Every good book needs

An eye-catching cover can persuade readers to pick up and buy a book. But a jacket that’s confusing or boring or worse, can stop a potential buyer from giving that same book a second glance. Covers also need to pop as thumbnails, for all those online shoppers.

Publishers rely on talented jacket designers to create great covers. These specialized graphic artists are either on staff or hired as freelancers.  Staff designers frequently cross over, creating a jacket for their own publisher one week, freelancing for another house the next week and taking on an indie author client the week after that.

Attention indie authors

For self-publishing authors, the ability to hire a professional designer is a new and important development, because nothing shouts amateur louder than a lousy book jacket. “There’s no reason why a self-published book should look “self published,” says Laura Duffy, a senior art director at Random House.

Hear hear! Read on to learn how four highly successful book jacket designers create stunning, memorable covers, along with their practical advice for writers who want to understand and participate in the crucial process of getting it right.

How 4 professional designers create great covers

Laura Duffy is Senior Art Director at Crown, a division of Random House, where she has worked in the art department for 15 years.

Kimberly Glyder is principal at her own book-design firm based in the Philadelphia area.

Henry Sene Yee is the Creative Director of Picador, a leading literary trade paperback imprint of Macmillan Publishing.

David Drummond is founder and principal of Salamander Hill Design, based in Québec, Canada.

What’s the most important thing to accomplish in a jacket design?

Laura Duffy: My goal is to create a cover that stands out, gets the correct message across, and looks interesting and even exciting. In the olden days our only goal was to have a jacket standout on a crowded bookstore shelf that would inspire someone to cross the store to pick it up. Now we also have to consider how covers will look online, so we’re doing things like making fonts thicker and subtitles bigger and really paying attention to how designs look when they’re shrunk down.

Kimberly Glyder: It’s been said before, by Chip Kidd [one of the industry’s best known designers] that a successful book cover is one that gets you to pick the book up in a store. I would add to that in this day and age, if someone “clicks” on a book online I’m doing my job well. Book covers are still marketing tools and a good design is one that makes someone want to take a closer look. My fear with e-books is that a large image and big type is what ebook publishers consider successful. Clickable covers are not ideal though, I still hope people buy their books in bookstores!

Henry Sene Yee: My goal is that the reader has an emotional response and connection to the story and characters or ideas. The minimum you can do is give out info, but how you say determines how it will be received, like hey, by the way, your house is on fire.

David Drummond: To surprise the viewer – not in a gimmicky way – but hopefully by solving the visual problem in an intelligent way.

How do you begin the design of a new jacket?

Duffy: Here at Random House we have concept meetings at the beginning of every list where we sit down with the editors and listen to what they’d like to see on the cover, as well as offer ideas of our own. I try to read whatever is available in order to have as much to work with as possible. Occasionally I work directly with an author. I look at other jackets in the same genre (comp titles). I also research online to get a bigger picture of what I’m working with, perhaps looking at an author’s website.

Glyder: I do like to read the manuscript in its entirety. Typically, I’m given a pub sheet with information regarding the sales handle and competing titles. With about 90 percent of my cover jobs, my interaction is limited to working with the art director who acts as a go-between with the editor, publisher, sales, marketing, and the author. I do sometimes see email exchanges with the author, but mostly I’m kept out of that discussion. The benefit of working with a traditional publisher, rather than with an author who’s self-published, is to make use of the specialists who deal with books on a daily basis.

Yee: In my meetings, I may ask for plot summary, characters and description but what I need to know is the theme, tone, mood, point of the book, what makes this different than other similar books, the meaning of the title, etc. An author & the editor can get too personally close to the project and know and want too much on the cover. I need to reduce and suggest using symbols, metaphors, tone. Not say everything. I do not want to illustrate a scene or turning point in the book but the subtext of that scene and what it means to the overall theme.

Drummond: I read the book if it’s fiction. If it is non-fiction I try and get a really good brief. I am always looking for a hook or a way into the material. If I need more information I talk to the editor and on occasion the author although that rarely happens.

Have you taken on self-publishing authors as clients?

Duffy: Yes, many times. I love working with these authors because I can bring all my experience to the project, including marketing ideas. Many times I’ve helped them evaluate their copy and its emphasis, perhaps changing wording or including elements in the design that make information pop that they didn’t realize was important. I’ve also helped them create selling back cover copy and discussed ways to market their books. It’s a lot of fun. My advice to them, is that if they’re hiring me they’re in good hands, so let me do what I do best and not over think the design. There’s no reason why a self-published book should look “self published”.

