Cover Reveal! The Break

Out of all the milestones there are in publishing a book, my absolute most favourite is when an author gets to reveal the cover of his/her new book. And I get to do it now! Here it is, the cover for THE BREAK out this spring! (late March or early April 2012)




I really, really love it. I think the design team at Great Plains did a fabulous job with getting the mood of the story on the cover. I especially love the colours and the blurryness of the girl's face symbolizing the fading memory of her beloved Nonna. But it's also the little things I love - like having the broken letter in the title. The Break has so many different layers of meaning - the actual spring break where Abby needs to look after her Nonna, Nonna's break from reality due to her memory issues, the breaks between family members because of illness or emotional distance. So many things to consider when pulling a cover together like this. I'm so happy with it!

I know authors have a real worry when their cover is revealed to them because so much of it is out of their control. I'm very lucky in that the team at Great Plains do really care what their authors think about a cover. I'd sent some thoughts/pictures to them and they very much captured the mood I was hoping would be invoked.

I really hope the cover draws people to pick up the book when it's released but right now I'm just enjoying staring at it. Sigh. I may just look at it all day! :)

Preview's Sell E-books! (at least to me)

Sorry for the long hiatus but it's been an unusually busy holiday season. Hockey tournaments, Dad's 80th birthday celebrations (on New Year's Eve no less) and ongoing house reno madness has left me about six balls behind the 8th one. I must confess, though, that one of the things that led to my distraction from blogging was my hubby's birthday gift for me of the new Kobo Vox. It's sort of the Canadian version of the Kindle Fire - a tablet e-reader (that also allows me to surf the web since I can never get my hands on any of the computers at home!). It's fabulous. After I pried it away from my husband (seriously, I did not see it for the first six hours it was home) I was finally able to download my first e-book purchase.



I chose World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie Apocalypse by Max Brooks for a number of reasons, one of them being my recent fascination with all things zombie due to The Walking Dead. But the biggie? The publisher let me read the first few pages. What, you ask? Isn't that standard e-book practice? Don't ALL e-books allow a potential buyer to get a taste of the book, an author's style, whether the beginning pages hook you or not? Surprisingly, NO.

I'm a big lover of sneak peeks. I love watching movie trailers for upcoming releases before the main movie begins. In fact, if we're late to a movie and miss the previews, it puts me in a grumpy enough mood for me to not enjoy the movie I actually came to watch. Those trailers hook me (or not) and are necessary (along with reviews) to help me make my decision about what movies I want to pay money to see in future. Same thing with books. When I browse for books from authors I have not read before I go through my process: Interesting title? Cover's cool? Blurb intrigues me? If all those are a yes, then I open the book and read a few pages. If it's all good then I usually buy.

When I was going through the Kobo library, I used the same process. Cover, title, blurb then I clicked on the Download Preview button. Then I went to my library where the book was sitting on my shelf, clicked on it and 9 times out of 10 I would get to read the first few pages. Well, I was deciding on whether to purchase World War Z and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. World War Z had it all and the writing was good so it was a no brainer. Click on Buy. With the second one, I already new Jonathan Safran Foer was a fabulous writer, my brother had spoken highly of the book, and I wanted to read the book before I saw the extremely well-reviewed movie. So you figure I should just buy it, right? Well, when I downloaded the preview and scrolled through the pages what I got were the first few pages of illustrations/pictures that were in the book but none of the actual writing. What the … ? No first five pages of writing, nothing. I know it probably didn't matter since the writer is who he is. But still. It irked me. I was denied the pleasure of browsing. I don't like to buy without browsing. No matter how many people tell me it's an amazing product. No click on Buy.

And it wasn't just that book. There were a few books from major publishing houses that gave me a preview of copyright and acknowledgement pages but stopped just before chapter one. I just don't get what they think they're accomplishing by doing that. Seriously. I don't buy the car without the test drive, people.

