{"id":557,"date":"2008-02-19T16:09:36","date_gmt":"2008-02-19T21:09:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/2008\/02\/19\/you-can-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-so-what-does-mine-say\/"},"modified":"2008-02-19T16:09:36","modified_gmt":"2008-02-19T21:09:36","slug":"you-can-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-so-what-does-mine-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/19\/you-can-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-so-what-does-mine-say\/","title":{"rendered":"You CAN judge a book by its cover. So what does mine say?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The  Fortune Cookie Chronicles cover gets a <a href=\"http:\/\/outerwearforbooks.typepad.com\/books_covered\/2008\/02\/nfcga-no-2-1.html\">shout out<\/a> by designer Christopher Tobias on his <a href=\"http:\/\/outerwearforbooks.typepad.com\/\">Outerwearforbooks blog<\/a> as part of his <a href=\"http:\/\/outerwearforbooks.typepad.com\/books_covered\/2008\/02\/the-non-fiction.html\">Non-fiction Cover Genius Awards<\/a>, launched Feb. 14. As he puts it:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Why do fiction books get all the glory? In my experience non-fiction is often more of a challenge to design than fiction. I guess it has something to do with the freedom that novels allow. With a novel there is a great deal more latitude with subject matter, tone, feeling, etc. But, with non-fiction, it is tight. Non-fiction deals with facts and with readers who want to know those facts. Making those kind of books look good and still retain the credibility that the book demands (how-to books, biographies, religion, etc.) is not easy. On one level you run the risk of making non-fiction look dry, academic and boring. On the other hand too much &#8220;creativity&#8221; might damage the very credibility that the book is trying to sell. Such a dilemma.<\/p>\n<p>So, in honor of those designers who pull off non-fiction cover design successfully and get no respect, I thought I would start featuring some of them on this blog: the Non-fiction Cover Genius Awards. I hope to present good options. And, of course debate is welcome.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For those who wonder: Anne Twomey designed my book cover. One of the best parts is actually the spine (which you can&#8217;t see, but features chopsticks like at the top of this blog)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Fortune Cookie Chronicles cover gets a shout out by designer Christopher Tobias on his Outerwearforbooks blog as part of his Non-fiction Cover Genius Awards, launched Feb. 14. As he puts it: Why do fiction books get all the glory? In my experience non-fiction is often more of a challenge to design than fiction. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-557","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-musings","category-chinese-food"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2pydS-8Z","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.fortunecookiechronicles.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}