Don’t judge a book by its cover. We’ve all heard the advice.
But of course we all do judge books—and lots of other things—by how they’re packaged. If we didn’t, there would be a lot fewer jobs in marketing.
In preparing to publish the new e-book version of my young adult novel, Out of the Wilderness, I learned quite a lot about how to create a book cover—and how the process of book cover design has changed in the past several years, thanks to the digital publishing revolution.
When Out of the Wilderness first came out in print, a lot of book cover art was, well, art. I was thrilled that Clarion Books contracted with Wendell Minor, one of the premier illustrators of children’s book covers, to design the art for my book. (More recently, Minor has designed covers for books by Jodi Picoult and LaVryle Spencer, among others.)
Original cover: beautiful art, though pinks aren't so great for a book featuring two brothers |
Protocol at the time was that the author only saw the cover after it was a done deal. There was no back and forth, no discussion of concept or correction of errors. (The cover of my first novel, A Distant Enemy, contained two large errors, but when I pointed them out, I was told nothing could be done to correct them—and they were rolled over to the paperback edition as well.) The practice of keeping authors and illustrators apart was designed to prevent conflicts in artistic vision, but it also made for some unhappy authors once the covers were presented.
Fast forward to the digital age. No more hand-done artwork. Errors could be corrected. Multiple versions could be created. Authors could release their own books, in digital editions.
Since full rights to Out of the Wilderness had reverted to me, I decided to release it as an e-book, for a new generation of readers (and soon, in a softcover edition). In the process of producing the e-book, I’ve learned a few things about covers: