Cover story: The author's role in book design
To what extent does an author get to control or even influence the cover of their book? Using my own books, let's discuss.
Hello and happy Wednesday.
Today, we‘re going to delve into a subject I get asked about a lot: book covers. If authors have strong feelings about the way their book cover should—or shouldn’t—look, do they get to share these feelings? And if so, how, to whom? What happens if you hate the cover that you’re shown? We’ll get into all these questions—and explore my answers—after some housekeeping.
Save my cat: This is the final week to take advantage of the Substack subscription sale I’m running to benefit my cat. The sale page is here; information about my awesome cat is here.
Improve your sleep: Many people have asked me what my experience was like with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia (CBT-I), a two-month long boot camp that helped me relearn healthy sleep habits and adjust negative attitudes around sleep. I wrote about my CBT-I journey for The Guardian.
Missing NaNoWriMo? Want to write a novel in a year instead of a month? “Yes, Molecule” is a novel generating year-long workshop led by the New York Times bestselling author (and one of my favorite writers) Rachel Khong, the force behind “Real Americans” and “Goodbye, Vitamin.” The deadline to apply is December 1st, and on November 18th, Rachel is holding an info session for people curious about the program. All information is here, but basically, “Yes, Molecule” is a support and development program run by four acclaimed authors to help participants tackle craft and accountability, yes, but also the intellectual, spiritual, and communal aspects of writing. Visit Dreamside for more info.
Escape to Oregon this spring: Have you been to the pacific northwest in early spring? Let me tell you, it is a fertile place to be, and I can’t imagine a more creatively fertile getaway than “Green Hours,” a five-night retreat that the Dreamside crew is running at otherworldly Steamboat Inn. The very team behind “Yes, Molecule” will be your teachers for this getaway: Meng Jin, Rachel Khong, Susanna Kwan, and Shruti Swamy. The retreat is from March 29th to April 3rd. Applications accepted and reviewed on a rolling basis. Learn more here!
What I’m reading: I’m reading two big books this fall: “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry and “Pachinko” by Min Jin Lee. I’m loving both these doorstop novels; really great reads to get swept away inside of. Epic novels, both.
Now on to the topic at hand.
How does an author get a book cover?
I get so many questions about the book cover process, I’m going to interview myself on this subject. Here goes.
How soon after a book deal does the cover conversation start?
It depends on how long there is between the signing of the contract and the publication date you’ve been given. Generally there will be two years to a year and a half between these dates. Cover conversations often start a year out from publication.
And what does the conversation look like, sound like?
I can only speak from my own experience here, but usually things were kicked off by an email from my editor saying something to the effect of, “let’s start talking covers!” I was usually invited to share any thoughts or hopes I had, and also to share anything I didn’t want to see.
Sometimes, the publisher (and especially their art director) had an artist they thought would be the perfect person for the book. (This was the case with TOUCH, where my team felt that Rodrigo Corral would interpret the book’s themes like none other. [I agreed].) Another time, my editor had seen a piece of artwork she desperately wanted for the COSTALEGRE cover, but we couldn’t clear the rights. Sometimes, the entire design is created in house, as was the case for BEFORE AND AFTER THE BOOK DEAL. For my latest novel, ALAN OPTS OUT, I was shown a selection of artists Little Brown’s art director thought would be right for the novel, and I got to pick who I wanted to work with.
Once an artist is selected, what happens then?
The artist will receive a creative brief of some kind with input from the editor, from sales and marketing, and (in my case) from the author and their agent. Depending on the kind of distribution the publisher is hoping to get for the book, that will go in the brief as well because some of the big retailers (Target, for example) have brand palettes they like their books to complement. This was the case with the paperback edition of my novel TOUCH. See those bright orange and blue and white colors on the paperback image above? Those are Target colors.
The artist will read the creative brief, then usually you’ll see a “first pass” that can include a variety of tonal approaches. These images are usually sketches, meaning they won’t have full color yet. Sometimes they’re just pencil sketches. Basically, you’re looking at different aesthetic approaches for the book. These passes will arrive in an email in a PDF format, and etiquette-wise, the author is supposed to first discuss the illustrations privately with their agent before giving feedback to the whole team.
The hope is that everyone lands on one direction that feels right. Then the artist will flesh the chosen image out with color and a designed typeface. As you get closer and closer to the real design, you might see a “dummy” blurb positioned somewhere on the mocked-up cover with an “author of” line if you have previously published. My most successful novel so far is I AM HAVING SO MUCH FUN HERE WITHOUT YOU which is tricky as heck to fit on the cover of a book because it’s such a long title.
What if you hate everything you’re shown in the first pass?
If you truly “hate” what you’re looking at, then something went wrong at the creative briefing stage and/or you or your team weren’t clear in your/their feedback to the artist. Generally there will be images in the PDF that might feel a little uncomfortable or risky, there might be one that feels out of left field or kind of “wild,” but there should be at least one or two images that give you a tingly feeling of “this might be it!” rightness.
