Orders Pop for 3-D Jacket

Thanks to 3-D jacket art with more depth and clarity than a hologram, orders for Avon's mass market edition of James Rollins's science-based thriller, Sandstorm (May), are up by 170,000 copies over his last paperback. The $7.99 reprint will be the first book to use "lenticular" technology, which may be better suited to a sharper image than the desert whirlwind on the book's cover. Avon will print a total of 470,000 copies of the limited edition, for initial orders only, in collaboration with Handbridge Associates Inc. and Offset Paperback Manufacturers. The house is also using jacket proofs to advertise the book, polybagging 10,000 in the June issue of Wizard magazine. Now that the imaging technique is more publisher- and packager-friendly following recent improvements by National Graphics, senior v-p and deputy publisher Darlene DeLillo plans more lenticular covers. "It's just a matter of matching the right book and look to the technology," she said.