Cover Talk with AdriAnne Strickland

Today's guest for the CRAP (Cover Reveal Anxiety Phase) is AdriAnne Strickland, 2014 debut author of WORDLESS, coming August 8th, 2014 from Flux.

Did you have any pre-conceived notions about what you wanted your cover to look like?

Like quite a few people, I had at least a vague idea—somewhat dark, no pink or purple, sleek and suggestive of the speculative-fiction nature of the story, no characters’ faces revealed. And then I came up with a couple of specific ideas that ended up being nothing like the cover I have now.

How far in advance from your pub date did you start talking covers with your house?

Well-over a year beforehand. WORDLESS is slated to release August 8th, 2014, and my awesome editor, Brian Farrey-Latz, broached the topic of covers in April 2013. But then, I was set to vanish to do the random commercial-fishing-in-Alaska-thing that I do every summer, so he wanted to talk to me about it before I fell off the edge of the earth for a few months.

Did you have any input on your cover?

Sort of—Brian certainly asked my in-depth opinion, and we were actually on the same page for much this conversation. But in the end, it’s up to the publishing team.

See, before I even showed Brian the dorky cover I made myself in MS Word (and I wouldn’t have, had he never said this), he told me during our brainstorming session: “One thought was a field of letters (almost like a search-a-word puzzle) with the title and your name bolded. It’s an OK idea… it could end up really cool or really meh.” And so I sent him this:

To his credit, he didn’t laugh at me, but perhaps I uninspired that idea right out of him. No, in all seriousness, we also came up with some other ideas, involving a shadowy silhouette of the main character being cast by the block letters “WORDLESS.” 

But Brian said anything they tried along either of those lines ended up looking too contemporary. So the team went with something completely different that I didn’t see until it was already done and decided. Good thing I loved it.

How was your cover revealed to you?

My editor sent it to me through email. I couldn’t open the darn thing fast enough, and then I proceeded to carry around my laptop for the rest of the day, staring at it.

Was there an official "cover reveal" date for your art?

Yes, through YABC on October 3rd!

How far in advance of the reveal date were you aware of what your cover would look like?

A couple of months. It was torture.

Was it hard to keep it to yourself before the official release?

(See previous answer.) Kidding. It was a bit difficult, but I “cheated” and showed close family and friends, and also the OneFours on our private forum, so that made it feel less like I was trying to contain a crazed cat inside my chest.

What surprised you most about the process?

That even though my cover didn’t turn out anything at all like I’d imagined (and I have a really active imagination—I was already signing imaginary books with this imaginary cover in my head), I still love it.

Any advice to other debut authors about how to handle cover art anxiety?

Try to trust your publisher. And even after you see your cover, sleep on your immediate opinions… or at least give it a little time. Because here’s how my reaction went:

One second: WHAT?!?
Five seconds: WTF, they didn’t listen to ANY of my suggestions!
Thirty seconds: It’s so… so… GREEN!
One minute: Not sure how I feel about this…
Three minutes: Wow, look at the crazy tendrils of energy, and the combo of metallic and organic in the title font, and the title echoing across the whole thing, almost disintegrating, and the marquee-like style of my name, and…
Five minutes: LOVE.

Much like in relationships (and in my book, thank goodness), love doesn’t always come at first sight. Sometimes it takes a whole five minutes.

Why Wait For the New Year?

It's mid-November, which means we're looking at a long stretch of good food and lack of self-control. Everyone knows that starting a diet right now is begging for failure, and so a lot of us just cave to the inevitable, gorging on pies and cookies, cheese ball and turkey, because hey... we'll take care of that in the New Year.

Cheers.

But... here's the thing - so is everyone else. Go to any gym in January and you'll find a lot of huffy, sweating people who I'll bet have very shiny, very new membership cards... and I doubt they fly out of the purse or wallet much past February. We're all guilty of those front-loaded good intentions that wither away when we discover they're actually, you know - work.

The same applies to your writing. So maybe you told yourself it's too late to hop on Nano, or maybe you started out Nano with a bang that withered away into a low word count. Now shopping lists are staring you in the face and people want to come stay at your house. So screw it. Why even try? That shiny New Year's resolution will make everything better - and this year will be the year you stick to it.

Right?

Except, much like the gym, a lot of other people are making that same resolution. And while in the gym all this means is that there's a longer wait for the elliptical and more of a permeable musk in the air, but with the publishing industry it means that agent's inboxes are fuller than usual. And that can mean two things - either one of these queries is a similar concept to yours and beat you to the dream agent, or all those queries are horrible and the agent is disenchanted with these reborn resolution queriers by the time s/he gets to you.

So measure up, and ask yourself - is my life really going to be that much better in January? Less busy? Will I really feel more inclined to take my writing seriously just because an electric ball hit a platform with numbers on it in Times Square? I doubt it, so call today January 1 and polish that query, or finish that manuscript now, before the hordes beat you to it.

Oh, and go to the gym too. You'll feel better.

Cover Talk with Cristin Terrill

Today's guest for the CRAP (Cover Reveal Anxiety Phase) is Cristin Terrill, fellow Class of 2k13 member and author of ALL OUR YESTERDAYS.

 Did you have any pre-conceived notions about what you wanted your cover to look like?

None! I did for novels I wrote before All Our Yesterdays, but for some reason I would always draw a blank with this story whenever anyone asked me. Ultimately I think that was for the best, though. 

How far in advance from your pub date did you start talking covers with your house?

My editor told me about some ideas she had for the cover very early on, just a month or two after the book was acquired. But the serious discussions and comp process didn’t start for another six months or so. 

Did you have any input on your cover?

We went through lots and lots of concepts and cover comps. We probably went through a dozen ideas before we landed on the cover that appears on the ARC of the book, and then that cover was rejected by Barnes and Noble, so we went back to the drawing board. 

All in all, I probably saw at least thirty different concepts over a span of seven or eight months, and Hyperion was great about asking for my opinion along the way and incorporating lots of the changes I asked for at different points in the process. I still really love some of those covers we ultimately didn’t go with.

How was your cover revealed to you?

After many, many months and a zillion different comps, I got an email from my editor saying that they had a completely new cover based on a totally different concept than anything they’d tried before and that the team at Disney was convinced this was finally the one. I thought they were working on something totally different, but the clock cover had snuck in and surprised everyone. Supposedly when they revealed it at the sales meeting, everyone gasped.

Was there an official "cover reveal" date for your art?

It had been decided that Hyperion would reveal my cover during a panel at BEA, and we were scrambling right up until the last minute to get it finished in time. 

How far in advance of the reveal date were you aware of what your cover would look like?

Not very! I saw the final cover for the first time about fourteen hours before it was revealed at BEA.

Was it hard to keep it to yourself before the official release?

Haha, no. Especially because I was asleep for most of those fourteen hours. 

What surprised you most about the process?

How difficult it was. I obviously had a particularly troubled cover journey, and I never could have imagined it would take so long or be so stressful and emotionally draining. But I’m so grateful that Hyperion continued to push for a something they thought would be really great instead of giving up and settling for something just okay when the process got tough.

You’ve got international editions coming out. Tell us about your foreign covers.

Seeing the foreign covers starting to come in has been so much fun for me, because they’re all wildly different and seem to want to emphasize different aspects of the story. Here are the have covers for the UK, Dutch (I Am Not Me), and Bulgarian editions. And the German cover, which I adore and can’t wait to see in person, was just released last week. This is Time Splitter:

Any advice to other debut authors about how to handle cover art anxiety?

Just try to let go! It really is completely out of your control, so do your best not to stress over it. Indulge freely in your vice of choice if necessary.