Thursday, February 18, 2010

And we got book covers pretty much galore

In the interests of bringing exciting covers to my blog ...  Here is Cathy Clamp's Serpent Moon and the May trade reprint of Spymaster's Lady.
Annique certainly gets around, doesn't she?

(I moved all these covers below the cut, so browers won't have a hard time loading the blog, which I think they may do, sometimes.)






And here we got Maggie from Forbidden Rose doing a guest appearance on Suzanne Enoch's stepback for Before the Scandal.

Is it just my imagination?  The hand looks hauntingly familiar . . .
Forbidden Rose on the left.  My Lord and Spymaster on the right . . .?


Nah.  It's just my imagination ....

The cookie that's sitting up top, holding down the -- I dunnoh what it is called -- of Forbidden  Rose is a Girl Scout cookie, but I do not remember which kind.  Something with lemon, I think.  My favorite is thin mints. 

The cover thingum is a long bit of sturdy paper that contains the front and back cover and the spine and the stepback, (I didn't know Forbidden  was going to have a stepback till I saw this, ) and what looks like information for bookstore buyers.  So it is some sort of marketing tool.  They send you four or five of these.  I seem to get them just a bit before the galleys, but I don't think this is a rule. 

This is all on one long sheet that feels like the paper the cover will be made out of for the book itself.

8 comments:

  1. Thank you for posting these, Jo. The blurb is very tantalizing. And the gothic building is the stepback, I presume? Very evocative, especially with the shadowy writing and superimposed rose. June 1 seems a long way off. Plus, I keep thinking that Justine is imminent, too, though rationally, I know it's not.

    Speaking of hands, I also like the top half of the stepback for The Spymaster's Lady to which you drew our attention a few posts ago. That's how I picture Annique's hands--slender and graceful--though I suppose it should look more as though she lives rough.

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  2. The gothic building on the stepback is Notre Dame. Very logical and suitable for a story set in Paris.

    My characters even refer to Notre Dame a few times so it makes sense in every possible way and I cannot imagine how it actually ended up on the cover.

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  3. Anonymous5:53 PM

    You don't think someone in design actually read the book, do you? :-)

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  4. Jo,

    I've been lurking for about a year now - ever since I read TSL- my favorite romance of all time! Thanks so much for giving me hours of pleasure.

    I like the new cover for TSL -very elegant. (I get so tired of headless heroines and naked chests!)

    Have you checked out covercafe.com where they run an annual contest for the best and worst romance covers? Here is a link:

    http://www.covercafe.com/contest/2008/intro-res08.html

    My favorite in the historical category is "Deep in the Heart of Trouble," and be sure to read the comments on "Mr. Fix-it" - in the Worst covers of 2008. They are hysterical.

    I am eagerly waiting for June 1st!!!

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  5. Hi Kay --

    So glad you said hello and thanks so much for the link to Cover Cafe. All About Romance runs, or used to run, a contest with the best and the worst covers and I LOVED it.

    I was delighted to see Deanna Raybourn's Silent in the Sanctuary cover as the Historicals cover winner. Great cover for a great book.

    She came to speak at my local RWA group. I don't get to many meetings -- it's a two hour drive or more -- but I went to that one because I admire her work so much.

    One thing she spoke of was language. She said reading poetry helps to get an 'ear' for cadence. I was much struck by that and agree with her entirely.

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  6. @ Anon --

    Actually read the book . . .

    Nah. If I started believing stuff like that my entire world view would dissolve into little puddles of incredulity.

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  7. Boy, Annique really does get around, doesn't she?

    I love the cover for The Forbidden Rose, too--can't wait until it graces my bookshelves. :)

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  8. @Linda --

    I am of two minds about the Forbidden Rose cover. It's very 'strong'. I am a little taken aback by it.

    But I think that's a good selling point.

    I got the ARCs yesterday and discover that they have the glossy cover on them -- like the real book -- rather than the yellow covers my other ARCs had.
    So apparently this is another change in the way things are done now.

    All the copyedits and the galleys were done electonically. This is so strange.

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