Paul Smalera

Since I’m a writer, I often find myself looking for and reading books about the “art & craft” as we tend to reverentially call it. Whatever, I’m just trying to learn a few tricks. But one thing I definitely WON’T do for the first book is allow any use of stock photography whatsoever. Besides having a girlfriend who is an excellent photographer, my own background as a web designer taught me to be very careful when using stock. Clients never want to see photos on their sites used anywhere else, but are often unwilling to pay enough to secure exclusive rights for them. I had one photo of a curly haired man in a loud tie wearing glasses that I must’ve used a dozen times. I still see it crop up now and then in bank advertisements.

From everything I know about it, book publishing is mostly a low-margin industry.
A few big Harry Potters keep the midlist catalogs in print. But still, Francine Prose and Norman Mailer deserve better than to share the same dull clip art:

Oh, you don’t think it’s the same? Just very similar. Well, sure, there’s some Photoshop distortion going on. Mailer’s colors are deeper, befitting his Old Lion stature, and Prose’s brighter but still not exactly bright, befitting her matter of fact outlook on literature and its place in the world. But, dear reader, this is the same Photodisc image by Ryan McVey:

Poor Norman. Poor Francine. Such different books, such different writers, yet such generic (if regal) covers. I wonder what the book design bloggers have to say about this one….