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Group think is overrated in cover design and publishers should only allow a small number of parties to be involved its decision making, a conference has heard.
Business psychologist Tony Crabbe was speaking at last week's The Bookseller Cover Design Conference. Around 200 delegates heard presentations from the likes of Little, Brown's Duncan Spilling, marketing strategist Damian Horner and Hodder & Stoughton's James Spackman.
Crabbe said greater structure would take the conflict out of cover design meetings and lead to better decision-making. He said the designer, sales director and editor should be the only ones to make the decisions, with other participants only present to offer opinion when asked to do so, Crabbe advised.
"Group think" leads to poor quality decisions which lose "uniqueness", the psychologist said. "Take the emotion out of it, cover design is a strategic thing," he added.
However, Hodder & Stoughton creative director Auriol Bishop advised building trust with authors and agents by involving them at an early stage in what directions the publisher thinks a cover could go, offering options and "buy in".
A full write-up of the conference will feature in this Friday's issue of The Bookseller (1st July).