I’m a writer, not an artist. I have some aesthetic sense, but no manual skills.
The cover turned out to be the most difficult part of the original submission for me. I hadn’t thought much about it, and felt suddenly asked to provide art, cover copy, and aesthetic decisions about color and font. I had no image of the book, and knew no artists to help. I also couldn’t find examples of the various fonts, and no publisher provided recognizable examples.
I was writing local history, so went through photographs I had available to find something I thought might work that had no problems with permissions or privacy. I didn’t know the legal guidelines, but I limited myself to photographs taken by me or my father. I’ve since heard some commercial publishers require signed waivers from anyone whose face appears on a cover. Most on demand publishers don’t provide this legal information. Instead, they put a number of clauses in their contracts that protect them from your ignorance.
Next I found someone in the yellow pages who could digitize 50-year-old slides. I told him what I was using the pictures for, but had not yet received the specification that defined the file type and minimum pixel density. He was a professional and gave me what I needed (TIF files). I later learned it was the wrong color convention, but could be converted. I don’t remember that being in any specification.
I don’t have professional photography layout software, but I did mockups for my high school newspaper. I found my best method for refining the cover text was to insert a book-sized box in a WordPerfect document, then allot space for pictures, a company logo and bar-code. You may have been on the yearbook staff and might get similar results by cutting blocks of paper.
I typed my cover text in a font size I thought would work, and discovered it didn’t fit, even though it was less than the prescribed number of words. Because physical appearance was more important than content, the rewrite became an exercise in poetry. Working with the graphic representation stimulated a different part of my imagination.
Publishers offer to write the back cover text for a price, but I was skeptical anyone was going to think about my book in the same way I discovered I could. At best, it would be worth it if they would start from my concept and polish it. Thinking anyone is going to understand your work as well as you is as naive as thinking any of them are going to pluck your manuscript from the mire and promote it into a best seller. Even writers published by major commercial publishers complain about the transformations that occur when designers only follow the conventions of the market.
Some publishers offer to design your cover for a price; others offer basic templates that have predetermined blocks where their designer inserts the picture and text. The latter changes the design process into something analogous to looking at group picture mats in the hobby store and picking the one that will work best with your family photographs and wall decor.
One publisher specified the pictures you sent had to already be the exact size of the template block. This requires you have the necessary software and experience. If you don’t, then the cost of paying a professional, yours or theirs, is required. Photoshop, the best known of the layout packages, lists at about $600. I used the software that came with my camera; it may have been free, but the camera wasn’t. My biggest problem was the manual had long disappeared and it took hours of trial and error to learn it well enough to use.
I cropped and enlarged the pictures to create objects (JPG files) I could insert into my word processor mockup. I played with WordPerfect’s color wheel, which is available under the "more" option of the highlight button. I tried one color after another for the background in the text box until I found the one that worked with my pictures. I then changed the font colors until I found something that looked OK.
I sent my mockups along with the original TIF files created by the professional and the formulas for the colors with my submission package. The pictures in the mockups weren’t usable because, in my ignorance, I destroyed the reproduction quality of the images, but their intent had always been a means to communicate vision.
My mockups didn’t fit any one template, and the company offered a service upgrade. I realized the cover is another of those potential vanity snares. You need to know how you’re going to distribute your book. If it’s going to be sold at a community booth a simple cover will work. If you’re going to sell it with a seminar you offer you may need more.
I looked at the ads in the New York Review of Books and discovered covers didn’t attract my attention and that most large publishers have fairly simple ones that still look good when they’re shrunk for promotions. Indeed, many don’t use pictures, but sophisticated freeform fonts. The only time a book jacket might be important is if you place it in a bookstore or souvenir shop where you need to catch someone’s eye before you can sell to him or her.
I decided I could live with a template, so long as they reproduced my colors and croppings.
I was surprised at how happy I was when I finally beheld a copy of the finished book, and the flat proof page was changed into three-dimensions with a glossy surface. I discovered I cared very much that the book look like a book and feel like a book.
My satisfaction with the book as an object comes from those choices I made that panicky weekend when I prepared my submission. I realize now it had become a matter of stepping up to the challenges of new software tools, and mine were primitive, or live with the work of others who wouldn’t be able to devote the hours I did to my project. Choosing the options that provided the most control within the skills I could develop was the root of my pleasure.
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