Judging a book by its cover

WHAT price a book cover? Quite a lot, actually. Last year Bloomsbury had to pay Columbia Films a cool £60,000 for the right to adorn their reissue of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility with a film still of Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet. However, as 150,000 copies of the book were sold on the strength of the movie tie in, Bloomsbury obviously considered the money well spent.

Now Mandarin have forked out more than £50,000 to Miramax for the privilege of having Gwyneth Paltrow's face on their reissue of Emma. Given that Ms Paltrow was unknown until she landed the part in the movie (which has just opened in Ireland), Mandarin are taking a bit of a gamble, but they're so confident of her star appeal that they've printed 100,000 copies of the book.

So where does that leave Penguin, who've linked themselves to the ITV version of Emma, which will star Kate Beckinsale and which is due for screening in November? Well, Penguin have only paid the producers £15,000 for the Beckinsale cover, but they're also producing a tie in book called The Making of Emma, from which they're expecting great things - last year's The Making Of Pride and Prejudice sold more than 100,000 copies.

It's depressing to think that a film star's mug is needed to sell a classic book (a reprint of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter with Demi Moore on the cover, sold 16,000 copies in Britain, despite the fact that the movie was a laughed at failure), but at least it means that the classics are being read by a new generation. A pity, though, that Jane Austen isn't around to pick up the royalties.

I'M glad that at the launch of the Hodges Figgis 1996/97 Irish Catalogue, guest speaker Brendan Kennelly singled out Penguin's recently published Selected Poems of Patrick Kavanagh (£7.99) for special mention. Brendan thought it one of the books of the year, and so do I.

Of course, any lover of Kavanagh should have the Complete Poems (Goldsmith Press), but Antoinette Quinn's selection features almost all the poems we all love, her introduction is full of genuine insights, and her detailed notes to the poems are exemplary - among many other things, I now know more about Art McCooey and Memory of Brother Michael than I did before.

The new Hodges Figgis catalogue offers a guide to more than 1,000 books relating to Ireland and is laid out in clearly defined categories. You can get it free from the Dawson Street shop.

I'M afraid my brain glazes over when an invitation includes the dreaded words "slide presentation". This phrase was used in the invitation to the Irish Book Sales Autumn Roadshow in the Mont Clare Hotel last Tuesday evening, and it was enough to convince me that I had an engagement elsewhere.

I'm sure I missed a fascinating event. Organised by a north south consortium of the O'Brien Press, Mercier, Marino, Blackstaff and Wolfhound, it promised (according to O'Brien sales manager Chenile Keogh) "an enjoyable and informative evening" which featured, yes, a slide presentation of the autumn titles from these publishers, followed by a hot buffet.

The Irish Trade Board were in support, and it's hoped that the event will become a hardy annual.

IF you fancy a few days among a motley gathering of novelists, I short story writers, poets, historians, theatre directors, screen writers and cooks, then Bangor is the place for you from next Wednesday until Sunday week. The venue is the town's North Down Heritage Centre and the occasion is the Aspects festival, which is billed as "a celebration of Irish writing" and which this year, according to festival director Kenneth Irvine, "looks at the various ways of telling stories".

I'm not quite sure how Darina Allen fits into this, but she's among the eminences who'll be telling her story. I'm not sure, either, what the programme means when it says that novelist Josephine Hart (another of the speakers) is "one of the few writers in our time who can be said to have created a genre of her own". What genre is that? Writing in very short sentences?

Among the other writers in an impressive line up are Clare Boylan, Michael Longley, A.T.Q. Stewart, John Montague, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Graham Reid, Marita Conlon McKenna, Eugene McEldowney and (last but definitely not least) Roddy Doyle. If you wish to know more, contact the festival at (01247) 271200.

INCIDENTALLY, Roddy Doyle will be in Waterstone's next Tuesday at 6.30 p.m. to introduce a reading by Dermot Healy.

This is to mark the publication of Dermot's moving and funny memoir The Bend for Home, which has already been receiving very good reviews across the water. And I see that the book is on the shortlist for the Esquire/Apple/Waterstone's Non Fiction Award, the winner of which will be announced on the day after Dermot's reading.

Meanwhile, those of you who read the extracts from Mike Murphy's memoir, Mike & Me, in last Saturday's Irish Times and were startled by their candour may wish to know that the author is signing copies in Eason's of O'Connell Street at 11 am. today.