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Nice! I did this one, but I found the girl in an advertisement, rather than a book cover. Gotta say, though, TMI does it better with the background. I think. http://stackedbooks.blogspot.com/2009/08/double-take-part-viii.html

Very interesting. As for changing hair and eye color, eye color is easier than hair. With hair you’ve got all the tonal variations to deal with. It’s not so much difficult as it is time-consuming.

Same cropping in the ad! The stock photo itself must be cropped this way.
Thanks for the link.

My graphic design days were before computers… so I never had to do this kind of thing. But I’d love to see a video (like the one here, of someone changing a photo like this!

And look closely at this jacket, the same season and publisher as TMI!
http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/32580000/32589679.jpg

This makes me wonder why I’m not creating stock photography. One image, used four times (at least!) equals easy money?

Good eye!!! I’ve looked at this jacket several times and never made the connection.

Not so much, I think. If you look at a page from Getty Images you gotta think it’s a miracle if someone chooses your photo. Triply so if they choose it more than once!

[...] Linda at Jacket Whys has another set: Ginger Rue’s BRAND NEW EMILY and Sarah Quigley’s TMI. Share this [...]

HaHaHa, there’s a liar image in there somewhere. It’s still the best audience-capturing image.

I’ve heard the entire background debate about the Liar jacket, and it actually makes complete sense if you have read it. The whole concept for that original image for Liar was that the entire package needed to be a lie, since the character was a liar throughout the book. The author is super opinionated, yet approved the original image. However, one blogger made it a racial issue that caught on like wild fire, the author got scared, and went against her company in fear of losing buyers, which in turn created a mass blog opinion tsunami.

Purely from a design standpoint, I actually thought that was a really awesome idea. Possibly not the best image, but the whole concept of lying to the public, without revealing the fact that the girl thinks she is a werewolf, is very cool.

Very few books make the whole package speak for the book. As much as it has been talked about, the team for the Liar jacket loved that book, and wanted to make it the coolest conversation about lying, not race, but people just love to have an opinion and created an industry scapegoat. Don’t get me wrong, the conversation needed to happen, BUT, most of the people that had an opinion about this book, never read it, will never read it, and just liked to put wood in the fire of nonsense.

Graphic designers up with sometimes 100 different compositions for a book cover, but then it is up to editorial/sales for positioning and changes. I like this blog, because no one knows that it takes 6-8 months for a jacket to actually be conceived, concepted, edited and approved.

Uh… I have to disagree with the idea that Justine “got scared” once bloggers “made it a racial issue.” If you read her blog, you’ll see she is tireless in fighting for racial diversity in young adult books. She didn’t speak out against the cover at first, but you’ll notice she didn’t say anything positive about it once it was released. That was deliberate. She didn’t want to speak out about it because she felt that would have been unprofessional, but behind the scenes she was actively trying to get the cover changed. Read her post here for more information.

Yeah! The Liar photo–I saw it immediately, too! I like all of the design possibilities they posted; it’s neat to see what stays and what goes from sample to sample.

This is exactly what I am talking about. Thanks for proving my point. You obviously weren’t part of the behind the scenes discussion. I’ll just leave it at that.

Oh, and please don’t get me wrong, the author was COMPLETELY correct in fighting for this issue. I was really just talking from a design perspective (since this is a book design blog). It was a really neat initial idea as an outside designer. And, I truly think more people should read it before having an opinion.

However, I do feel that it started the conversation with the wrong book, especially having read it, and knowing the background to it all. I am glad the conversation at least got started though because I noticed this problem a long time ago.