Why that man for SPA?

[La Vish]

Hi Michael and Josh,

I am 63 years old and can easily understand SPA. But what I don't understand is the significance of putting that man's(Egyptian King?) picture on your book. What are you trying to convey with that picture? and what is he saying with his hand outstretched?

[Ulf Dittmer]

Manning uses similar covers for all its books. The authors were most likely not involved with its selection. See http://www.manning.com/about/covers.html for more information.

[Rob Crowther]

Actually it's my experience that we (Manning authors) are given three choices and pick one. There's usually some description to go with each picture, so sometimes the choice is made based on that, but I just picked the picture I liked best

[Bear Bibeault]

No disrespect to La Vish, but I really don't understand this whole obsession with covers. Tech book covers rarely have anything to do with their contents. O'Reilly uses animals, Manning uses people in period dress, Head First uses hipsters. I have a PHP book with a sea anemone on the cover, an HTML5 book with a pointing hand, a cryptography book with a manhole cover, and an XML book showing Native American artwork.

Yes, I'm touchy about the subject as someone whose book got a 1-star and a 3-star review on Amazon because they didn't like the samurai on the cover.

[Josh Powell]

Yeah, we got three covers to choose from, the one we chose, a pregnant woman in period dress, and something I can't remember. I'm not a fan, but the owner of Manning loves these things. If I had a publishing house all the covers would be pictures of my kids. I'd probably still get complaints about them.

@Bear - Yeah, that's is not a Ninja on your cover. Just in case you didn't know, FYI. Fortunately, your book was good enough to overcome those BS reviews and hang on to its 4.7 star rating.

[Josh Powell]

FWIW, our cover has grown on me over time, I like the burnt orange stripe and it matches the guys cloak. And the guys is looking slightly befuddled, as if to say "What is this Single Page Web Application stuff that you speak of?"

[La Vish]

Thank you to all of you authors for sharing your thoughts. For your next book please remember the age old saying: " People always judge a book by its cover". Good luck.

[Bear Bibeault]

And as the adage goes. people shouldn't. It makes no sense at all to me -- especially when it comes to technical books. Would you perhaps not buy the PHP book on my shelf because sea anemones are poisonous?

[Bear Bibeault]

By the way, the Japanese edition of my book does have a ninja on the cover, so be sure to go out and buy it!

[Josh Powell]

I have had to have the cover discussion about 5 times so far, I'm sure Bear gets it all the time because of the Samurai / Ninja Discrepancy. But the point is that covers are pretty much out of our hands and telling us the cover sucks will make us give you a scrunched up face look in return. It's like telling someone they are fat, it insults them but there is precious little that can be done without a lot of effort.

[Bear Bibeault]

It has been said that the French soldier on the cover of jQuery in Action (2nd Ed) made for the ugliest Manning cover ever (Amazon review), but that didn't seem to affect its sales much.



(If I recall, I was only given two choices: the French soldier, and a boy carrying a dead lamb across his shoulders. I didn't want no dead lamb on my cover. )

[Josh Powell]

LOL, that sends a great message to potential readers... jQuery is like a dead lamb.

I'm pretty sure they do the designer trick of showing the design they want + two awful designs and ask us to choose one. This gets a much better response then just choosing the good one for the customer... unless the customer chooses the ugly one, then its best to just fire the client.

[Michael Matola]

Why does the French soldier have a tail?

[Bear Bibeault]

Good question. I've also been asked why he's wet his pants.

[Rob Crowther]

Because, now he knows jQuery, he spends a lot less time writing and debugging JavaScript code and has a lot more time for smoking his pipe, growing a tail and peeing in his own pants. This is clearly a book which will help you get your priorities straight, just like this man.

I shouldn't talk, my book has a Victorian hipster on the cover...