When I first started posting about those trendy backside covers, one of the first examples cited was Allison Winn Scotch‘s The Department of Lost and Found. The paperback cover, it turns out, is quite a departure from the one on the hardcover, and Winn Scotch explained why the switch was made on her blog yesterday. Well, actually, she explains how she’s come to live with the switch:
“I’ve come not only to accept the new cover, but I’ve even come to like it… as much as I’m going to like a cover that I probably wouldn’t grab from the shelf,” she writes. “Book marketing is a tricky thing… no one is quite sure what will sell a book… and if the marketing department thinks that this image, which in my mind is very evocative of a Jodi Picoult book and which is certainly good company to keep, will do the trick, then it’s a-okay with me.”
Then she explains that Avon is looking to reach “moms in the Midwest and book club readers and a whole slew of folks who felt alienated by the other image,” and “if it’s putting out this cover so that the words inside the book reach more people, well, that’s the whole point of this thing anyway, isn’t it?” So she’s good to go.