Cover Thoughts
When your book cover calls you out on Twitter; nobody knows what makes a novel sell; Agnes Martin & Jordan Ramsey Ismaiel
I think maybe the most surreal moment so far of my “career as a writer,” if that’s what this is, was when the cover of my first novel called me out on Twitter. Some background: I had wanted a cover that came at the novel’s subject matter (falling in love with a sex worker and getting syphilis in Bulgaria) at a slant, maybe even something plausibly abstract. I think my favorite cover for any of the editions (though there are a few I love, I’ve been lucky) was the UK hardcover, which is basically a grid: a block of apartments. Very un-Bulgarian, with all those colors, but I still dug it. So when my US editor sent me a cover proposal with a man’s face on it, I was dead-set against it.
Unfortunately, authors don’t get that much power over their covers. (This may be fortunate, actually.) Or maybe some do; in my case, there’s some very vague, unenforceable, mostly meaningless contractual language about “consulting” the author, which basically means I get a chance to opine but they don’t have to care what I think. In practice, publishers generally do want the author to be happy, or not totally to hate what their books look like; in a few cases when I have put my foot down uncharacteristically firmly I have been able to scuttle a bad design idea.
Also though my editor is a ninja, who somehow never quite says no to me but always gets what she wants. She’s also kind of a genius—as are, generally speaking, the design people at FSG. She wrote back to my absolutely not email with a suggestion that I take a few days to think about it. The design wasn’t just a face: it was two thirds apartment blocks, one third steamy model. I remember she sent me several different versions, physically, by mail (meaning I had time to let my initial response cool; I tell you, a ninja), the same design but with I think six different faces for me to consider. I did not at all like the idea of putting a face to one of my characters, but weirdly over the weekend one of these faces became Mitko for me (like, visited me in a dream), and by Monday I had come around. I approved the design.