Judge books by their covers
Ann Patchett and the underrated art of cover design.
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First up: I’m hosting an In Writing Creative Hour this Sunday 11 December at 5pm GMT. I hope to see lots of you there – it’ll be the last one of the year. It will be friendly but not festive (unless you choose to feel festive during it. I can’t be held responsible for that).
For those who haven’t joined us before, it’s a get-together on Google Meet where we talk a bit about what we’re working on, then spend most of the hour writing in companionable silence together. I’ll send out a link on Sunday morning – to join in, you’ll need to become a paying subscriber for £4 a month. A bargain, I’d say.
Earlier this year I read These Precious Days, a very enjoyable collection of essays by Ann Patchett on family, friendship, marriage and work (it’s recently come out in paperback, if you’re interested). I really liked her essay Cover Stories; it’s a history of her relationship with the cover designs of her own books. It starts:
When I sold my first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, I was twenty-seven years old. I knew as much about book jackets as I did cars, which is to say certain models appealed to me but I had no real understanding of how they worked. My publisher hired Thomas Woodruff, who had painted the cover illustration for Anne Tyler’s extremely successful novel Breathing Lessons, in hopes that if he painted the cover illustration for my book, the legions of Anne Tyler readers would absorb the subliminal message of similarity and become Ann Patchett readers. I suppose they were on to something, because almost thirty years later people still tell me my novels remind them of Tyler’s. For The Patron Saint of Liars, Woodruff sent in a painting of a field at sunset with a house in the distance and a night sky full of stars. In the foreground was a votive candle, a small flame twinkling in a glass cup. It was a beautiful painting.
But instead of saying thank you, I said I didn’t like the candle. The symbolism seemed contrived—light a candle against the darkness—and too overtly Catholic, though the novel was nothing if not overtly Catholic. The art director went back to the artist to explain that the young novelist did not like the candle, and so the artist snuffed out the candle and replaced it with a dandelion whose seeds were blowing loose and floating up into the stars. When I saw the second incarnation, I realized the candle had been a good idea.
She goes on to describe the covers that followed – the good, the bad, and the ugly. It’s a really good read and gives an eye-opening glimpse into the publishing process. The buck stops with the author, in a way, because it’s their name in big letters on the cover of the book, and nobody else will continue to care about it for the rest of their life in quite the way that the author will.
But it’s also a rather fraught process, and one that writers can’t necessarily control. I have one friend who hated the cover his publisher chose. He told me, ‘I have had a protracted argument with them over the last couple of weeks which resulted in a) no changes to the original design and b) a massive souring of my relationship with my editor.’
We’re not supposed to judge books by their covers, but of course standing in a bookshop, there’s not much else to go on. Even blurbs from other authors and celebrities can be iffy. Maybe Famous Novelist really did “read this in one sitting” – or maybe she privately thought it was only good-ish, but she shares an agent with the author and is trying to be kind. Maybe Influential Journalist genuinely found it “a bewitching tale of colliding passions” – or maybe he thinks the author is cool, and just wants to be invited to one of his parties. One famous writer, who regularly blurbs, confessed to me that he’d written a glowing quote for the cover of a book he hadn’t had time to read.
But let’s get back to the design. It should tell you roughly what to expect – in genre and tone. It should give you a sense of whether this is a cosy, gently humorous read that will get you through a dark winter, or whether it’s a spine-chilling thriller by someone who considers themselves an intellectual. It’s setting out the book’s stall, and trying to tempt the right readers, and if it’s wrong, that’s potentially a disaster.
Book cover designers get surprisingly little credit for their works of art, which we’re incredibly lucky to be able to buy for a reasonable price and keep on our shelves. Can you name the artists behind your favourites? Probably not, which was the thinking behind the founding of the ABCD – the Academy of British Cover Design. It’s run by the designers Jon Gray and Jamie Keenan, and hands out awards every year for the best designs.
If you want a reminder of how impactful, imaginative and moving this work can be, just look at some of the covers that Gray and Keenan are personally responsible for.
2023 will mark the tenth year of the ABCD Awards, and they’re opening for entries on 1 January, with the prizes given out in March – entries will be shortlisted, and then voted for on the night by designers themselves, so it’s a very democratic and joyous occasion (I hear). They share news of these various stages on Instagram. I hope to talk to Jon or Jamie in the future for this newsletter, to delve more into book design, but meanwhile, here are some recent winners to ponder.
Please point us in the direction of your own most beloved covers – or if you’ve published a book, tell us what it was like for you – by leaving a comment.
Side note: there’s an illustration challenge running at the moment under the Instagram hashtag #theimaginedbookcover2022. My good friend and fellow Substacker Tor Freeman is taking part and has been drawing some wonderful imagined covers at @tormalore. I also particularly love the contributions of Molly McCammon. Worth checking out.
If you’re new around here, I’d love you to come and introduce yourself. Meanwhile, see some of you on Sunday – good luck with your writing this week!
I love this post. I'm currently reading a book (US publication) because the cover was so compelling I found myself running to the library to grab it before anyone else did. It's called Shmutz by Felicia Berliner, and so far, the insides of this book are as grabby as the outside. I'd love to know more about the book jacket industry and the artists who get these gorgeous books in front of of our eyes. Best of luck to all the publishing writers on this thread. May your covers have readers running to bookshops and libraries everywhere.
Oh this is a brilliantly timed read for me. The design team at Penguin are currently running a competition to come up with ideas for mine and I am both intrigued and anxious about what they come up with. I feel like Ann about it (in that I know very little about the art of the cover design) and have basically given zero brief myself and I keep reminding myself that they are the experts (eeeek!)