Glyder: Up until last year, I rarely accepted self-publishing authors. However, it’s hard not to notice that the publishing environment is changing rapidly and self-publishers have many more resources available to them. Still, I’m picky–I tend only to take on self-publishing authors whose work I find very interesting. As a designer, it’s difficult to take on authors directly who may not understand the publishing process and how books are marketed, especially just how important it is to consider the audience in finding a successful tone for a design. My experience working directly with authors is that they become set on one vision, rather than being open to understanding that the way they view their book may be different than how a book needs to be marketed so it appeals to a wider audience.

Yee: I have. The best advice is to hire someone good and then trust them to do their best job. Have all your information ready for them to create.

Drummond: Lately I have been doing quite a few covers for self-published authors. The ones I have worked with have been really good about letting me do my thing with a few exceptions.

Do you have a standard contract with mutual expectations, dates and other terms? What’s the typical cost range for a jacket design?

Duffy: Some of the houses I do freelance for send me very specific contracts with design direction, due dates, and budgets. The costs vary from house to house with the smaller ones paying $500-$800 a cover, and the larger ones $1200-$1800.

Glyder: Most of my contracts come directly from the publisher. Dates and terms are included, covering all expectations, including (sometimes most importantly) the kill fee. When I hand off the initial comps and can bill for half the fee, that’s already a large amount of time spent. Typical fees range on the low end for university press clients approximately $800, all the way up to $3000 for some trade publishers.

Yee: In general, two weeks for sketches/comps for the art director and another week to refine an idea to show the editor. And then the game of a thousand cooks with their own opinions of the cover begins. The base amount is $1500. But can range as low as $1,000, and as high as $5,000

Drummond:  The process is usually quite informal. I do sign contracts for the bigger publishers. My range for cover designs runs the gamut. Average fee is about $1000.

DIY book jackets

Many authors feel strongly about having a hand in their own jacket design. The late Steve Jobs reportedly loathed the initial cover design of his own biography by Walter Isaacson. Jobs, although not the author, insisted on redoing the cover himself with the clean white aesthetic typical of Apple products.

In the case of author Bruce Spitzer, a background in advertising led him to design the jacket to his debut novel Extra Innings, a sci-fi baseball thriller about Red Sox legend Ted Williams, who is brought back to life with cryonics in the year 2092. Spitzer, experienced working with graphic print media, had a strong sense of the front cover photo and design he wanted, and a creative way of achieving his goals.

Spitzer had a limited budget, so he recruited a graphic design college intern who could translate his rough sketches into a polished jacket. He then found a photographer online who turned out to be a huge Red Sox fan. A neighbor with a young son fit the bill perfectly as the tall, lanky Ted Williams and Johnnie, a child who plays a central role in the novel. Then he located a vintage Ted Williams’ jersey with his famous number nine, bought some cleats and authentic red socks, and they were ready to go.

Spitzer’s garage became a photo studio using the photographer’s lights, a white backdrop, reflectors, shades, power cords and cameras on tripods. He found a model release online, always a good idea. A few days after the photo shoot, Spitzer and his designer sorted through the shots to pick a favorite, choose the jacket’s colors, the type, and to organize the copy Spitzer had written.

Costs so far for his jacket, still a work in progress: Art Direction/Graphic Design: $300. Photography: $300. Props:$200. Models: $1. Collaboration: “Priceless!” Spitzer says.

What about you?

As authors, what’s your take on all this?  Have you been satisfied with your jacket designs?  Did your publisher involve you in the process?  If not, do you wish you’d had the opportunity?  And if you’re self-publishing, what are your plans for your cover design?

Any thoughts on the jackets pictured in this post?  Which stand out for you?

I often hear questions like these from authors I work with. So I explain that an index is an indispensable tool for almost every non-fiction book.

An index enhances the ultimate value of a book

The ultimate value of your book is greatly enhanced by the ability of a good index to locate all the places throughout the work that address specific interests and concerns.

And readers absolutely expect to find one in the back of the book.

Producing a book’s index is one of those little understood, mysterious but essential parts of publishing that happen once the manuscript has been copyedited, checked over by the author, returned to production, and then made into page proofs. Indexing usually begins simultaneously or immediately after final proofing for typos or other egregious errors. At that point, an outside professional indexer steps in.

