Personally, I just thought it was a good author photo and fitting of an author who was writing gritty futuristic police thrillers (with a lot of good romance thrown in).

There is one very famous author whose historicals I *love* even though her heroines have certain core similarities.

Camy

I have tended to assume that the back cover autor photograph is meant to project a marketable persona, not reveal character. For instance, the merits of a supposedly hard-boiled thriller might be called into question if the author photograph shows a bespectacled, little old lady with her grey her in a bun and dandling her grandchildren on her knee. While it is very possible that warm scene is part of her true, everyday life, the image is not one easily reconciled with the blood, gore, and violence of the book she is trying to sell.

For that reason I would expect it is in an author’s best interest to be photographed in a style that is consistent with the tone or type of her/his book. Also, why should the fact that an author may be interested in exploring a particular type of character, for instance, automatically mean that she herself is like that character? Would a reader only read novels that contain characters who are like mini-portraits of her/himself? Not this reader.

Websites, too, tend to reflect the type of books the author is selling, in order to capture the interest of the target audience. The same look would not, I think, work with equal success for a writer of medieval romances and a writer of contemporary thrillers. Why should it be any different with cover photographs? They are, ultimately, a marketing tool, too.

but not necessarily

oops sorry….

But I tend to remember the covers, though and not the titles of books so I do assosciate that w/ the author bunt necessarily as the author – make sense?