Anytime you have consequential negative feedback about a cover, it should be presented by your agent to the publisher, allowing you to keep a positive relationship with your editorial team. What I mean by consequential is: the directions they’re presenting are off; the cover makes your book look more commercial than it is, or misrepresents you as a writer or a person; the cover suggests a genre you don’t write in—anything that misses the mark in a big way.
If the pushback involves something nuanced with the design (“can we try my name in a more legible font?”), the author can communicate this to the publisher themselves. Because so many PDFs will be bouncing back and forth during the process, most of these correspondences take place over email. It’s a good idea for you to be organizing the covers as they come in, because often the file name is just, like, “image 2” and can get easily lost in the melee.
If you’re first being published in hardcover, will your paperback have the same cover as the hardcover?
Again, I’ll speak only from my experience. If your hardcover performed so well that you’ve established cover recognition in the marketplace, generally you’ll keep the same cover as the hardcover for the paperback. This being said, not all hardcover books become paperbacks (if your hardcover drastically underperformed, the publisher might scrap the paperback), but if you are getting a paperback, it’s an opportunity to:
Communicate something about the book that didn’t show up clearly with the first cover.
Hammer home what the book is about.
Support a message or subject in the book that really resonated with readers.
Show off new press, reviews and blurbs that might have come in since publication.
Try to reach an audience you missed (or didn’t think to try and reach) with the hardcover.
Let’s use two of my own books to illustrate some of the above points.
Example 1: TOUCH (if you’re still here please note that this is a very timely novel that could use some extra sales, just sayin’)
I was absolutely obsessed with the hardcover for my second novel, which is about a famous trend forecaster who goes rogue and predicts that touch, intimacy and “in-personism” will trend, not technology. Accordingly, the bold fingerprinted typeface felt impeccable. The novel came out right after Trump’s first election, however, and people #1) were not buying fiction and #2) did not have the presence of mind to stand in front of this book and try to sort out what it was about, which is why we went for a more heavy-handed depiction of the story’s plot in the paperback. It was chosen by a celebrity book club (Belletrist with Emma Roberts), so we stamped that news on the cover and did a beautiful stepback with the great press we’d received. (A “stepback” is the blue and green colored paper behind the cover in the paperback.)
Example 2: COSTALEGRE
In the initial reviews of Costalegre, journalists and readers really responded to the fact that this novel is heavily inspired by the relationship between the art heiress Peggy Guggenheim and her artist daughter Pegeen Guggenheim, so my team built in a subtitle to that effect. We got a rave review in the New York Times so that went on the front as well.
Example 3: THE YEAR OF THE HORSES
The Year of the Horses is an example of a simple seasonal refresh. The paperback came out in spring so we lightened up the colors and design to feel spring and summer ready. My memoir was chosen by the Today show as one of the best reads for Mental Health Awareness month, so we sure as heck put that on the front!
What about if you are being published in other countries?
With translations, it could go either way. Sometimes foreign publishers use the exact same cover, sometimes they use a variation of it, and sometimes they design a cover of their own. A few of my translations by way of example:
Let’s go back to the beginning of the cover process when a publisher asks you whether you “have any thoughts” about your cover. What thoughts can you have (are you allowed to have?) and how do you share them?
Stay tuned for my next newsletter in which I’ll share the actual creative briefs I made for the ALAN OPTS OUT cover (for which we used two separate artists) in order to answer this.
That post will only be for paid subscribers, but I still have a sale ongoing, so you can subscribe at a discounted rate (50% !) if you would like. Proceeds of this special sale go to my cat who is trying to heal from nerve damage after he was hit by a car.
In the meantime, let’s head to the comments!
Has anything surprised you about what I shared so far? If you’ve published a book before and had a different experience involving cover design, feel free to explain what yours was like. Otherwise, what questions do you have about authors and their book covers that I haven’t answered here?
Thank you for being here. It’s snowing as I write!
Courtney
"The directions they’re presenting are off; the cover makes your book look more commercial than it is, or misrepresents you as a writer or a person; the cover suggests a genre you don’t write in—anything that misses the mark in a big way." --- This and the following was the advice I received from another tradpub author when it comes to cover input.
If there's an element that might confuse readers or give the impression of the wrong genre (ie - an Amish-style barn that evokes Christian fiction when my book is very much not and set in the American west) then be SPECIFIC about that element in your feedback vs. saying "I don't like anything about this cover" and stress that the specific element may impact book sales / lead to one star reviews / lead to upset readers when the cover doesn't match reader expectations. Focusing on how your requested change can impact the business side of things comes off as having the publisher's interest in mind and can get changes made quickly, respectfully to the cover artist, and can also protect you as a writer by making sure the cover elements are correct and properly convey the genre / tone of the book (which also helps you as a writer).
And yes, fellow readers, read Touch! Such a fun concept for a book and I loved the characters and story.
The way I frantically scrolled through this post for a cover reveal … bamboozled 🤣