Deborah Cooke: Author

I realized while I was signing the contest prizes from last week that not all of the copies that were prizes had stepbacks in them.

Therein lies a fun publishing fact.

A stepback is a second cover, tipped inside the first one. I think it was called a stepback because initially, the cover was trimmed back 3/16″ or so, to just show the lip of the stepback which was the same width as the book. These were hugely popular packaging choices for historical romance in the 1980’s and 1990’s – this was when the outside covers became “candy-box” covers, with ribbons and flowers. Many readers missed the old clinch covers, so the clinch moved inside, to the stepback.

Now a stepback is a comparatively expensive choice for packaging. It’s printed separately on heavier glossy stock – maybe not as heavy as the cover, but heavier than the book pages themselves – and then tipped into the book by hand at the bindery. It also requires another piece of art, so another artist’s fee, in addition to the production costs. A lot of distributors disliked stepbacks because they tended to get damaged in the stores – the discerning historical romance buyer wouldn’t buy a book with a damaged stepback, so a lot of books ended up being junked because the covers were torn or dented. They also cause delays in reprinting, because they take time to put into the books. That makes it harder for the house to respond in a timely fashion to a surge in demand for a title. Overall, stepbacks were an expensive proposition, which is part of the reason why they’re a lot less common than they were.

At Dell, which was the house that published the Bride Quest, the midlist romance titles didn’t have stepbacks. Only the lead and superlead romance titles had them. All houses distinguish the ranking of the books in their list by how much budget is allocated to the covers – at some houses, only lead titles get foil or embossing (or both), for example. At Dell, the mark of lead title was the stepback.

So, the first five Bride Quest titles (PRINCESS, DAMSEL, HEIRESS, COUNTESS and BEAUTY) all had stepback covers when they were initially printed. THE TEMPTRESS did not, possibly because stepbacks were beginning to go out of fashion.

In subsequent printings of the initial five books, the stepbacks were omitted.
Aha! Which means that if you have a copy of any of these books with a stepback, it’s probably from the very first print run of that title. Shouldn’t that make it a collector’s edition? I’d think so!

Either way, there’s your fun publishing fact for the day.