Glamorous author photos of the 80s

Go ahead, judge these books by their (back) covers

One of the delights of working in a used bookstore is that you get to handle books printed over the past several decades, and in so doing, you sometimes spot the emergence of various themes and trends, both in content but also, in cover design. For example, there was a time when the back covers of books by commercially successful, mass market female authors looked like this:

Back cover of a novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford (apologies, I forgot to record which one).

or this:

Back cover of Zoya, by Danielle Steel.

or even like this:

Back cover of Lady Boss, by Jackie Collins.

Based on my highly unscientific study, which consisted of perusing the shelves of our little store, looking for books printed during this era, it seems that most of the commercially successful male authors, the ‘big names’ of the 80s and early 90s, were not expected to do this, to dress up and gaze into the camera so directly. The one exception I found, was James Lee Burke, whose 90s-era back covers have a similar vibe to the above:

Based on the prop I believe this is the back cover of Cadillac Juke Box, by James Lee Burke, which actually came out in 1996. But I could be wrong. Will be sure to take notes along with photos next time I do a post like this!

The intended vibe here is, I believe, tastefully sexy. Two of the three women are going for a soft, yet opulent, glamour—Taylor Bradford’s tousled curls and jewels, Steel’s bright red lips and (presumably genuine) fur hat and stole—while Collins has gone for a tougher look; this is a woman who means business, whose shoulders are probably padded but her elbows definitely are not. They’re sharp as hell.

Of the four, Burke looks the most uncomfortable. I imagine he was repeatedly instructed to ‘act natural,’ as though side-hugging a juke box is something he does all the time. He’s going for a kind of aw-shucks sex appeal, showing us that he’s the sort of ruggedly handsome guy who doesn’t think about his looks, let alone iron his shirt before a photo shoot. He just threw it on, just like he threw this here book together. Writing a book is just telling a story, no big deal.

The women though, are not going for approachable. Despite the directness of their gaze, they seem distant, as though they belong to a rarefied class—feminine writers who have both beauty and brains, who write their novels in between three-martini lunches and mani-pedis, who are as successful as their male counterparts. They live this life, because their books sell, because they are talented and savvy as well as gorgeous, and they are utterly deserving of your admiration. They have it all.

Or maybe this is not what their lives are like, at all, but these are the stories I imagine about these women, when I stare into their beautifully made-up eyes, before putting their books back up on the shelf. In my hands, these books feel more like artefacts than books, like products of an era that has come and gone.

These days, if the cover design of a contemporary mass market novel includes an author photo at all, it is usually a thumbnail on the back cover, or a slightly larger one on the inside back flap. The back cover is generally reserved for a synopsis, effusive blurbs, and/or a bunch of copy about other books by the same author. Devoting that promotional real estate to a giant glamour shot would be considered extremely tacky by today’s standards, the desperate act of a terribly vain, out-of-touch writer who has steamrolled over the marketing team.

I would love to believe that the primary reason for the shrinking size of author photos on back covers is that, as the author Frances Wilson once hoped, that books have “become words again,” that writers are increasingly being spared the indignity of being judged on their looks, in addition to the content of their books.

But really, I think it’s that the reverse is true.

Author photos have gotten smaller on back covers because, instead of creating their professional personae via a single, evocative photo, writers are now expected to post (or employ someone to post) both text and photos regularly, on whatever form of social media best suits their personal brand. Whether they like it or not, their faces are then reproduced everywhere, all over the internet and in print. A curious reader doesn’t have to flip the book over to see what the writer looks like; they just have to type their name into a search bar.

It’s still very important now, as indeed it has been since the first century B.C. (!), for writers to provide attractive representations of their physical selves, in part because there is so much competition for attention in our increasingly visual media environment. An “alluring author photo,” as Cornelia Powers writes in her fabulously entertaining article on the subject, is more likely to be featured prominently by both traditional and social media, and can sometimes be a “golden ticket for literary success.”

If by literary success, she actually means getting nice book deals and selling lots of books, I get it. It’s depressing, but I get it. Beauty bias is a well-known phenomenon and I’m sure the publishing world is no more immune to it than any other industry. And yet…

I personally do not know, or feel the need to know, what any of my favourite living authors look like. I don’t use social media, but I also don’t live under a rock, so I might recognize a few of the most famous faces in contemporary lit (and a few more historical ones), but that’s about it. And I’ve never once picked up a book and been disappointed to discover that there was no photo of the author on the inside back flap.

What about you, dear readers? Do you have any fabulous 80s-era hardcovers in your book collection? Should we go back to full-colour glamour shots on back covers, or get rid of author photos on dust jackets all together?