The back cover – first draft

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Not quite first draft, there have been a few other versions. This is the latest – again a collaborative effort with CStM. Opinions welcome.

backcover4I probably have to add a ‘not for children or the weak’ notice, to be on the safe side…

 

Update: The wording might be ‘Not suitable for children, Puritans, the hard of thinking or the perpetually offended.’ That should cover it.

23 thoughts on “The back cover – first draft”

  2. Looks Great! Only tweak I’d suggest might be to leave out “Which will you hear first?” and, with its deletion, enlarge the font by a couple of steps.

    Why? Because when I wrote Brains I made the mistake of designing the original black on white cover to be “arresting” in bookstores. I didn’t realize my market would be Amazon. On Amazon my cover looked amateurish and stupid — 10 years ago their 2-D cover displays left it as simply black words floating against the background of Azon’s white page: it looked like a book that didn’t HAVE a cover so Azon was simply displaying its title.

    You want your back cover text to be readable without much extra effort on a skimmer’s part when they run across it on Azon.

    Looking forward to it in production Leg!

    🙂
    MJM

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    • I dunno…I like it as is. And I doubt very seriously that your cover was “stupid” just because it was sold on Amazon.calm and not bookshelves. I mean, who was buying the shit? The same people right?

      Q: What’s wrong with being “amateurish?”
      A: ó¿ó

      I thought that was the whole point of this shit. Being an amateur? How does being an amateur equate with being stupid? ANSWER MY QUESTIONS GODDAMNIT!!! WHAT…ARE YOU STUPID OR SOMETHING?!?!?!?

      Food for thought. ❤

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      • LOL! CF, I was aiming at a different audience with

        https://web.archive.org/web/20141118064730/http://www.antibrains.com/

        I was faced with the dual challenge of

        1) appearing professional/knowledgeable/academic as I was challenging what was supposedly the “prevailing scientific consensus” and was doing so without the benefit of a prestigious academic podium or a bed of multi-lettered credentials.

        and

        2) being a successful PT Barnum Carnival Barker who could attract the attention of the passers-by to Something New And Completely Different when their entire background set of knowledge was pretty firmly set in there NOT being anything New And Completely Different out there (at least not in the area of interest.

        My solution at the time for getting that vital extra few seconds of initial attention was a stark white cover with just three big capitalized black block lettered words: DISSECTING ANTISMOKERS’ BRAINS. I needed people to pick it up and just read the first four, or even the first two, lines:

        —-

        I am not now, nor have I ever, been a member of the Communist Party.

        I am also not now, nor have I ever, been affiliated with Big Tobacco or their stocks, nor do I have any plans to be.

        I also do not here, nor have I ever, tried to claim that smoking is generally good for you, although many find enough enjoyment in it to justify its risks. I do however argue that long-term risk from normal contact with other peoples’ smoke are virtually non-existent.

        —-

        and from what I’d observed among dozens of samples in various (slightly pub-heavy) situations they’d keep reading and either turn the page or ask about buying it.

        The white cover WORKED in the physical world because it made people stop for a moment and realize that the title, despite being ABOUT smoking, was clearly not saying the same thing as every other book in the world seemed to be saying about smoking (i.e., either “It will kill you & others!” or “Here’s How To Quit!”)

        But three black words with no indication they even HAD a physical cover behind them? Nope. Didn’t work on Amazon. Fortunately I had a WONDERFUL graphic artist, Sam Ryskind, who’d come up with the amazing Brainy image and I eventually used it for a revamp.

        Now Leg is *also* trying to do something along the lines of what I’d done: incorporate an image/feel into his cover that will make people stop for a moment to check out why this particular book might be different than all the other books sitting out there. In the horror/weird genre the “creepiness” factor is high in that regard: if you can somehow appear to be “uniquely creepy” then you’ve got a shot at being looked at and maybe bought!

        Ideally we’d want a front body shot of Leggy displaying The Full Monte.

        Unfortunately that would leave a trail of heart attack corpses clogging up the aisles and preventing potential customers from laying down their shekels at the cash register.

        So, something a BIT milder… but not much… is needed.

        – MJM

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  7. Maybe invert the black n white and make the eyeballs red with no black pupils whilst losing the pseudo owls and putting the eyes in the black night surrounding the now whitish tree.

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      • “The owls… are not what they seem ;”

        I didn’t think they were. :>

        During the first few years I lived in my house there was a HUGE feral cat colony in the back area. Maybe around 20 of ’em. They’d change their gathering/camping locations on and off, but their favorite hangout was in the overgrown courtyard I share with three other houses.

        Criminal vulnerability is often something of an issue in my neighborhood, but I always felt that that back area was made VERY secure by that colony. If you walked down the alleyway late at night you’d enter to courtyard to to see 30 or 40 glowing little eyes evaluating you from all different directions. If you unwisely continued inward you began to be greeted by some VERRRRY unsettling killer-cat growlings…

        The colony eventually dissipated. Some neighbors, not very politically correct I”m afraid, blamed the influx of Vietnamese/Cambodian immigrants of the early ’80s that concentrated in one sector of our neighborhood including the other side of my block. Others, including me, more accurately (I think) blamed the raccoon/possum population that started to grow around that time. Every once in a while, even today, it’ll be late at night and I’ll hear what is almost certainly a cat suffering through the last minute or so of a deadly raccoon encounter. :/ And twice, after such sounds, I noticed cat families (usually a mom with two or three first-yearlings) missing one of their members. Sad, but I guess that’s the way nature works sometimes. And unfortunately I don’t really have the resources to become one of those krazy ol’ cat people who takes in all the strays.

        :/
        MJM

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      • “The owls… are not what they seem ;”

        I didn’t think they were. :>

        I didn’t think they were either but what else to call them. Should have known you did the inside out upside down stuff..

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