Anatomy of a Cover

Here it is. The most jeered cover out of any book we've ever published. "Word balloons on a cover? Ewwww!" This is the gist of what a few reviewers some convention attendees complained about.

Winter Demon three came out in our fourth year. I had enough experience to know what a cover needed for it to sell. BL titles that promise sex inside sell better than those that don't. This is often as easy as having the 'adults only' warning label on the cover.

The folks at DMP know this warning label sells books, particularly online where a lot of sellers don't bother to give the age rating. It still helps to have an eye-catching picture. One that has action and/or drama, and the promise of sex.

This cover without the balloons still makes BL fans look. When the books are lying face up on the table at conventions this is one they always pick up to examine first. (Along with Yaoi Hentai 3).

If the cover was good enough without word balloons, why block the art with them? It was an experiment to see if people would click the thumbnail when it came up online. Thumbnails are to online stores what spines are to brick & mortar. All customers see in Borders is our half inch spine. That's why there's always a tempting picture there. The first step to a sale is getting the customer to pick the book off the shelf. For online sales you want them to click your thumbnail.



After a year in print I can now look at sales figures and decide whether the gimmick was worth it. It's true that we had higher than average amazon sales for this title. I don't think there's enough to warrant us doing something that fans don't like. It didn't hurt sales, but only mildly helped them in one area. No more word balloons on the cover. Got it.

There's something more at play here. I didn't think fans would wrinkle their noses as much as they did to the text on the cover. Before I read manga I read comic books. Balloons on the cover was a common enough technique.

Comic books are my roots in this business. My script writing style is more influenced by comic books than by BL graphic novels. I'm taking the conventions of BL: seme/uke dynamic, unrealistic gay romance, et. al., and am writing it the same way a superhero comic book writer would. (Assuming one wanted to start writing this stuff.)



The generation making up the vast majority of our customers got their roots in manga. There were already manga gns out there for them. Most of them never got into comics. They didn't like them, in fact. It looked like a guy thing, with boobies and muscles. A Western comic technique, such as balloons on the cover, made the book look less like manga and more like those icky comic books.

I still thank these fans for buying Winter Demon 3 despite their aversion to cover dialogue. Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, with usually the cover complaint being the only compliant I see. Even though the adventure inside reads more like the comics with the boobies and the muscles than manga, the only glaring connection to that sort of thing is the cover.

Fans know this reads different than a manga. They assume it's got a different feel because it's OEL, and in part they're right. I was born in North America, not Japan. My influences are different. Fans speak to me with their BL dollars. They say: we like it. Just don't mess with the covers anymore.