Judging a Book by its Cover?
I had the pleasure of meeting a cover model last Thursday evening when he visited the local Borders romance readers’ group I belong to…he was there to talk about the whole business and experience of being on the cover of romance novels. Robert John Nuzzie is originally from South Amboy NJ and now not only models, but also acts in films and does commercials, too.
As an author, it was interesting to finally talk to someone who ultimately represents an author’s book to readers, and who represents the author’s HERO to those readers. Sometimes, as readers and authors know, the person on the cover doesn’t even resemble the character as described in the story. Sometimes, the cover gods rain down blessings and it’s a stunning visual of exactly what the author intended.
Robert has posed on several Harlequin covers – and we were amazed at all the different appearance in all the poses and photos we saw…and all of them were very, very nice 😉 Check out his website if you don’t believe me — www.robertjohnnuzzie.com
The interesting thing to me as an author was all the questions he had for me. It’s amazing that there is so little interaction between all the people involved in bringing a book to ‘the shelves’ — and how little we each know about the process that the others carry out for our books. Authors and translators know even less about each other — and they are the ones choosing the right words! How much more important could that be in putting my words into another/other languages? Actually, in some other countries, the translator gets top billing inside the book on the copyright page…before the author.
So, on last Thursday, I spent a couple of hours learning more about the whole process of making covers. . . and it didn’t hurt that I spent them with a very nice man. . . and a bunch of romance readers. . . in public. . . in a store!
Terri (who is still learning this whole business even after 10 years…)
