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Already the campaign to get a replacement for the, ahem, REEE-VOLTING cover of The Well-Tempered Clavier is picking up speed.
The doughty Juliet Doyle [NB, by the way, Juliet, how this time I have actually managed to spell your name right and have refrained from calling you Julia Boyle] has weighed in. Big time!
Juliet is a really big-gun - big enough, even for Idle Tom the Publisher to sit up and take notice. (As opposed to me - one way or the other he doesn’t pay much heed to what ever I say).Check out Juliet’s excellent blog here. I am only slightly biased … she was one of the first reviewers to rate my book!
Here’s Juliet’s thoughts:
Yeah! Go Bill! Even better - a wrap-around sticker - obliterate that dread word ‘bittersweet’ once and for all . . .
In fact, print the words ‘Alexander’, ‘McCall’ and ‘Smith’ large enough (and maybe add a discreet giraffe or zebra) and it’ll fly from the shelves and top the bestseller lists in no time. The sticker’s a sure-fire winner whichever way you look at it and, indeed, pretty much wherever you stick it.
Thank you for your kind words, Juliet. I think what we’re actually talking about is a sticker approximately five inches by eight inches which may leave the undiscerning browser with the impression that the entire book has been written by Alexander
McCall Smith.
I called up The Killer for his views.
"I don’t care what Tom does," said The Killer. "The cover’s got to go. And I want it gone by the end of the month."
"Or what?"
"Or else."
* What are your thoughts on the cover? Do you actually like it - or do you think it sucks? Most incisive comments will be duly rewarded.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:47 am
Um, er, ‘thanks’ Bill for the link etc.
But . . . ‘doughty’??? ‘big gun’??? ‘weighed in’???
Bloody hell - you make me sound like a cross between Miss Marple and HMS Dreadnought (with faint suggestions of the Pillsbury Dough-Boy and a Sumo wrestler in there somewhere, too). I realise of course that you need a stout, tweedy old lady in lace-up brogues to add to your merry cast of blog characters (to offset Bittersweet Tom and The Killer, not to mention the suave, sophisticated novelist-about-town), but couldn’t you (please) find someone else to fill that particular role?
If you don’t, then you’ll leave me with no choice but to take the first train to Edinburgh and shake my walking stick at you very fiercely indeed.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:27 pm
It would be extremely difficult to invent a worse cover! What a crime. If I get a copy, will immediately have to make a paper jacket for it.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:49 pm
I’ve just hopped over from Juliet’s blog . . . and I can see why she’s in such a lather. Mmm, not a cover you’d want to show off in public. Maybe issue a concealer stick with each copy - to cover up the offending artwork? I hear that Yves St Laurent’s Touche Eclat is the business. But even Boots’ cheapest own brand would do the trick.