Here’s the kicker: the author pays

In most publishing contracts, the author pays for the index.  That comes as a surprise to many first-time authors, but it’s because the index is considered part of the book’s content – and the author is responsible for providing all the content of a book under contract.

It doesn’t mean the author sits down and writes a check, but rather that the cost is applied to the royalty account as an additional advance. If this advance is never earned out, as is frequently the case, the publisher absorbs the cost in the end.

Nevertheless, who pays for the index often comes up during my negotiations with the author, or more likely, with the agent.  This negotiation usually ends in a compromise which caps the author’s contribution at some reasonable figure, up to $750 – $1,000, and the publisher pays the rest.

Why we don’t let the author provide the index

“But no one knows the book better than I do,” an author may say. “Can’t I just get one of those cheap indexing programs and let it scan through the pages looking for keywords?”

Nope — there’s a big difference between an alphabetical list of keywords, which is what indexers call a concordance and a real index that organizes and cross-references the theme and message of the author’s intentions according to topics, individuals, and relationships.

To provide some real expertise on the subject, I interviewed Sylvia Coates, a professional indexer with a reputation as one of the best in the business.

Why does an author need a professional indexer?

No computer software program can provide on its own the professional skills of a good indexer.  I respect that the author knows the book best, and I always recommend that an indexer work very closely with the writer to be sure that all the topics, subtopics, and thematic relationships are accurate and arranged in the most useful way.

Indexers also know the conventions and press specifications for providing a professional looking index. An amateurish or poorly executed index can damage the credibility of an otherwise well-written book.

What’s the process of creating an index?

I always read the book very carefully. You have to start with that. And of course it helps if you know something about and understand the subject. Many indexers specialize in certain areas. For example, I would never take on an index for an engineering book. Not for me.  But an indexer can be found for any subject.

After reading the book, I determine the main headings and entries by subject, topic, subtopics and thematic relationships.  It’s also essential to choose the best terms for each of these, which come from the vocabulary of the work itself.

Do you still keep track of everything on those little index cards?

Oh heavens no. There are some excellent high-end programs like Cindex, Sky or Macrex that are very useful, much better than the kind of inexpensive keyword programs an author might purchase.

I do all the creative and intellectual work of creating and organizing the index, but the software is indispensable in alphabetizing, merging, paginating, and changing the pagination when an entry is added or revised because of a correction or addition in the text.

What do you say to the author who wants to go it alone?

Indexing requires special skills.  It’s both a craft that can be learned and an intuitive art that involves a way of understanding, conceptualizing and organizing a book.

I’ve been teaching indexing for almost ten years using an approach based in part on research comparing how children and adults conceptualize differently by Emilie Lin and Gregory Murphy. Their findings were that children conceptualize using a thematic approach, while the majority of adults have adopted a classification approach. I use these ideas to help my students adopt the proper mindset allowing them to create the thematic framework required for a successful index.

Three tips for authors

 1.  An index is essential if you are writing a non-fiction book you want to be useful and long-lasting

 2.  Don’t try to do it yourself. If you’re self-publishing your book, save the money you would spend buying indexing software, and use it to hire a professional. Most indexers charge about $3.75 per printed page, while others structure payment per entry fees, hourly fees, and flat project fees.

 3.  Respect the indexer’s art and craft and also check to make sure they haven’t missed anything. If it happens, they should welcome your participation.

Sylvia Coates is one of the many people who work behind the scenes in publishing to ensure that the books produced are polished and professional.

“I love being an indexer,” she said. “It’s allowed me to stay home with my four sons when they were little and have an interesting career, working with authors I respect, producing something that greatly enhances their work.”

Every editor, designer, sales person and publicist in the company can have a different point of view, often causing intense turf battles, expensive start-overs, blown production schedules, and snarky rants hurled between colleagues like:

“Sure, go ahead with that pretentious Picasso rip off, but my buyer at Barnes and Noble hates the blue period and will never order a book with that jacket.”

Or: “If we don’t use that retro Boy’s Life type design I showed you, we’ll sell 20,000 copies less and kiss our year-end bonuses goodbye.”

Or: “This book will sit on the shelves if we use that cheesy drawing of the two women kick-boxing on the cliff.”

