Book Jackets

What if your book cover could interact with your reader? Drag your mouse over the book cover embedded above to see what the future might look like.

UK Publisher Walker Books just unveiled that cover for Daylight Savings by Edward Hogan. Impressed by the design, literary agent Jonny Geller tweeted a great question: “Better than a book trailer?”

Here’s more about the book: “Today, in fact right this second, the clocks are going back an hour. For most of us, this is a fantastic day as it means we get an extra hour to stay wrapped under the duvet, safe in our beds. But for one of the main characters in Edward Hogan’s debut young adult novel, Daylight Saving, this time of year brings nothing but fear… it’s a thriller ghost story by a new voice in YA fiction that will have you utterly gripped. We can also tell you that this very night, when the clocks go back, is one that fills the characters with dread.” (via Jane L.)

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In breaking summer publishing news, editor and freelance writer Michelle Witte has proven that Penguin Classics covers would make great band-aids.

Last week Penguin Classics unveiled a super cool limited-edition set of skateboard decks featuring cover art from Penguin Classics’ titles. You can actually win one of the skateboard decks if you submit a picture of a Penguin Classic and a skateboard. Follow this link for more information about the contest.

Inspired by the contest, Witte designed a set of band-aids with some hilarious choices of classic titles on the front. Here’s more from the post: “Skateboards are boring. But bandaids with Penguin Classic covers? Yes, please! So to make a pitch to the people at Penguin Classics, I offer my suggestions for extremely awesome bandaids featuring some of the great Classics book covers.”

The cover for Robert Kirkman‘s first novel set in the world of The Walking Dead comic book series has been unveiled. Entitled The Walking Dead: The Rise of The Governor, the book debuts at the end of September.

Last year Kirkman landed a series book deal with the Thomas Dunne Books imprint at St. Martin’s Press. The first book in the series will be co-written Jay Bonansinga.

Above, we’ve embedded the cover for the new novel. SPOILER ALERT: The description of the book below reveals a few broad plot details from the comic book series.

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Author and Reddit user Max Barry convinced his publisher to let the Reddit community help pick the cover for his book, Machine Man. As of this writing, cover design #5 lead with nearly 80 votes.

Check it out: “Here are some images. I would deeply love to hear what you think, because getting the cover right is really important, and I’ve been staring at designs so long I can’t remember what books are supposed to look like. And I trust your judgment. Or, at least, I’ve been around Reddit long enough to know there are more smart people here than lunatics.”

Follow this link to see all the potential cover images on a single page. Leave your cover votes in the comments thread at this link. You can also sample the book in this online serial version.

In the three-minute video embedded above, you can learn how to build an optical illusion for your book cover or book poster.

Cover designer Lauren Panepinto explained the process in this blog post as well. The project requires some editing tools, but produces surreal and beautiful results.

Here’s more about the project: “So what you don’t know is that the initial design was even crazier. I wanted to hide the cover text IN the optical illusions. Slight legibility problem, I admit, for a teeny book cover…but FABULOUS for a poster. And since I know you guys love these how-to videos, I screen-captured my process so you too can make your own Editable-Text Optical Illusion Poster…and melt the retinas of all your friends. After the jump you can even download the Illustrator file I used, and add your own text.”

Designer Chip Kidd has made covers for Haruki Murakami for years, and he unveiled his latest cover for 1Q84 (embedded above) at the  Knopf Doubleday site.

His essay reveals more about the plot of this massive novel.

Here’s more from Kidd: “By using a semi-transparent vellum for the jacket, and printing the woman’s image in a positive/negative scheme with the title on the outside layer and the rest of her on the binding, once the jacket is wrapped around the book it ‘completes’ the picture of her face. But something odd is definitely going on, and before the reader even reads a word, he or she is forced to consider the idea of someone going from one plane of existence to another.”

Graphic designer Rodrigo Corral (pictured, via) has been named creative director at Macmillan’s Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). According to Unbeige, Corral actually worked at FSG from 1996 to 2000 following his graduation from the School of Visual Arts.

Here’s more from Unbeige: “He begins in his new post early next month and will continue to run Rodrigo Corral Design, the nine-year-old studio behind such memorable book covers as those for James Frey‘s A Million Little Pieces, a shelf of Chuck Palahniuk novels, Debbie Millman‘s smashing How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, and Jay-Z‘s recent memoir-cum-lyrical codex, Decoded.”

Rodrigo’s work has appeared in New York Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New York Times Book Review. His art has also been seen on books published by Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group (USA), and W.W. Norton.

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As self-published books multiply, a new generation of amateur designers are working on their own book covers. We attended the inaugural day of the  Blurb Pop-Up store in New York City (pictured) this afternoon, covering  the “Compelling Cover Design Workshop.” Designer Alan Rapp shared the most common mistake he saw amateur cover designers make–lack of experimentation.

He explained: “One of the tendencies that people have–I don’t even know if I would call it a mistake–is to be too conservative with topography. At publishing houses, when designers are submitting book designs, they don’t present one idea. They present at least three to five ideas. It manifests something that’s latent, something you didn’t imagine. What I like about Blurb is you can do that kind of experiment. I can do a number of versions, and I can see how they will feel.”

If you want more book cover deign resources, check out our collection of book cover resources for self-published authors. We also encourage self-published authors to RSVP for our Book Pitch Party on November 3rd.

Garth Williams‘ original graphite-and-ink cover for the E.B. White classic, Charlotte’s Web sold for $155k at auction. Altogether, 17 bids were made via internet, phone, and mail on the Heritage Auctions item.

Besides the original cover, another three items were included in the lot: “a 14 x 16.5 in. ink drawing of a web that was used to create the decorative end paper design for the book, and two 9 x 8 in. watercolors of the cover design.”

According to The Washington Post, the auction organizers originally estimated it would go for $30,000, but it exceeded expectations by more than 500 percent. 42 of Williams’ art pieces were sold in the same auction and in total, the collection grossed more than $780,000. The New York buyer for Charlotte’s Web preferred to remain anonymous.

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The cover for Tina Fey‘s first book, Bossypants starred at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Flavorpill has a photo: Fey’s face superimposed on the body of a large man with a tie and a white-collar shirt. In the video embedded above, Fey talked to Zap2it about the eye-popping cover.

Fey said: “I shot it with this great, great photographer named Ruven Afanador, and it was an idea he had that I really liked. It’s funny to me that some people think it’s funny, and some people, it makes them furious. I can’t figure out why. It’s not dirty or mean… it’s a memorable image, at the very least.”

As a writer, Fey is best known for her comedy writing on Saturday Night Live. Bossypants comes out in hardcover on April 5, 2011 from Reagan Arthur Books.