A Little Help? Design My Cover
I’m handing in the manuscript for my extratext / paratext book this week. Its title at present is Show Sold Separately: Film, Television, and Off-Screen Studies (I figured I might scare people away by putting “paratext” in the title). Anyways, part of submitting a book, as many of my readers will know, is submitting the Author’s Questionnaire too (which asks you to write the blurb for the back of the book, and give suggestions for marketing and publicity). One of the questions asks for ideas for the cover. I’m stumped.
If it helps, the book examines a wide range of paratexts. Trailers, websites, marketing campaigns, opening credit sequences, official websites, wikis, spoilers, DVD bonus materials, vids, podcasts, interviews, reviews, toys, videogames, ARGs, transmedia, spinoffs, sequels, etc. The argument is that most of these things have been understood and appreciated largely as selling a film or television program, but too little work exists that examines how they contribute to and create the text itself. Kind of the point behind many of my blog posts here.
Especially since I’m arguing for the importance of all those things that surround a text, it would be really really lame if my cover sucked. A book about paratexts should have a good paratext waiting to greet you at its entrance.
So, if any ideas strike you, please pass them on. Thanks.
This question stumped me as well. The only thing I can think of would be two or three (or more) media technologies crashing against each other somehow. But that would probably be hard to do.