Or: “We can’t afford an original piece of art for this mid-list book that’ll only sell 5,000 copies — if we’re lucky! We have to use one of those cheap stock illustrations.”

Who’s in charge?

A jacket should truly represent the content, artistic intention, mood and style of the book. It should be beautiful and meaningful, but also have the punch, drama, and color to rivet any potential reader’s eye once they see it face-out on the shelf or table of some crowded book store.

Take a look at the covers pictured here. These are the current #1 best selling books in their respective categories on the New York Times list. What’s your opinion? Do you think any of these jackets helped the book’s success?

The lines of authority regarding directing and approving a book’s jacket tend to shift with the case-by-case politics of each situation. The numbers of participants with strident opinions in any given project, moreover, are proportionate to the size of the advance, projected sales, and budgeted net revenues.

The players

The Editor…who acquires and develops the book from scratch, maybe even inventing the book, commissioning the idea with a chosen author. Either way, the editor is the original champion and producer whose job it is to shepherd the book through the production process while maintaining the book’s integrity, and at the same time satisfying the need to sell the book. That means playing ball with the requirements and opinions of the sales, publicity, and marketing people.

The Art Director…who’s responsible for interpreting the often inarticulate and muddy-headed ideas of the editor. For example, attempted dialogue between editor and art director can regress to something like this:

Art Director: “Who’s the book for?” Editor: “Well, uh, hmmm, well there are millions of people who will just love this story as much as I do!”

Usually overworked and underpaid, a good art director can be a brilliant creative partner, but unfortunately is often handling 40 other covers at once and they’re all due next Thursday.

The Author…who probably wants complete approval over the jacket — but only a tiny percentage have the leverage to get it. Most have to settle for some kind of guaranteed “consultation,” meaning only that they get to see a nearly final proof. Nevertheless, editors want their authors to be happy and will often listen seriously to their wishes.

Hunter Thompson, for example, came in with a friend’s drawing of the leering skull we used so effectively for the original edition of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail.

Many authors have excellent ideas for what their jacket should look like, and good taste too. So as their front-line champions, editors often struggle with their colleagues to keep the author’s best ideas in currency, despite opposition from all sides.

The Agent…who can be a powerful force in the process, especially if the literary rep is one with whom the editor may want to do a lot more business in the future. Agents may not necessarily agree with the author, in fact they often have their own idiosyncratic notions of what it the cover art should be. Editors ignore these wishes at their own peril, and often have to shuttle back and forth to caucus between superstar prima donna agents and recalcitrant sales reps.

The Sales Reps…those hard-nosed denizens of the real world, who are compelled to present 60 new titles in half an hour, and are most concerned with the idiosyncratic taste of key account category buyers, like the guy at Books-A-Million who doesn’t like Garamound or any other type over 16 points. Sales reps have a frightening amount of power since you literally can’t live without their support.

The Publicity People…whose interest may be to have the author on the front cover, if she’s famous or attractive. Or the opposite if not, and then not even on the flaps. Their clients are the national TV producers, bookers at National Public Radio, columnists for the New York Times and other media. These days they also want a jacket that will reproduce well on a screen for internet blogs and websites, where more and more books are publicized.

Five tips for what an author can do to help

With all these conflicting parties stirring the pot, the actual book jacket often suffers from the compromises of consensus. So if you’re an author trying to influence the jacket design for your book, here are five tips:

1. Try not to assume that you know what’s best for the book, even if it’s true. Cultivate good relations with everyone at the company and maintain a position of modesty, humility, and cooperation.

2. Don’t bring in your 9-year-old child’s cute little pencil drawing of her horse for the cover, even if the book is about how to ride bareback Western Style. The only exceptions to this rule are genius-level kids with their own TV show.

3. Muster empathy for the sales and publicity people who may seem to be marching to a different drummer but have mutual interests to share. Keep in mind that they have to sell your book, and without their enthusiastic efforts you’ll be severely handicapped.

4. Remember that in the end, this isn’t a science and we don’t always know what ultimately sells a book. Books with less than fabulous jacket designs have become huge sellers anyway. Take a book I published, the Scarlatti Inheritance by Robert Ludlum. I thought the cover was boring and that it didn’t say anything about the book itself. Nevertheless the historical thriller was such a hit that the design was used again for subsequent titles. See it here.

