Q & A: Do you do your own book covers?

No.

That said, these days most pub­lish­ers extend me the cour­tesy of show­ing me poten­tial cov­ers and respond­ing to my reac­tion. (They are not required to do so.) Ear­ly on, that was not always the case. There have been cov­ers I have liked, and cov­ers I liked far less. I have even dis­liked some. But I’m not at all sure I’m the best judge. Cov­er design is a spe­cial skill. I’m a writer, not an artist. There is that say­ing that “You can’t tell a book by its cov­er.” But the cov­er art can be a pow­er­ful incen­tive to pick up a book or leave it on the shelf.

Among my favorite cov­ers are the orig­i­nal hard­cov­er edi­tion of The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle. Com­pare that with the orig­i­nal Avon paper­back of the same book. I dis­liked that one.

There have been a cou­ple of cov­ers that, in essence, I designed. That is, I sug­gest­ed the nature of the image to the pub­lish­er and it was accept­ed. Those book were hard­back edi­tion of The But­ton War, and Don’t You Know there’s a War On? The back-head­ed image of the boy on the cov­er of Don’t You Know… derives from a pho­to I took of my son, Robert.

Some of my favorite cov­ers are those from for­eign edi­tions. These artists con­sid­er the books in dif­fer­ent ways, and some of the results are stunning.

Oth­er cov­ers I real­ly liked are Old Wolf and The Unex­pect­ed Life of Oliv­er Cromwell Pitts.