To catch the eye so the browser buys!

What is it about a novel that makes a browser take a book off the shelf in the shop or click to read the synopsis as they search in an online book store for their next purchase? I suppose the answer, as in many things in life that are taste dependent, is that it depends on the likes and the aesthetic appreciation that the beholder has. Some of us like funky covers with a design that is a little abstract and jumps out of the shelf at us. Others, like something a little more traditional that conveys a message of serious literature contained inside.

How important is the cover though in your enjoyment or appreciation of the novel as you read it? Every time you finish a chapter and put a book down the cover looks back up at you. Can you however, without going to look, describe the cover of the book you are reading or the book you have just finished? I suspect that the cover is all important in the persuasion of us to buy the book but that its impact is not long lasting. I'm recently reading a novel that has a snowy scene, some clever overlay of paper that allows there to be a depression of something in the snow on the cover, a person walking away from the scene in the background with a long trenchcoat and a robin in the foreground. I can picture the scene on the cover but maybe that is because it is in my mind as I write and because I am taking an age to read it so it keeps being put down cover up. However, I am a little more hazy over the covers of the other five novels I have read this summer but that doesn't mean my enjoyment of the novel or my recall of the plot is any less.

I was asked to approve the proof of the cover for my novel 'A Place to Play' in August. I'd already supplied some ideas and the graphics designer sent me a mock up of the cover. Although one of the images I'd supplied was used as the main photograph it didn't seem quite right. To what extent did I want the browser to be considering a book that was about a stark place, empty of children? Even though one of the many themes of the plot is a future without places for children to play I wanted the cover to offer some hope as indeed the novel's end offers. Just a few minor changes was all it took to lighten the mood and the finished result is something I am pleased to have my name on the bottom of. Publication date is getting closer- hopefully September - so not long until the book will be on your bedside table, face up, waiting for you to read the next chapter. Of course, you may not be able to put it down and read it in all one go, which is always a good sign of a great story. In this case, just leave it lying around for another browser to have their eye caught by the cover.