The Extratextuals

So, currently my book about paratexts, entitled Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts, is in production at NYU Press. It’s due out at the end of the year.

Problem is, we’re all struggling with an idea for the cover. This is where you, gentle reader, come in, since I need your help. Any and all ideas welcome.

A few parameters and notes:

• The urgency here is that NYU keep threatening to use a picture of the Simpsons on a couch that many who went to see The Simpsons Movie would have likely seen outside their theater (the big plastic mock-up of the family, which you could sit beside and get your picture taken with them). Problem is that I already have a book with a picture of the Simpsons’ couch. So, yes, the notion of being able to sit alongside the family does allude to what paratexts are all about on one level, but I really don’t want my books to have iterations of the same cover. Or for people to think it’s a second book by me about The Simpsons. Or am I over-reacting?
• NYU prefer a single image, not a montage
• Which leads to the tackling thing: what one image could be metonymic without being painfully reductive? The book argues that all those things that surround film and TV often contribute meaningfully to popular understandings of shows, to the point that they are bona fide parts of “the text itself,” btw. If you read this blog, you likely have a sense of my take on paratexts, and that’s the book.
• And, of course, since it’s a cover, there are legalities to dodge, and I can’t just lift a commercial image and claim fair use when it’s a cover.

So, please, help me with my cover. Thanks!

front covers Show Sold Separately