Judge that book by its cover!
May I recommend…
considering the book cover
I sometimes get invited to speak at book clubs, which I love because I really enjoy meeting these quirky groups of (usually ladies) who have known each other for years and feed me wonderful hors d’oeuvres and love books. (If you live in the Ottawa area and want me to come to your book club, I’m totes avail. Check out my website for details).
What I have found though, is that unless the book club is VERY organized (usually those are run by retired teachers) we don’t talk a lot about the book. Instead, the book clubbers want to learn the behind the scenes dirt on publishing.
One question that always comes up in these talks is the book cover and how it comes to be.
Every publisher takes a different approach, so I can only speak to my experience… I am not a very visual person and I am not at all confident in my design-y eye, so I was fine when my publishing contract spelled out that while I would have say in the cover, I didn’t have the final decision. The way I figured it, the publisher was motivated to sell my book, had far more experience and knew what readers wanted. I was happy to leave it to them.
I know some authors who had very strong feelings about what their cover should look like and were then disappointed with the final product. Others were so leery of the loss of agency that they chose to self-publish so they’d have total control. I was in neither camp. I don’t mind being bossed around — I’m the fourth of five kids — It’s actually kind of comforting to be told what to do.
Anyway, I thought I’d walk you through the cover process for my first mystery, The Foulest Things (a zippy story about a young archivist who finds a body squashed in the stacks and risks her life to figure out whodunnit. Louise Penny called it a “Literary joy ride.”)
Halfway through the book’s editing process, my editor reached out and asked what I was thinking in terms of covers. This generated a lot of anxiety, as I do not trust my own taste… I wore a pair of cutoff overalls with “Big Mac” emblazoned on them for much, much longer than I care to admit.
I got over my angst and sent some ideas … Note I didn’t provide any actual images, but used my trusted and reliable words to capture my thinking: Coldness, icy lakes, frozen rivers (the novel is set in an Ottawa winter and that shizz is frigid), Paris (the novel has a historical element set in the early days of the First World War in the City of Light), old letters (the novel revolves around the discovery of a cache of correspondence hidden in a ledger) and art works (there may or may not be a missing Rembrandt in play).
After firing off the email I forgot all about the cover process because by then I had seen the cover the publisher planned for my debut novel, The Honeybee Emeralds, and it was a beaut:
Eventually I heard from the publisher. There was a choice of three covers, which did I like?
I picked the one below, my publisher agreed. I was thrilled and announced it in this very newsletter.
The cover captured the iciness, and hinted at the artiness with that hidden Rembrandty figure. All was tickedy boo for a couple of months until the editor got back in touch. When the publisher had shared the cover with their distribution sales team, those guys unanimously recommended that it be changed. According to them, the cover looked more like a work of historical nonfiction than a mystery series. This was a problem, because the ONE thing a book cover has to do is tell the reader what they can expect. The one above, so the sales guys thought, was misleading. More history than mystery.
What do you think?
I was annoyed at the time, but deferred to the distributors’ greater experience in selling books. Now in retrospect, I think the cover we ended up with was stronger.
Again with the ice, but the yellow really pops from the blue and there is something a little ominous and …dare I say mysterious… about it.
I have been very lucky in all my covers. Below are the other two (both follows ups in the Dominion Archives Mystery series if you’re interested…)
Anyway, what do you think of the covers? Do you have a favourite book cover? Let us know in the comments!
Article Roundup!
As a dog owner I try to get my dog to abide by most of these. For many years we didn’t let her up on the furniture at all, but the Pandemic broke us. Life was hard enough, why were we denying Daffodil the couch?
Sit, Stay and Be a Good Boy: 21 Rules for Dogs and their Humans
I haven’t read any of these… Have you? What’s good?
Reels!
(Warning: you’ll be taken to Instagram when you click)
This is an oldie, but it does make me laugh/weep
The ending of this really made me laugh
Why, WHY do I find videos of people falling so funny?
Book Stuff
This is happening on Monday, June 9th in Toronto… If you’re in the area, come on by. A whole WHACK of Amazing Canadian authors will be in attendance, including Nita Prose (The Maid Series), Samantha M Bailey (Hello, Juliet), Uzma Jalaluddin (Detective Aunty), Sue Hincenbergs (The Retirement Plan), Elizabeth Renzetti and Kate Hilton (Widows and Orphans) and Farah Heron (Meet Me on Love Street),
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