5. Once the jacket is designed and chosen, put aside any regrets and do everything you can to help sell the book, including your own strenuous on-line web marketing, blogging, twittering, and other brilliant new techniques that emerge in these rapidly changing times.

 

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The Book Design Review blog has released a compelling list of favorite covers for 2008. Take a look and see what you think.

Eureka! It happens.

Think of Chicken Soup for the Soul, or Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, or Gone with the Wind, or Jaws. These book titles resonated and were ultimately absorbed into the fabric of American culture.

Back to the drawing board

But more often than not, the title we publishers see on a new proposal or manuscript is uninspired or confusing, so it’s back to the drawing board for the author, editor, and often quite a large group of interested parties weighing in, including marketing and publicity pundits, sales people, even key account buyers from Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

Sometimes a stroke of creative genius can turn a ho-hum title into one that sings. The great editor Maxwell Perkins changed “Under the Red White and Blue” to The Great Gatsby. Thomas Pynchon’s “Mindless Pleasures” became Gravity’s Rainbow.

Last minute drama for Catch 22

Unforeseen circumstances can force a high-drama title change at the last minute.

Joseph Heller’s brilliant Catch 22 was initially called “Catch 18” until Leon Uris unexpectedly beat him to the punch with Mila 18. I happened to be there at the time, in 1962, a new editorial assistant to the legendary Bob Gottlieb, Heller’s editor at Simon & Schuster. It was my first exposure to the behind the scenes anxious back-and-forth that frequently occurs over nailing down the perfect book title.

I’ve since suffered over many books, struggling to transform a mundane working title into something memorable. A manuscript originally titled “A History of Indian Tribes in North America” became Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. “Harlem Memories” became Manchild in the Promised Land.

In some cases you get the perfect title before the book itself is even written. My wife, Cheryl Rinzler, came up with the title Raising Baby Green that defined both the content and the market, inspiring the book we commissioned by Dr. Alan Greene (what a coincidence), which recently won the Nautilus Award for Best Parenting Book of 2008.

Sometimes, agonizing compromises

On other occasions, I’ve experienced an agonizing process of painful compromises with too many cooks and ambiguous results. I wound up sort of liking the title for Irv Yalom’s latest book Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death. But I still wish we had called it “Wild Dogs Barking in the Cellar” a terrific image suggested by Irv’s agent Sandy Dijkstra that no one could quite understand but sounded perfect to me. Oh well.

I’ve also come up with some real corkers. A perfectly fine and decent book we published about how men and women regress to the “fight or flight” primitive survival instinct of the brain stem amygdala, inspired me to fight for the title Reptiles in Love: Ending Destructive Fights and Evolving Toward More Loving Relationships by Don Ferguson PhD.

To compound the difficulties created by this mouthful, we put a gorgeous but terrifying illustration of an evil looking lizard biting the head of a flamingly colorful snake on the front of the book. Wow. I’m told that buyers hid it in a plain brown paper bag before leaving the bookstore.

Suggestions for authors

• Less is better. Try to keep down the number of words to a precise and evocative few.
• More can also be better. If it’s impossible to be brief, try something deliberately long like Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex but Were Afraid to Ask. That worked.
• Don’t rely on the subtitle to explain what the book is really about, as we did with Reptiles in Love. It’s the title itself that people see first when scanning a catalog or bookstore shelf.
• Avoid clichés and hyperbole like “Best”…”Most”…”Radical New”…
• Research the title on Amazon or Google. You can’t copyright a title; therefore you’ll often notice there’s more than one book with the same one. Avoid taking a title that’s been used too many times or already belongs to a famous book.
• Try out your title on a variety of people, including people with different tastes, people who are not family and friends, who are educated about the subject or not, who are cool and uncool – be curious and open to the market.
• Put a “promise” in the title of how-to books, like Launching Our Black Children for Success, or Helping Children Cope with Divorce.
• Welcome controversy, like Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great.
• Ignore all of the above. Who could have predicted that Eats, Shoots & Leaves would become a huge best seller about why commas make a difference?

Titling, as with so much else in the book business, is an art, not a science.

I’ll be posting occasionally about the individual components of a published book, each of which requires care and attention. We’ll look at the special issues and strategic publishing decisions relating to elements such as the cover art, the foreword, the flap copy, the author photo and others.

You can find these posts in the blog category Parts of a Book. Please weigh in with any questions.