Kudos to UnBeige for catching this one first: Rachel Kramer Bussel has filed a story for the main mediabistro.com site about how to discuss your book cover with your publisher. Most of the time, you'll be lucky to get any input at all, she says, but if you have a chance to steer things your way, take it; one author "creates one-page cheat sheets for her publisher describing what her heroine looks like, her tattoos, and any other key information" that might help create an arresting cover image. As long as it's not too arresting; novelist Scott Pomfret discusses how the original art for his gay romance Hot Sauce almost tanked the book's chances with Barnes & Noble until his publisher agreed to go back to the drawing board.

And for those writers who think what was good enough for J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye is good enough for them, an unnamed senior editor offers some practical advice: "If you're Thomas Pynchon or The Beatles, you can do The White Album. If you're a growing author, you don't want to be enigmatic with your title or cover design."

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