The Business of Cover Art

One of my authors -- the endlessly energetic and idea-rich Vinnie Mirchandani -- just wrote a blog post about the process that got us to a final cover for his book The New Polymath. I suspect most of my readers are more used to the process on the fiction side of things, and may be surprised at the amount of back-and-forth Vinnie describes -- but that's how things happen where I work; we always ask authors for their thoughts at the beginning of the process and try to accommodate their wishes.

(Of course, "try" can be a weasel word, or describe efforts at any point on a long continuum -- but our process generally continues until we have a cover that all parties are happy with. And that entails a lot more discussion with the author -- and, often, the marketing people at the author's firm -- than fictioneers are used to.)

One thing I do want to mention -- Vinnie lists me first, possibly because I was the one talking with him the most, but David Riedy is the actual designer of the cover, and deserves all of the credit. Vinnie and I (and others, like editor John DeRemigis) talked out what we wanted to do -- but David actually did it, and made it look great. (I've been really lucky in my career to work with some amazing art directors and designers, like Toby Schwartz and Ray Reynoso at BookSpan, and David is another wonderful colleague with a great eye.)