Alternative Covers
htaccess
Posted 2009-12-29 2:44 PM (#1756)
Subject: Alternative Covers



Veteran

Posts: 207
100
Hi

Feature request.

It would be great to have the ability to choose an alternative cover image for a book which has a number of different covers. I know it helps me remember the books I have read much better when the cover matches the copy I actually read. It would be great if I could select my preferred version of the cover for any given book. This cover would then be displayed everywhere on the site when the user is logged in.

Having the covers match what I actually read would be a feature I would appreciate
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Administrator
Posted 2009-12-30 11:46 PM (#1758 - in reply to #1756)
Subject: RE: Alternative Covers



Admin

Posts: 4003
2000
Location: Dallas, Texas

That would be a neat feature for some point down the line but not something that's going to jump to the top of our already very long list.  Something like that could come into play after we've got all the user submission features built in which is going to take some time.  Coding is the main bottleneck in our development.

Some practical issues I can think of off the top of my head:

- User submitted images will be all over the place for size, color and quality.  We strive very diligently to have quality images for all our books and I'm not willing to let poor quality images onto the site.

- For every book on WWEnd there are actually 4 different size cover images for different areas on the site.  I don't think anybody is going to make multiple sizes as needed except for me.   It's a royal pain, trust me.

- Images would have to be reviewed before they could be posted.  People do stupid things.

We've got it set up where visitors can submit alternate covers via an email link on the novel page but in 5 years nobody has ever done so.  I dumped a bunch on the page for A Canticle for Leibowitz because it's a favorite of mine and I wanted a page that showed how all the novels could look eventually.  You'll notice that all those alternate images are of different sizes which makes them unsuitable for the main cover graphic but they're decent quality and interesting nonetheless.

Thanks for the suggestion.  We'll re-visit this down the line I'm sure.

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