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Comment Threads

• Charlie Stross commented on CMAP #6: Why did you pick such an awful cover for your new book?
  Don't get fancy and use smart quotes or typographical characters here; it confuses the hell out of Movable Type. (Also note that there are probably character set translations going on. The web runs on HTML entities, the server is running Debian (which may be trad ASCII for all I know), my web browser runs OS/X (UTF-8), and Cthulhu only knows what character set various versions of Windows are using. If you type something that looks like an em-dash on your PC it may get translated a couple of times before it gets stashed in the MySQL database ... or not.)...
• cepetit.myopenid.com commented on CMAP #6: Why did you pick such an awful cover for your new book?
  Our Gracious Host said:... Cthulhu only knows what character set various versions of Windows are using.No. I'm afraid that differing character sets is something that frightens even the old ones. My first thesis was required to be done on the university IBM timeshare system — and thus, it was coded in EBCDIC. And it could be WordPerfect 4.2's alternate-character support system, which (despite its comprehensiveness in those pre-ISO-character-set days) was not supported by anything else (that's what my second thesis was required to be in). At least it wasn't WordStar!...
• Charlie Stross commented on CMAP #6: Why did you pick such an awful cover for your new book?
  You're absolutely right, except for one point -- covers at Ace (for one, and possibly other imprints) get tested against the highly subjective eyeballs of the buyers at B&N and Borders. I've had a book cover changed after feedback on the ARC from the big chain buyers. Given the way modern short-run printing costs break down, it ought to be possible for a publisher to do A/B testing on cover designs -- take a hardcover with a projected 6000 copy run and do two dust jackets at 3000 each, see which comes back more frequently in the returns, and pick...
• Charlie Stross commented on CMAP #6: Why did you pick such an awful cover for your new book?
  Furthermore, why should anyone care whether one buyer for Barnes & Noble likes a title or not? Because it's not just any buyer for B&N -- it's the manager in charge of acquiring SF for the entire chain. If they take against a book on the basis of the cover, the book's sales will slump 30%. And the sales of the subsequent book will be lower, too, because the author's sales track record is showing a downward curve....
• jsoderba commented on CMAP #6: Why did you pick such an awful cover for your new book?
  Probably because Pohl's book is twenty years out of print. You'll note that in both cases Charlie cited the conflicting books were published within months of each other....