Maybe it’s the cover blurb that sells you, or the title of the book, or the name of the author. Covers are the billboards of reader enticement. They have about two seconds to draw you in before you’re nothing but taillights.
I wonder if that old idiom began back when book covers were roughly the same; when book covers were just the cloth-wrapped boards that protected the pages between them. At one time the only thing that differentiated the Bible from Robinson Crusoe before you opened it up, was the title of the book.
We count on covers. They separate romance novels from cookbooks. Usually. They tell us how fabulously famous the author is, when her name is larger than the title. They help us make the first cut in selecting a book.
All of this is by way of introducing the new cover of what was, in 1996, my first novel, Keeping Private Idaho. The book has been out of print for a while, and I’ve never done an electronic version.
Now, the book is available, again, in trade paperback, and will be available as an ebook in just a few days. What pleases me most about bringing it back is the new cover, created by Ward Hooper.
If you live in the Northwest, you’ve seen Ward’s work everywhere. If you’re not familiar with him, please visit his website or Facebook page.
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