charles barrow's writing

Cover That Sold Me The Book #42 So we've all been guilty of judging a book by its cover, both metaphorically and literally, haven't we? I try not to do the first, but hey I'm human. However I am definitely guilty of the second. I can pore over that table of books in Waterstones, the one with the new releases, laid flat on their backs, artfully designed covers glowing under bright lights, and lift dozens of them up for a closer inspection if the cover art appeals. I always spend less time browsing the A-Z shelves where I'm faced with rows and rows of spines, though I will head there if I'm after a specific title. It's the cover that will always attract me. Does that make me shallow, that I love all the pretty, shiny things? Anyway, the marketing works on me, so I guess I'm both shallow and susceptible.  Of course, pretty and shiny doesn't always guarantee a thumping good read. As with the metaphor, the contents don't always bear any relation to the pa...

I've been thinking about re-designing my ebook covers, so I've been checking out book covers generally, seeing what's in vogue, what's not, and found these two inexplicably similar examples. One book is a novel, so fiction, the other is nonfiction, both with different authors & publishers. But surely the same designer, right? Same diver, in the same trunks, on the same board. Almost the same colour sky, and white & blue font colours. Weird. Too much of a co-incidence, surely. If these are done by two different designers perhaps one of them can claim/blame zeitgeist. I like that the diver is poised and ready in the first image, and just starting his fall in the second. A moment in time, captured nicely. I'd pick up both of these titles in a bookshop, judging them on their covers alone.