🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1611@chinacat.Unicom.COM> woody@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Woody Baker @ Eagle Signal) writes:
>... Where do publishers get
>off on the idea that they can call the shots?  I'd be pretty hardnosed
>about it if I were writing a book.  I'd design the cover AND the title
>and reserve that right in the contract...

You might have to bargain pretty hard for rights to do the cover design.
Barring ultra-technical books -- the ones with the extremely bland covers
and extremely high prices :-) -- the cover of a book is *advertising* for
the book, and publishers understandably think sales will be higher if
the cover is designed by a professional.  Publishers "get off on the idea
that they can call the shots" because it's *their* money paying for
publication, and they are the ones who will be out of pocket if it sells
57 copies from a print run of 1000000000.

My understanding is that even getting right of approval of cover design
is generally impossible unless you have the clout of, say, a near-certain
bestseller.

Actually, there are publishers who give you complete control over it all.
They're called "vanity presses".  The gotcha is that you get to pay all
the bills in advance, and selling the books afterward is your problem.
-- 
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