For some, an ebook is simply a different means of content delivery. They will enjoy the latest bestseller or their favorite author’s latest story in either digital or print form–it’s all the same to them. They want the story, and they want it when they want it. For others, an ebook is an opportunity to make changes in the process of publishing–for them, time spent hunting down out of print backlists of favorite authors, or missed books in a series, or even classics from the next fifteen-year overnight sensation, is only a process they engage in because it’s currently the only way to find that awesome book from 1994 whose title you can’t remember. These readers question why the access to the content requires an expiration date when it no longer requires a physical manufacturing process. And for still another group of readers, an ebook is an opportunity to change the way we experience a story.

No one is sure yet which of these groups has the closest guess to right as to what the future holds. But it would be crazy not to at least try to imagine what could be.

We still see ebooks through the reference lens of print books. But what if it doesn’t have to be that way? What ways could the benefits of instant online gratification find a way to enhance our reading experiences? What makes an ebook a unique experience, and what could make reading an ebook not simply different from reading a paperback or a hardback book, but better?

Whether from bad dreams, a too-cold bed–even when there’s a cat curled up on someone’s head, or “I heard a noise, Mom, our house is haunted, I swear.” (and no, the house isn’t haunted, it’s three years old and the place used to be a farm and a pasture, if we’ve got the ghosts of anything, it’s cows, squirrels, and the spirits of soybeans past, now go back to bed), my nighttime visitors will snuggle for about ten minutes, just until they fall back asleep, and then–off come the covers.  It gets me to thinking, these late-night invasions, and I’ve been thinking about covers lately.

Book covers, that is.

One of the persistent concepts I toy with on a regular basis is a question I keep asking myself.  How are ebooks different from print books? Followed up with the more interesting question of how can ebooks be more different from print books?

Both Alien Communion and Jolly Rogered have awesome covers.  Liquid Silver is one of the better houses for providing classy, quality covers, and they did so long before some of the other houses left the Poser-art covers behind in favor of photomanip and original artwork.  Each of my books has an excellent cover, as do many e-only and e-first releases.

But why just one?  I mean, ebooks can be found and “shelved” in multiple places, under multiple keywords, and under multiple sub-headings.  I see reissued print books in stores with updated covers, covers differing between hardback, trade, and mass market paperback editions, and books repackaged with movie stills.  I see books repackaged under different auspices–they started life as one genre or subgenre and after the movie came out or the hype exploded, they re-emerge with new covers to appeal to a larger audience attracted to a more general marketing appeal.

But all that takes time and money in the print world–a publisher has to seriously consider whether or not to create a new print run of a book when the old one might not have sold through, leaving extra stock with older covers on the publisher’s books. But things happen faster at the speed of electrons.

Not to say cover art is free in the world of epublishing–artists should be compensated for their work whether they paint in pixels or pastels. But if you write something cross-genre, say, Science Fiction Romance *cough* ;P then the online sales of your story aren’t limited to one shelf or the other, and perhaps your cover marketing ought not to be limited, either.

Every author wants to attract more readers, and the genre shorthand of visual cues on covers can help to reach a core audience within a genre, who knows what they’re looking for and knows what the cues mean.  But why limit that attraction to a single genre when cover cues can be used to reach multiple genres?  I’d love to know if anyone’s tried a simultaneous release with different covers–with a print or an e-book.  If so, was it a successful or wise decision? Do you feel you’ve reached more readers?  Do you feel multiple covers would give you the chance to reach more readers if you write cross-genre?