. This line was thought to be an illusion
created by the overlapping smoke. A similar effect is seen on x-rays,
when gas bubbles in the intestines overlap a spinal bone (thus creating
the false appearance of a fracture line in the bone). Likewise, the
smoke line on the book cover seemed to create a "butt crease" on the
woman. Of course, after Alan pointed it out to the graphic designer, the
publisher wanted it removed because of what it looked like. As it turned
out, according to the person who'd created the woman-in-the-smoke
graphic, it was, in fact, a buttock crease! It was airbrushed out of the
cover.
Does a publisher create more than one version of a cover
concept for a novel?
Yes. As can be seen from Figures B, C, and
D (at
left), the graphic arts department will usually produce several
versions of the cover. The editor and marketing department then confer,
and if the author is fortunate (as I was), the editor will ask the author's
opinion as well. In the case of False Accusations, it was a
unanimous choice. The differences in The Hunted's cover are
obvious. But can you see what's different in the two alternate versions
of the False Accusations cover (compared to the final published
version)? Click back to the "home" page to see the final cover.
I once saw a plain cover on a book and was told it was
an "ARC." What does that mean?
An ARC, or Advance Reading Copy, is a bound soft-back version of the
pre-publication "galleys." Galleys are proofs, or images, of what the actual
finished book's pages will look like. Galleys are sent to the author to
proofread for errors in formatting, typesetting, and the like. These same
galleys--before they are corrected--are bound as an ARC and distributed to
reviewers, media outlets, and booksellers...hence the term "advance reading
copy." ARCs come with a warning that states that they are uncorrected proofs;
that they remain the property of the publisher; and that they are not to be sold
or transferred to anyone other than to whom the publisher sent them. Any
duplication or sale is a violation of law. Figure E shows the cover for
The Hunted's ARC. ARC covers are often bound with plain covers, without
graphics, to save money.
The Hunted was loosely based on a real person's
disappearance...
Loosely
based. A neighbor's husband had disappeared, and he was never found.
Years passed, and we still never discovered what had happened to him.
Such a scenario is fodder for a fiction novelist's furtive imagination,
and a story began to take root. The plotline I had envisioned was
originally part of a very involved story, with six subplots running
simultaneously. I soon realized it would probably result in a thousand
page novel, so I started trimming the story to its core elements. One of
the deleted subplots dealt with a wife's husband who had mysteriously
disappeared. However, when I told my agent what I had cut, she
encouraged me to write the entire novel based on the plotline involving
the missing husband. And The Hunted was born.
False Accusations: "Ripped from the headlines"?
The impetus behind False Accusations consisted of
two newsworthy events: the well-known Sam Sheppard murder trial of the 1950s
(and the basis for The Fugitive television series); and the repressed
memory case in the San Francisco Bay Area, in which a father was falsely accused
of molesting his daughter: he lost his job, family, friends...everything he
valued. Alan became fascinated with the idea of being falsely accused of a crime
and being unable to defend oneself.
It took a long time to write False Accusations...
Including research, from the first draft to the final version, False
Accusations took three-and-a-half
years to write.
Reminiscent of John Grisham's beginnings, False
Accusations first came out in paperback, through a small publisher...
False Accusations was, in fact, initially published in paperback by a small
publisher in
Canada
(Figure F).
Around the time that they started shipping copies of False Accusations, the
publisher went bankrupt, leaving thousands of orders unfilled. After much legal
wrangling, Alan secured his rights from the defunct publisher and his agent sold
the rights to Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books imprint. False Accusations was
published in hardcover less than a year later.
Both False Accusations and The Hunted have been published in
several other countries. Do those publishers design their own covers?
Yes. Each foreign publisher designs a cover that will
appeal to its own readers' demographics. What might sell in Australia might not
catch the eye of someone in Germany, and so on. At left, Figure G, is
Finland's alluring cover for False Accusations.
To see other foreign covers,
click here.
As a side note, an inherent risk in having a novel published in another
language is that sometimes the translated text does not carry the same meaning as
the author intended when he or she wrote
the original English version. Cultural differences and variations in slang can
be another stumbling block. As a result, there have been instances where certain
references in some novels have offended the readers of another country.
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