On a more positive note, I'm really enjoying World War Z and my Kobo Vox. And I'll probably go buy Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close the old fashioned way - standing in the bookstore aisle, flipping through the pages and enjoying the preview.

How about you guys? Do you need the test drive when you buy an e-book or not?

Which Influences a Teen Reader More: Title, Cover or Back Cover Blurb?

Last week on Twitter there was a very interesting discussion on #yalitchat about what draws a teen to pick up a book from a shelf. There was general consensus that the biggest influencer on teen reading was word of mouth. Of course teens listen and watch what their friends are reading - just like adults do. Reviews don't seem to be as big an influencer (whereas that enters into adult book choices much more. Not saying they don't help make a decision but I'm talking more about impulse buys.

My personal belief is that Covers and Titles are the biggest influencers for teens. As I have my very own little test group at home (i.e. a teen daughter) I thought I'd find out straight from the horse's mouth what influences her to get a book (forgive me for comparing my DD to a horse - she looks nothing like a horse. She's quite lovely actually. Not that horses aren't lovely too. And where did that weird saying come from anyway? Must research and do a blog post about weird sayings another time. Sorry. I digress.)So the next time Daughter Two and I were in a bookstore and she was picking up a couple of books for her collection I asked her why she chose those particular books.

One book, The Clearing by Heather Davis, she said she picked up first for the pretty colour of the green on the cover (she's into colour choices now since she has to pick one for her room walls) and that it drew her eye. The title was interesting (what happened in The Clearing?) and then the back cover blurb intrigued her because it was a bit of a time travel love story. So all three of these things drew her in but the most prominent was the cover.

The second book she got was Looking for Alaska by John Green. This was strictly a choice based on a friend of hers having read it and recommending it.

The third book was Whip It by Shauna Cross. Again the image on the cover drew her in but then she remembered that a movie was made of it and she heard the movie was good so she wanted to see what the book was like.


I also remember when I brought home Across the Universe by Beth Revis (which I purchased because of all the positive reviews I'd been reading) and Daughter Two's reaction was "Oh, I wanted to check that one out because the cover was so pretty."

Totally unscientific but it supported my belief that Covers are probably one of the biggest influencers for a teen who doesn't have a preconceived notion of what she/he wants to read when she walks into a book store. That cover may hook them but the back cover blurb might keep them hooked. Then they might check out the first page or two (at least that's what I've always counselled my kids to do if they're about to spend some hard earned cash on a book). I don't always check out the first page if a book has received fantabulous reviews but if I know nothing of the book besides what's written on the back or inside flap then I will check out the writing.

But what about the title, you ask? I always thought it was one of the things that hooked a potential teen reader more than anything. I still believe that though I have no scientific proof (or unscientific because Daughter Two only peripherally acknowledged that a title helped her in selecting her books). I know ILLEGALLY BLONDE was a title that got attention from agents and editors but have no idea if it hooks a teen reader. I do think the cover draws the eye and am hopeful that a teen will pick it up because of that and read the back cover blurb etc.

I know publishers spend a lot of time and money on getting the right cover so there must be more scientific data that confirms all the expense that goes into either getting the right stock photography, or hiring an artist or photographer to create original artwork. I wonder also, with the proliferation of e-books whether the same sensibilities will happen when browsing through e-books? My brother, not a teen mind you, but an avid iPad book user says his main determinant for buying an ebook now is the free chapter download and not cover or blurb. So the first chapter will become even more important than it already is I guess. But will teens buy e-books in the same way? Or will they browse through the covers and download the most evocative covers for them?

What do you think? Covers, title, blurb or all three?

