Dragaera

book by its

Casey Rousseau casey at the-bat.net
Tue Oct 7 14:51:04 PDT 2003

Steven Brust wrote:
> As I understand it, blurbs are less designed to appear to
> readers than to the buyers for various chains and major outlets.
> Er, if that  doesn't answer your question, you'll have to
> rephrases it.

to which Philip Hart replied:
> Hi, what I meant was, Does the cover art/title/back cover matter for the
> third book of a trilogy?  Will random people actually buy the book?

Ah, but it does not actually matter in the particular and immediate sense
whether cover art/title/back cover will prompt random people to actually buy
the book.  The key consideration is whether said items are attractive to the
big buyers who purchase tens or hundreds of thousands of copies of the book
to be prominently displayed at all their chain stores, etc.  So, if the
cover art/title/back cover are of the sort that the buyers think will be
appealing to the consumer, than it has done its primary job.

To the left, if the covers for an author consistently caused these buyers to
overpurchase, they would eventually change their 'taste'.

Casey