Hi!

Book covers are like the front of cereal boxes. Their job is to sell the product, to stop the shopper, to say this is the one you absolutely just have to have today.

The first cover for Early’s Fall—it’s the one on top if the covers are stacked or top left if they are side-by-side—while it’s okay, didn’t do that.

The first iteration was the cover you see minus the Winchester rifle . . . a section of highway in lonely, desolate, flat country, the various shades of brown suggesting it’s fall.

I sent the designer a note, asking if she could drop in a police vehicle—preferably a Jeep because that’s what Early drives—the vehicle behind a car stopped at the side of the road.

The answer was no. It’s likely she couldn’t find a photo of that to Photoshop in.

Then how about a rifle, I asked, a Winchester because Early carries one in a scabbard on the hood of his Jeep?

That got a yes. She found the image and laid it in, a rifle and a ghost image of the gun behind it. However, she laid the rifle behind the center striping of the road. There was a big white stripe on the gun.

You can’t do that, I said in my next note. Can you Photoshop the stripe out?

She did.

I needed that rifle to suggest to potential readers that Early’s Fall was a western.

As I said, it’s an okay cover. Not great, but okay.

When I decided to reissue Early’s Fall last year after six years or so of the book being out of print, I decided with the project manager to let the cover designer have a free hand in coming up with the cover as long as it suggested this is a western, and this time we used a sheriff’s badge rather than the rifle to suggest the book is a crime story.

You see the result. A single strong image—a cowboy, his back to the viewer—and the colors suggesting fall, but the colors are much brighter than those in the first cover . . . and the badge that was to tie together all the covers of the books in the Early series.

My comment to the project manager, “Tell your designer she’s come up with a winner!”

The proof came at events I was doing after I had new covers for my three James Early books. Four people stopped and helped themselves to the three books without either reading the back covers or asking me what the books were about, or without even knowing I was the author.

“They’re westerns,” they said as they handed me their charge cards. “I like westerns.”

Others purchased the three books as either birthday gifts or Christmas gifts for someone in their family, usually a husband, a dad, or a grandfather. Here the buyers did want to know about the stories.

The season of book events is here

I like selling at arts and craft shows. I’m out in front of my setup, hailing people in, selling in my space and selling in the aisles while most vendors sit behind their tables, hoping someone will stop by.

At Albion’s Stroll Through the Park art fair, I always set up next to the park committee’s bake sale because everybody stops at the bake sale. The bake sale always gets traffic, and I get a good share of that traffic.

A husband and wife were together at one event, and she was buying a book. “Do you want me to sign this to you,” I asked.

“No, sign it to both of us,” she said. “Mary—”

“Traditional spelling,” I asked.

“Yes, Mary and Jon.”

“John, also traditional spelling,” I asked.

“No, Jon—J-O-N. He’s modern.”

So then she wanted to tell me the story of when she and Jon were seriously dating, when she finally introduced him to her parents. “It’s Jon, J-O-N,” she said.

Her mother gave Jon a hard look and asked him, “Don’t your parents know how to spell?”

At another event, Susan was buying a book. I asked her how she wanted me to sign it.

“Can you sign it ‘To a young woman and beautiful, too’?” she said.

I did.

She went on her way, showing the page to her friends who were with her. “Did you see how he signed it?” she asked them.

I always get surprised at these events. Two weeks ago, I was a vendor at Middleton’s Good Neighbor Festival. A woman went by pushing a tandem stroller for kids about a year old. But no kids in the stroller. Instead two wanna-be dogs, two little puffs of fluff.

I remembered my Uncle Jack. Jack loved babies. One time when he was retired and living in Livingston, he and Aunt Marion were out for a morning walk and a woman came their way, pushing a baby carriage. Jack stopped her and looked in, ready to say ‘You have a beautiful baby.’

Instead, he choked. “It’s a goddamn dog,” he said.

He never did tell me the woman’s reaction.

Back to Middleton, an hour later here came another woman pushing a double stroller, this one a side-by-side. No little children. Again two wanna-be dogs.

Still later, a guy came by on a fat-tire electric bike, a saddle seat between his knees. And a dog on it.

Oh, my.

Coming events

Tomorrow (Tuesday), I’ll be in Williams Bay, at the city library, talking about the book biz with the members of the library’s Mystery Book Club. Ten a.m.

And on the 27th, I’ll be with several other authors, crafters, and artists at Adventure Day at Janesville’s Rotary Gardens. Eleven a.m.-3 p.m.

If you’re in the neighborhood of either event, stop on by.

Until the next time, keep on reading.

Jerry & the Sheriff