On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Casey Rousseau wrote: > 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 I'm not making my point very clearly. Once again - aren't the big buyers aware that this is book 3 of a trilogy or book 5 really or book 17 perhaps? Won't they be much more concerned with sales of books 1&2 and SKZB's track record? And isn't any residual concern with the packaging connected to the behaviour of individual purchasers, who I imagine will definitely buy the book upon seeing "Brust" on the cover if they read 1&2 but not otherwise. Certainly this cover wouldn't have moved me to buy the third book of a trilogy at random - the only cover art that might have done so was that of Heinlein's _Friday_ back when I was 13.