Unfortunately I would have to answer yes, image in this day and age is very important to anyone who is trying to market a product, including books. The "thing" and everything directly connected to it has to look pretty. Remember the old books with no jacket, no pictures, no hideous gigantic embossed gold letters to lure readers? They had fine leather covers and marble patterns printed on the edges of the pages. No author picture there. The book still sold.

 For many years I worked for a major international electronics manufacturer in marketing and believe me, image (whether visual or virtual) is everything. Woe to the author who is not photogenic, for his work must be more than fantastic to overcome the preconceptions "business people" have of what a person (or product) must look like to be marketable. Thank goodness for airbrushing. I'm sure Brook Shields is not drop-dead gorgeous when she crawls out of bed in the morning.

The problem, as usual, lies with the publishing industry. The big traditional houses are too afraid to break the mold. With today's print-on-demand industry and the Internet, the big publishers need to watch their p's and q's. These new publishing outlets are a lot more flexible and a lot less beholden to the stock market and shareholder demands. There are better writers out there than J.K. Rowling, Clive Cussler and Nora Roberts who could also make a good buck for publishing houses big and small; the publishers just have to look beyond the "image" and appreciate their talent.

But take heart. Some of the world's leading authors today do not look like Tom Cruise or Penelope Cruz and they are selling books in huge quantities. The readers don't give a hoot what the author looks like, as long as he or she pumps out another good read.

Personally I don't care what a writer looks like. I do care about the bio, as I want to know something about where the writer is coming from. I hate those writers (publicists?) who feel the writer must always appear brooding or tortured or angry at the world. It's so fake. That can turn me off a book rather than the opposite.

It's not just pretty faces that have seduced our industry, it's anyone who's exploited themselves-or been exploited-- in our tabloid leaning news that has taken over news reporting. It was Walter Chronkite's biggest complaint. Just yesterday, the former Miss California, whose anti gay statements made headline news recently, signed with a publisher. To write what? Who the hell knows. For whom? A waiting conservative Christian market that I bet won't mind if the jacket of her book sports her bikini-ed body responsible for her 15 minutes of fame.

We are all a little bit guilty. The National Inquirer doesn't sell itself. I'm reminded of an  interview I did with highly regarded Charles Champlin, then at the helm of LA Times Entertainment. I asked him when will Hollywood stop making these car chasing, bombs exploding, content-less movies?

"When we stop buying tickets,"  he replied.

 

It doesn't surprise me at all. Why should the publishing industry be immune to the shallow, insensitive, media-hyped theme that runs every venue from movies to whose checkout line you'll stand in at the supermarket? It's a psychologically proven statistic that attractive people are more believable, get better jobs and higher pay, command more respect, deserve more attention, etc.

Thank heavens there is still room for creativity. If looks were the criteria for what gets published, Stephen King would be writing computer software in a back room somewhere. And people like Susan Boyle would not even be allowed to stand on the stage in front of an audience.

I have a question, however: when you're submitting your novel to a publisher for the first time, how do they know what you look like? In all the "how to" information I've read, nowhere does it mention submitting a picture.

The next thing you know, you'll be judged by the sound of your name, whether it rolls smoothly off the tongue or sounds mysterious, evil, or seductive, depending on your genre. Then you'll only get published if you have names like Azure Blue, Wildberry Fontana Twinkletoes, and Hellbent Fury!

 

Who said, "A picture is worth a thousand words" and the flip side, "You can't tell a book by its cover."  Personally, if a reviewer, potential reader, or someone just browsing depends on the attractiveness of the author's picture, I think their priorities are just a little mixed up.  I agree with those who stated that they prefer knowing the talent of the writer, not what is hidden behind the make-up mask.  We all want to look good, but that's exterior.  The words on the pages come from the interior, and to me, that's what counts.  The professionals that I have conferred with never commented on my looks, but their interest was squarely on what I wrote, whether they accepted it or not.