Do We Judge a Book by it's Cover? (Yes, we do.)
The-step-by-step process of making the cover for Where Are You, Echo Blue?
First things first! Barnes & Noble is giving a whole 25% off for pre-orders through April 19. Tomorrow. Which means… you can pre-order Where Are You, Echo Blue? If you love books and if you want to support me— plus other great authors— then this is a good sale to take advantage of. Do some girl math here and think of it as getting two free cups of Starbucks. That makes sense, right?
Plus there are only 4 days left to enter the Goodreads giveaway to win a copy of ECHO BLUE. Enter now!
Judging a book by it’s cover
I get so many people commenting and asking me about the cover for ECHO BLUE, so I thought I would give you a history about the cover.
This one was hard. The hardest book cover process I’ve been through. There’s a whole discussion on Threads (you can follow me there) about how traditional book publishers don’t give their authors any say in their cover design.
I am here to tell you this is not true. I have had plenty of say in all three of my book covers, but especially this one. Dutton was incredible in supporting what I wanted while also finding a compromise of how they wanted to sell the book.
When my editor and I first started talking about what we wanted the cover to look like, I gave her a Pinterest board that I had been making to collect visuals about Echo Blue. I do this for every book I write. I’m a visual person so I love to collect images that inspire me. I started by sending them photos of 90s it girls like Kirsten Dunst and Chloe Sevigny. to me, these photos of them captured that grit of 90s Hollywood. I loved this picture of Chloe because she’s so young, yet such an individual, a lot like Echo Blue.
I also sent them this picture of Kirsten Dunst. It was taken by Sofia Coppola I believe in the Chateau Marmont in the 90s. Kirsten Dunst and Sofia Coppola were huge inspirations for me while writing ECHO BLUE. I wanted Echo to have this cool vibe where she wasn’t just this Hollywood royalty, the daughter of two famous actors. She had her own vibe. Her own look. Vintage furs. A little grungy. Yet super cute and innocent. This picture said it all to me.
Then I also sent them the cover of Hit Parade of Tears by Izumi Suzuki which I am obsessed with. This is a photo of the author. Amazing, right?
First they sent me back this, which we all agreed was beautiful. But the magic of Echo and her messiness, her “it” girl just wasn’t coming through.
They worked on it a little more and came up with this. It was a cool, striking cover. What did I love about it: The font was amazing. Her stare showed Echo’s contemplation and sadness that she goes through in the book. But it gave too much of a 1960s Twiggy vibe to me. I didn’t like the color of the jacket, her hair (Echo is supposed to have stringy hair like Deborah Harry).
So they worked on it and sent this back. Again, a beautiful cover. The hair was fixed so that Echo had wispy hair, but the whole vibe became very Icelandic. Too ABBA/1970s. And the part that really didn’t sit right right with me is that Echo Blue is no older than 19 in the book. We see her life from the time she’s 10 years old. This woman just looks older than that.
We went back to the drawing board. Played with a few different coats. A few different models. And a whole new font. And we came to this stunning cover. To me, this is the epitome of Echo. She looks like she’s on a photo shoot, dressing up in her mom’s clothes, trying to play dress up. She looks wild like I wanted in the earlier photo of Chloe Sevigny, but also like a chic glamour girl like Kirsten Dunst in that vintage coat. Her freckles make her look young and her hair is zhuzhed just right. Dominique Jones is the brilliant creator of this cover and she’s the person who brought Echo to life. I will forever be grateful for her patience and her artistry.
Part of me was concerned that I was asking for too much. This is my adult debut. I’m not a best seller. Who am I to ask for exactly what I want? I don’t know if this has something to do with me being 53 now. Part of me feels like life is too short to not ask for what I want. That’s the good news of getting older. You become more secure, more able to stand in your own shoes and fight for what you believe in. Even if it’s just a book cover. But as we all know, people do judge a book by its cover. Especially if it’s a literal book. (!!) And from the feedback we’ve gotten, all of the work seems to have paid off.
If you have any publishing questions, I’d be happy to answer them.
Thanks for reading,
Hayley