Slated: Getting it Covered

by Teri Terry

It has been a year with a lot to smile about: the last twelve months have seen an agent, and not just any agent but Caroline Sheldon; a publishing deal for Slated with Megan Larkin and Orchard Books; and finally: a long-awaited moment. An actual book cover!!
Read on, and there just might be a chance to read Slated before the 3rd May publication date...

One of the most exciting moments on the road to getting my book on the shelves:

Seeing the final cover for the first time!!!!

Ta-da!!

Isn't it gorgeous?

OK, it has been appearing on the internet here and there for a little while, but this is my official unveiling. And, for the first time anywhere, you can see the back cover, too:

Seeing the final cover was one of those wooo-hooo moments that made it feel more real.

This book is really and truly happening. Isn't it?

Of course, I didn't have that much to do with the general awesomeness of the cover.

I might be unusual in this, but I can honestly say that until the cover was raised by my editor, I wasn't thinking about it. Yes, I was doing that whole picturing-my-book-on-the-shelf thing every time I went past a bookstore, but how it looked was curiously blank in this fantasy. I didn't have a pre-conceived idea what it should or shouldn't look like. I mean, I was pretty sure it shouldn't be pink and fluffy, but apart from that? Nope.

As it turns out this is a good way to enter the process.

This is how it happened. My editor called one day and asked if I had any ideas about the cover. Then she briefed the designer, the very talented Thy Bui.

To the left is the first cover I saw: the one everyone liked the best. Especially those eyes. The whole thing looked a bit Celia Rees, and everyone was excited.

Now that I had something concrete to look at...while I loved it, I wasn't sure it conveyed the futuristic, psychological thriller that Slated is. I thought it needed something I called the 'Freaky Factor' - the weird and different - for this dystopian tale. I came up with crazy ideas which were wisely ignored; they sent me more covers to look at to aid discussion.

This was when I started to fully appreciate the amount of hard work designers like Thy do. They sent me another three covers - all completely different designs, different faces. I later learned these were just some of the original designs Thy came up with. There was another I liked: a different girl, in profile, with an interesting slate type effect background. The original face was still preferred by all of us, but they came up with the idea of changing the first cover to include that Slating effect: brilliant!

The next version, to the right, was the first attempt at this synthesis. I loved it.

Cue panic: the Australian photographer could not be contacted. Every means, even Twitter, were attempted. With deadlines tight, Thy created yet another cover: a similar idea, different face and execution. It was gorgeous, and I was torn: I loved them both.

Then the photographer was found, and there were two covers in the running. Other factors were considered: the availability of other photos for the next book was also important. I kept changing my mind which I loved the most.

In the end - you can see the original face was the one chosen. I felt some regret at letting the other one go, yet over time, I'm sure the right decision was reached. The other cover was gorgeous, and very pretty. In the end this one as developed into the final version was a much better choice: far darker, more arresting. A better representative of the story.

And I must admit, I like the idea that both model and photographer are Australian - since I am, too (I'm sort of a Canadian/Aussie hybrid with a few other things thrown in).

Slated - complete with gorgeous cover - is published on 3rd of May! But there is a way you can read it before then...minus the gorgeous cover, but with a pretty nifty proof cover on it, as modeled here by chief muse, Banrock.
For a chance to win a signed proof of Slated, go to the Slated website - all the details are there. This closes in two weeks, at 12:01 am on Feb 16 EST (5:01 a.m. UK time), and is open internationally.

UPDATE: I've interviewed Hayley, the cover girl on Slated! You can find it on teriterry.com, here.

The London Book Fair Day Two: It's the UK against the world in book cover design

The talk was meant to be about international perspectives on cover design - there were to be two British publishers — Patrick Insole from Walker Books and Jon Lambert from Templar — and Christine Baker from the French publisher, Gallimard Jeunnesse.

But we lost the French publisher due to the transportation chaos - Antonia Pelari, rights director of Scholastic stepped in at the last minute.

Patrick, Antonia and Jon

Despite the exotic sound to her name, Antonia is as British as the other two speakers making the 'international panel' thoroughly UK led. But I thought the resulting event - though not what it said on the tin - was revelatory about the UK market. Illustrator John Shelley blogged very perceptively about it today.

Jon of Templar showed the evolution of this Eragon cover with the author Christopher Paolini very much hands on - changing the key image up to the last minute. But this is an aberration rather than the rule. The author may be consulted but the opinion that counts the most would be "the client". Who's the client? The bookseller.

Patrick of Walker showed the evolution of international covers for The Savage by David Almond and illustrated by Dave McKean. Candlewick, the American arm of Walker, felt that the original cover (on the right) was too "brutal". So McKean came up with the cover on the left which is the US cover.

It just goes to show that violence is in the eye of the beholder.

Here's the French cover - very chic. Said Patrick, "Even though internationally the covers (of The Savage) look different, there’s a family likeness to all the books."

"Sometimes when authors see the covers of their foreign editions, they are a bit taken aback," Antonia said, because the international interpretation may be so far from their own. "What they need to realize is that those international publishers create a cover that will work within their market and nobody knows that market better than they do."

Antonia showed these covers of Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve and illustrated by David Frankland.

On the left is the UK cover by David Frankland and on the right is the Dutch cover. Indeed this Dutch edition didn't do well. The rights have now reverted and been picked up and the cover on the left is now what bookstores are stocking in the Netherlands. "They don't always get it right," Antonia said.

With the British book market contracting slightly in the downturn, overseas sales have become so important to UK publishers that appealing to all markets has become very, very important.

The problem for picture book illustration in the UK of course, as pointed out by Sunday Times critic Nicolette Jones, who hosted the panel, is that we might end up in a "generic place".

She cited as an example picture book illustrations which show cars with the steering wheel in the middle. "We could end up with a generic picture book land where things look a particular way and not at all like real life."

All this talk of covers made me wonder if my own book TALL STORY (out in May ...  pre-order here - I am not ashamed to beg but please don't make me do it too often) could jump through all the hoops mentioned by our panel. So here are some things that were said and how my cover stands up to them.

It is incredibly hard to make children not look sinister and disturbing. 

Hmm. The child on my cover is eight feet tall. But he doesn't look too sinister.

Tall Story Cover

Illustration David Dean. Cover design Alison Godsby

A luxury space like the Barns and Noble in New York (would have room to display your book cover). But the majority of bookstores cram them in – a lead title might be face out but everything else will be spine. 

Tall Story spine:

Yay! I love that the girl with the basketball points toward the cover as if saying, "Check out this book!"

For the sake of the international market, we avoid putting things on the cover that might be too specific - like a big red double decker bus.

Oops.

Tall Story back cover

It's all not necessarily so of course, the panel said. There are really no rules although it might seem like it.

Getting the cover right is - like everything in the book business - all about balancing risk with doing the best you can - Jon Lambert summed it up beautifully:

What we are trying to sell people is a common goal not to exclude anyone from reading a great book. 

An aside about the cover of Tall Story: I LOVE it --  it's so ... 3D! It's so full of story, whether you're looking at the flaps, the spine, the back or the front. And I especially LOVE the big red double decker bus. I'm sure the Philippine Department of Tourism loves it too! Thanks, David and Alison! You rock!