Subway Stranger Reading Recommendations

Usually I pick the books I want to read in one of two ways: I receive recommendations from friends or I read reviews. It's been a simple and, for the most part, effective way to broaden my reading experience. But the other day, as I was sitting on the subway riding in to work, I looked up and saw a woman reading a book that had an intriguing cover. I tried to check the title without looking like I was a subway stalker but because of the angle I couldn't quite catch the title. She got off on a stop before mine and I was never to find out what book she was reading. This bugged me. I don't know why but I decided to pay more attention to what the mass of people were reading on the TTC (that means subway in T.O. but really stands for the Toronto Transit Commission. But that's not the point of this story). Anyway, I decided to check out these random books so that I could decide whether to add them to my reading pile. A stranger's recommendation, if you will. A barometer of what the everyday, joe-blow, go to work person like me is spending their precious 20 min, half-hour to an hour commute reading in the morning. It wasn't as easy a task as I thought it would be.

Some days not one person had a book. Which appalled me. It's not that people weren't reading - they were. It just happened to be newspapers, iPhones, or university or highschool textbooks. Many were just listening to music. Others just staring off into space. I despaired of finding ten different books that I could check out before Christmas. But, by the end of two weeks (and some days I didn't ride the subway) I had my Subway Stranger Reading Recommendations.

So here are the books (and the blurbs I hunted up on Amazon and other sites) that I'm committing to either buying or checking out from the library over the next few months. Of the 11 books I spotted, I only read one (The Time Traveler's Wife) so I have a nice even ten books to check out:

The Secret Daughter by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
On the eve of the monsoons, in a remote Indian village, Kavita gives birth to a baby girl. But in a culture that favors sons, the only way for Kavita to save her newborn daughter's life is to give her away.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Stratten
January 1946: writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger, a founding member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. And so begins a remarkable tale of the island of Guernsey during the German occupation, and of a society as extraordinary as its name.

A Mortal Curiosity by Anne Granger
The second novel in Ann Granger's wonderfully atmospheric Victorian mystery series. Lizzie Martin, lady's companion, has been sent from London to the New Forest to comfort a young woman whose baby has tragically died. A sad enough task, but things take an even darker turn when a rat-catcher is found murdered in the garden, and the young woman is discovered beside the body, crying and covered in blood. Not knowing where else to turn, Lizzie calls upon her friend Inspector Ben Ross from Scotland Yard to solve the horrific crime.

Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard by Richard B. Wright
In a quiet manor house in Oxfordshire, an ailing housekeeper by the name of Aerlene Ward feels the time has come to confess the great secret that has shaped her life-she is the illegitimate daughter of William Shakespeare, England′s most famous playwright.

Lie Down with the Devil by Linda Barnes
Things get moving quickly in Bostonian Carlotta Carlyle’s twelfth mystery, picking up right where Heart of the World (2006) left off, with Carlyle’s mobbed-up fiancé, Sam, sought for murder, and teenage Paolina, Carlotta’s adopted little sister, recuperating from her horrific experiences in Colombia. In her emotional agony, Paolina has shut out Carlotta, so the six-foot ex-cop and part-time cabbie turns her energy toward proving Sam innocent—in the face of his secrecy, his womanizing, and, worst of all, mounting evidence that he actually did the deed.

The Debutante by Kathleen Turner
Cate Albion is a gifted artist who is hiding from her past in her elderly aunt’s London antique shop. When her aunt sends her to Devon to catalog the contents of an old Georgian house, Cate finds more than just antiques, she finds a mystery. The home belonged to Irene Blythe, a wealthy, elderly woman who was once a beautiful socialite between the wars. Cate finds an abandoned nursery, locked for years, and a shoebox full of mysterious articles hidden behind a stack of books. Cate realizes the box belongs not to Irene but to her sister, Baby Blythe, the dazzling, dangerous, over-the-top debutante who mysteriously disappeared without a trace more than 60 years ago. Unable to resist, Cate unpacks the box and follows the clues to Baby Blythe’s dark, secretive past––one that parallels Cate’s own dark life all too well.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
"The Lost Symbol" solves puzzles, analyzes paintings and reveals forgotten histories -- all so that Brown's tireless hero, Robert Langdon can find a legendary Masonic treasure despite special ops squads that are dogging him and a bizarre killer who has kidnapped his dear friend and mentor.

