Writing science fiction; novel sales problem, part two -- book covers
I wanted to get the information about the used-versus-new book issue out first, so that it would be clear. But I don't want to give the impression that the low sales figures for the Native Tongue books were entirely due to that problem. There were some other factors. For example, there were the book covers. Covers -- over which writers often have little or no control -- are critically important to sales. Readers who go into a bookstore and ask straight out "Where are your science fiction books by [author's name]?" are priceless, and treasured -- and relatively few in number. Readers just wandering around in a bookstore's sf section looking for something to read, or something to buy as a gift, pick up one book rather than another because they're attracted by its cover. Academics hunting for a book to use in class care about the covers, too, but in a different way. Appealing to both groups isn't easy.

Like some of the commenters, I really liked the DAW cover for Native Tongue that showed a friendly ET with a handsome baby. But instructors who wanted to assign the book for their classes (and who called it "the cover with the giant bug getting ready to eat the baby") complained about that cover incessantly. The two most common complaints were (1) "I'm ashamed to carry a book with a cover like that on campus, and I can't ask my students to do it either" and (2) "My colleagues would be horrified if they saw that book displayed as a required text in our college bookstore, so I can't ask the store to order it." I explained this to DAW and I pleaded for a separate academic edition with a simple plain set of covers that would be accepted even on the most anti-sf campus -- but they didn't see that as an expense that could be justified. This was a chicken-and-egg item, you perceive. DAW didn't see spending the money for new covers as justified, because the sales figures weren't high enough, and the academic resistance to the old covers kept the sales figures low.

Then there was the fact that nothing about the three covers DAW used gave even the slightest hint that the books were part of a trilogy or were linked in any way; you had to look closely enough to see the "Native Tongue II/III" lines to find that out. So that even readers who had read the first book and enjoyed it were unlikely to find the other two books except by accident.

When Feminist Press brought the books out in reprint editions they did them differently. I don't pretend to understand the semantic content of the cover designs they chose. I do understand -- and am very grateful for -- the fact that the reprints have plain and simple matching covers that even the stodgiest Classics prof would be unlikely to find shocking. (Probably the Classics profs would understand that semantic content.) The addition of scholarly "afterwords" in each book, clearly mentioned on their covers, was also a plus. And the covers make it absolutely clear that the novels are the three books of a trilogy.

However, the non-academic science fiction reader is not going to be attracted by a trade paperback with a subdued cover that advertises an afterword and has "The Feminist Science Fiction Classic" as its upper border line. If Feminist Press were a big commercial publisher with lots of money to throw around I'd suggest a separate mass-market edition without the "feminist classic" and "afterword" lines on the covers, at the standard [though still too high] mass-market price. But FP is a small and distinguished university press with a limited budget; I won't be bothering them with that sort of suggestion.


Tomorrow -- if the electricity is on after the storms that are headed our way this afternoon and evening -- I plan to turn to the issue of the things that I myself did wrong, in terms of writing a trilogy that would sell well enough to make a publisher willing to bring out another novel with my name on it.

Suzette