Hello, Book Cover!

On nervous anticipation, resulting delight, and Ari Honarvar's book launch

Beth Kephart’s WIFE | DAUGHTER | SELF, seen here at Powell’s, features her husband William Sulit’s art and Gigi Little’s design.

As the publisher of Forest Avenue Press, I always get to see covers before our authors. Gigi Little, our fabulous designer, sends multiple versions my way. We talk, tweak, then talk and tweak some more. Then--when she’s ready--I send our favorite iterations along to the author.

Then, always, we wait nervously for feedback.

I haven’t heard yet, I sometimes email or text her in this in-between period. Just so Gigi knows I am waiting too. On edge. Anticipating. Hoping.

This is always a huge moment in the life of a book, especially for debuts. We always want our authors to love their covers. In the space between sharing the draft images and receiving the author’s response, these questions usually hover:

Does the design match the author’s vision for the book?

Will the colors and typeface reach the audience the author expects, not just the audience those of us on the marketing/publicity side want to reach?

What if the author doesn’t like any of the options?

It’s always exciting and scary.

Just a few days ago, I had my turn on the other side of the desk: as a debut novelist, seeing my cover for the first time.

My whimsical nineteenth-century fable is forthcoming from Lanternfish Press in April 2022. I’ve spent the past twenty years writing, revising, retitling, setting it aside, and revising some more. Now, at age 45, it has a brand-new title (and even-brand-newer ending), and I feel ready in a way that I didn’t before. Maybe because I’ve spent the past nine years releasing other people’s books through Forest Avenue.

I know the process, what to expect, and how to (mostly) handle the anxiety.

When I was alerted about the a cover due date, I wrote it on my old-school, paper calendar: Monday, Sept. 13.

Which happened to be the day my Catapult essay, “Be Yourself and Sell More Books,” was slated to go live.

All last week, I found myself distracted, inattentive, and unfocused. It took a while to pin those feelings on anxiety about Monday--the essay’s reception and the first-chance look at my cover. I poured myself into household chores, took extra walks with the puppy, batch-cooked some vegan meals for myself, and scrolled through the cover designer’s website, wondering what mine might look like.

I also searched Etsy for hats with birds on them that I might (or might not) buy to match my book. A week or so ago, poet Armin Tolentino tweeted that he’d wear a hat to my launch, which prompted me to consider my own hat. When I showed a few options to my family—the glittery silver nest fascinator, the whimsical chapeau with branches—my husband said, “Why don’t you wait for your book cover?”

Whoops. That’s when I realized I had been obsessing. Trying to imagine my decades-in-the-works book actually existing in the world by considering my sartorial choices for a launch event that may very well be online, depending on the pandemic--all without yet knowing what the cover would look like.

So then I went back to… waiting. (Sigh.)

Which I’m afraid you’ll have to do, too, because one of the things about having an amazing publicist like Lanternfish’s Feliza Casano is letting her control the release dates of important things like titles and covers.

But I can tell you this. Three cover treatments came in at 7:05 a.m. on Monday, sent by my publisher, and attached as a PDF document.

I opened the file, but before I looked at it, I forwarded the options to my agent, Laurie Fox at the Linda Chester Agency. Laurie had been waiting with anticipation too. I knew if I peeked first, I might want to share my thoughts, and I wanted her to look at them without my notes sitting there. So I sent them along. And then, gulp, I looked.

Each iteration was gorgeous and carefully, creatively, lovingly conceived. One in particular felt exactly right for my novel. It’s an art object—I could look at it every day and never get tired of it—but it’s also deeply realized with its artistry and the way it gently choreographs the themes of my novel.

After a blissful call with Laurie, who swooned over the same cover as me, I wrote to my publisher: “There’s so much to love about this cover. I kind of want to write a poem about it. It’s modern and historical, buoyant and bright without being too bright.”

It’s better than anything I could imagine. Better, even, than any of the bird-themed hats I admired on Etsy. And, apparently, instead of a poem, I wrote this love (news)letter to my cover and the process. I will share the imagine when Feliza says I can!

In the meantime, check out this photo essay Gigi Little put together about designing the cover for Ari Honarvar’s A Girl Called Rumi, which comes out Sept. 21 from Forest Avenue Press. We’ve been working on this book constantly since Ari and I signed in August 2020, and Gigi’s process is always fascinating to read about. A Girl Called Rumi has been recommended by Ms. Magazine, Buzzfeed, and Debutiful!

Here’s a peek at some of the color combos we considered, but you’ll have to click through to Gigi’s post to learn what color scheme we went with.

If you want to learn more about A Girl Called Rumi, here’s the official trailer, courtesy of Ari Honarvar. Or join us, if you can, at the online Powell’s Books launch, slated for Sept. 24, where Ari will be in conversation with Ashleigh Renard, author of Swing.

Your Bright Side invitation: Think about your favorite book covers. What do the colors, designs, and fonts say about the contents? Do you have a favorite book that (alas) bears a cover that makes you cringe? If so, what don’t you like about it? If you’re a writer working on a book-length manuscript, have you thought about what you might want to see on your cover someday? Or what you really don’t want to see?

Feel free to leave a comment! I started this newsletter to create an intimate but accessible conversation space about creativity, grief, and the societal reset that the pandemic has offered creatives like us. I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can reply to this email to have a conversation just with me, or you can comment on the post to connect with other readers too.