Black and Blue by Ian Rankin
Rebus is juggling four cases trying to nail one killer - who might just lead back to the infamous Bible John. And he's doing it under the scrutiny of an internal inquiry led by a man he has just accused of taking backhanders from Glasgow's Mr Big. Added to that there are TV cameras at his back investigating a miscarriage of justice, making Rebus a criminal in the eyes of a million or more viewers. Just one mistake is likely to mean an unpleasant and not particularly speedy death or, worse still, losing his job.


Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
This zany tale of the bungling of Armageddon features an angel, a demon, an 11-year-old Antichrist and a doomsaying witch; unmistakably British humor is in abundance.

The Kings Grace by Anne Easter Smith
Smith's newest historical fiction is a complex exploration of a turbulent period of English history, taking on one of its biggest mysteries: the fate of princes Edward and Richard, locked up in the Tower by Richard III. Protagonist Grace Plantagenet is the illegitimate daughter of Edward IV and had been confidant to his family—including her imprisoned half-brothers Edward and Richard. After Richard III is killed and the princes disappear, a man named Perkin Warbeck appears to challenge Henry VII, claiming to be the presumed dead Prince Richard. Determined to discover the truth of Warbeck's claim, Grace throws herself into the politics of the court, knowing that if Warbeck is Prince Richard, it could be drastic for Grace's family—especially for her half-sister Elizabeth of York, now Henry's queen.

Whew. That's a heck of a lot of different books. To tell you the truth, I'm not sure I'm going to like each one. And if I don't, I'm not sure I'll finish them all. But it's an experiment in whether I can enjoy books I haven't sought out myself or that have been recommended to me by someone I know - a broadening of my reading experience to see if I like other tastes and genres. We'll see how it goes. I think I'm going to try The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society first - just because I love the title and I love WWII stories. I'll keep you posted on the progress.

So, have you read any of the above? And how do you go about picking what's going on your To Be Read pile? But, please, don't give me any more recommendations. I don't think I could handle it!

What makes you buy a book? Cover, Blurb, Recommendation or Review?

I ask this question because I'm really fascinated by the whole process people go through when choosing what they read. There are just SO MANY BOOKS OUT THERE! How on earth do you choose?? I know that, like everything else in publishing, choosing a book is subjective. For me, in the past choosing a book would be a very immediate, personal thing. I'd browse through the bookstore, sometimes picking a book up because the cover called to me, sometimes because the backcover blurb spoke to me. But that was when I had time to browse. As my reading (and choosing what to read) time diminished with each successive child, my book buying selection process changed. Buying a book became more about whether it had been recommended to me by a trusted friend who I knew wouldn't steer me in the wrong direction because I just didn't have the time to spend on a book that wasted those precious few reading hours I had left.

Now, my process has changed yet again. As part of a larger writing community I want to read what that community is writing - to support them for sure, but also to learn and be aware of what works and sometimes doesn't work in the YA and Romance genres. As for reviews and award nominations, I've sometimes been influenced to buy a book because I've read a review or seen a book's been nominated for an especially prestigious award (I bought Beautiful Creatures soley because of the William C. Morris YA Debut award nomination). But those things usually influence me very little.

So here's an interesting question to all my writer friends: if you had to choose, which would you want the most for your book: a great cover and blurb, word of mouth recommendations or awesome reviews/awards? Sure, sure, it would be nice to have them all. But you have to choose only one.

Me? I think I want that "She told two friends, and they told two friends" kind of buzz and momentum. You know - the kind of publicity you can't buy. I'm still very happy with my book cover, for sure. But friend to friend recommendation? That would be awesome.

Here it is! The Cover for ILLEGALLY BLONDE!

I've been waiting patiently and, I admit, with a little bit of nervousness for my cover from my publisher. I shouldn't have been nervous. The wait was so worth it! I love the cover and think it captures the feeling of the book wonderfully. There might be some more minor adjustments but this seems to be it. Yay!!!!!!!!!!!