Cover Illustration For My Book

The cover illustration for my book, The Bible's Most Fascinating People has now appeared on the Barnes & Noble website, catching up with Amazon.com which put it up last week. Amazon.com still has the best price, however. Moreover, Barnes & Noble still lists Penguin Group (USA) as the publisher, even though it obviously says Reader's Digest on the cover. I think that's because Putnam, one of Penguin's imprints, is acting as a distributor for my book. It does, after all, appear in Putnam Praise, their Winter, 2008 catalogue. Look on page 11 of the PDF, or page 8 of the dead tree version. You'll notice, too, that both the Putnam Praise catalogue and the Barnes & Noble website have my full name listed (though the B&N website actually lists it with both my normal byline and my full name, as if the book was written by two people with remarkably similar names.)

I get the feeling trying to get everything fixed and right on all the various booksellers' websites would wind up like trying to nail Jello(TM) to a tree. I'm not sure it would be worth the effort and I doubt it would be effective; after all, I already emailed B&N to get my name corrected once. And it didn't last. And of course, once again in the cover image, my name is spelled wrong. It won't surprise me if it winds up being wrong on the actual book, too. Odd, given that the proofs had it all right. Why would it have been changed at the last minute? Who would have authorized it?

Another interesting and odd error. In the Putnam Praise catalogue, if you look at it in detail, you'll notice that it lists the hometowns of the authors. It tells you that my hometown is Washington DC. Odd, given that I've never even visited Washington DC in my whole life. I was born in Ohio, moved a lot, and settled in California to go to college. I now live in Lancaster, California and teach in nearby Quartz Hill, where I also go to church. Oh well. I gave Reader's Digest all this information in the author's questionaire.

I shouldn't complain. My editor was very nice, I was paid well, and I have a book being published by a major New York publisher. If you're in the World Series and the program doesn't spell your name right, why focus on that? Be thankful you're in the World Series. Not many people get to be there, after all.