BOOK DESIGN & MANUFACTURING,
EDITED BY JEROME P. FRANK
Publishers Weekly, January 22, 1988
Part 2 – Mass Market Covers – Key Weapons in the Rack-Space War
(Note: first page includes images of covers of Smoke and House of Illusions, showing two very different viewpoints. Caption wit House says: “Zebra’s House of Illusions contain largest cover hologram yet, with three figures normal at left, monsters at right when the cover is moved. Romance hologram (far right) is still drawing sales. ) Far right refers to cover of Captive Chains by Sonya T. Pelton
Some publishers are biting the bullet one cover costs, while others are finding more affordable ways to produce enticing images
“In the few seconds it takes a consumer to scan a rack, we damn well better have a good reason for his eye to be caught by our books.” The thrust of that brusk observation by David Shanks, President of Berkley Publishing Group, made during an interview with PW, is a demand for cover excellence. The reason is clear: competition among mass market publishers is heating up for retail rack space. As a result, chief executives like Shanks are paying greater attention to the cover images produced by their art departments. To motivate his art people to take risks, Shanks tells them “Don’t worry so much about the cost of the cover. You come up with the design, and we’ll try to come up with a way to make it work.”
The way an image works can influence for good or for ill how chain-store, independents, and whole-saler buyers react to a particular title, a fact that is not lost on many—but not all—publishers and their art directors, who believe that the “sell-in” ranks as high as the “sell-through”. Or, to put it in simpler terms, a book must attract the bookstore buyer as well as the consumer.
Roberta Grossman, president of Zebra Books, a publisher known for its special-effects mass market covers, agrees. She says a cover’s graphics—foiling and embossing, for example—send signals to the buyers that the publisher is backing the book. “I think a great book, even a brand-name bestseller, must still have a cover with special effects,” Grossman maintains. That point of view is also taken by Kevin Jones, Bantam’s associate publisher of mass market books, who sees a more consistent trend to embossing and other special effects to sell-in. “I don’t think it is necessary to sell through, because I’m not sure the customer out there, who is probably wearing sunglasses when he looks at all the foil in the bestseller racks, needs it. But the buyers perceive it to mean that the publisher has put a lot of effort behind the book.”
There are times when a publisher can go well over conventional production costs to make use of a specific type of special effects. This is true in the case of Zebra’s newest hologram cover for its horror genre “House of Illusions” by Ruby Jean Jensen, the first multi-figure hologram that American Bank Note Holographics has ever produced. (Outside of banks, Zebra is by far the largest user of holography. The size of this hologram—4 1/4” X 5 3/8” —filling almost the entire cover area, will no doubt convince buyers that Zebra has indeed put a great deal of effort behind the title. The hologram has in its dormant state a normal-looking boy and girl gazing out of two windows while their father stands in front of the open door of the home. The slightest movement, however, turns them all into monsters in a dilapidated house. As the light hits the image, the door behind the father seems to be opening and closing.
With a smile, Grossman says: “I’ll probably get killed for saying this, but I don’t think there is any way we will come of this book making money.” But sometimes you have to do it. The hologram by itself is more than the normal manufacturing cost of the book. So it will more than double the cost, then there’s fixing the hologram to the covers and other related costs such as varnishing.”
In a “penny” business Zebra, a privately owned publisher, can choose to spend money that way because, as Grossman notes, “we are not operating on a tight budget, nor do we have to repot to a board of directors. And you have to spend money to make money. You are competing for rack space and perhaps those added few cents will get that ‘real estate’ and turn in once you get it.”
The retail price for House of Illusion, which is shipping this month for April release, will be $4.95, as opposed to $4.50 for other horror books, so we are absorbing most of the cost of the hologram.” To Grossman, a hologram is like a window into the story, “which is what a cover should be. It’s like a curtain going up on a stage. You see it happening.”
Grossman explains that Zebra’s editorial director Leslie Feldman, during a conversation about doing a full-cover hologram, asked, “Why can’t we have children looking out windows and have all the figures change?” Laughs Grossman, “I almost died thinking ahead of the costs involved. I said I don’t think American Banknote can do it. It’s enough giving the dimension and changeability to one figure. We have gone through this with other holograms using dozens of different plates and exposures until you get the right amount of dimension and change. Banknote didn’t know if they could do it, but they were willing to try, and it worked out successfully.” The holograms were affixed to the covers by Annex Manufacturing Corporation in Jersey City, N.J.
Grossman stressed that the present Romance holograms (fixed to the upper right-hand corner of its romance covers) are still attracting sales.
Two weeks ago Zebra launched a line of mass market hardcovers (to borrow Ian Ballantine’s term for what Bantam has done in entering hardcover publishing and then producing mass market editions), on a highly selective basis. There will be some six books a year, the first being On the Outside Looking In by Michael Reagan with Joe Hyams, which will have major advertising and publicity budgets and is set for March release. The new line will be published in paperback later, which opens the way for a continuing array of mass market paperback cover graphics. The hardcover book jacket will be foiled, but a final design has not yet been approved.
Dangers in overpricing
Grossman sees the rising price in paper, art, cover production and decoration and the like as a threat to an already precarious mass market. As was mentioned in Part 1 of this report (Jan. 8), there appears to be a general feeling among publishers that the cost push may force them soon to break through the $4.95 price point to a $5-plus point. “It is too precarious right now to handle price increases,” Grossman maintains.
