One step at a time
Wouldn’t it be great if we could all leap to the top of the hardcover bestseller list and skip everything that comes before it?
Yes, yes it would, but I think it might actually be better to get to your goal one step at a time. While it takes longer to get you there, in the end, I think you arrive at a better place.
Along the way, you’ve accumulated friends and supporters; you’ve recovered from your hard knocks; you’ve learned what works and what doesn’t work; you’ve developed a process and built a tribe—the two things you’ll need to make your next book a success.
I’m thinking about this today because my friend, Aaron Goldfarb, just released the print edition of his book The Cheat Sheet. He’s doing some really fun stuff with the design by setting each story in a different typeface. That’s something he wasn’t able to do when he put out the Kindle edition nine months ago, but the Kindle edition let him gain the traction he needed to create the print edition.
More and more I’m hearing a similar story: digital first, then print. Build an audience, drive demand, get people to care—all before you print. Yes, you still need someone like me to create the digital editions. Yes, you still need a killer cover. But you don’t have to pay for pulp and ink until you know you can sell.
Digital books and the internet are changing the game. The old walls are tumbling down. A lower barrier to entry doesn’t guarantee success, but it does make it a lot easier to toss your hat into the ring and give it your all.
A disclaimer: Aaron is a friend. He’s plied me with food, drink, and good conversation, so yeah, I’m biased towards liking his book. Then again, if you also like getting lost in conversation in a bar, wandering your way from topic to topic, and telling stories of exes and the sexes, then there’s a fair chance you’re already biased towards liking it too. Why not give it a go?
Today, I raise a toast to another creative getting their work out into the world one step at a time. Here’s to not waiting for someone to pick you, but instead letting all the people who loved your digital book be the ones to tell you it when it’s time to print. Cheers, Aaron!
One step at a time still gets you there, and often gets you to a better place.
Quote Art: Roadhouse rules of life
Thank you Mr. Swayze. Also, thanks to playingwithbrushes for the background.
Quote Art: Well played New York, well played
I look forward to the day we treat all our citizens equally.
Bookseller Cover Design Conference Talk
Yesterday, I had the honor of speaking (via Skype) at The Bookseller Cover Design Conference in London hosted by the very charming Damian Horner.
Here’s a transcript of my talk:
Predicting the future of book design
I want to start us off with a quote by John Gall.
“The re-working, dealing with all the feedback (some warranted, some moronic) ‘make this bigger’, ‘make this smaller’, ‘my psychic thinks it should be blue’—that is what separates the men from the boys.” – John Gall, Design Bureau Issue 01
This is great advice for designing covers. I keep it taped to my wall and on my desktop so that when I get frustrated I’ll remember that doing the work is the dividing line between success and failure.
I also think it’s key to the future of book design. We know the industry is changing, but how we deal with that feedback will determine what comes next. And I don’t think we should be afraid. It’s in our hands to shape the future of the industry. So let me tell you why I think Damian was right when he said we were entering a golden era of book design.
Using uncertainty as fuel
First, I believe design works best when it’s given limitations and a problem that needs to be fixed. Overcoming these constraints to find the most elegant solution to the problem is what we do as designers. We communicate ideas and solve problems everyday, we’re actually at our best when given a challenge. I believe the change, the challenges, and the uncertainty of not knowing what’s next for publishing will spur us to create amazing work
But we’ve got to meet the challenge head on. We’ve got to re-work our expectations and deal with the feedback.
As I see it we’ve got two choices:
- Keep doing things the way we’ve always done them, stagnate, and then fade into obscurity.
- Rebel against the status quo, fight back again against “this is how it was always done,” and innovate.
OR
Personally, I’m choosing the latter. I think Dylan Thomas said it well:
“Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
In the same way punk rock pushed back against conservative culture in the 80′s, we’ve got to take the problems we’re given in the bookselling industry and push back. We need to design solutions to our problems, not just book covers. We need to think critically about what we’d like our industry to look like, and then start spreading that vision to the people around us. We need to make public predictions about the future, and when we’re wrong figure out why and what might work instead. We need to take a stand, give a damn, and make our voices heard.
I’m not content to let the future of my industry and my work be decided for me. I believe it’s our job, it’s everyone’s job in the industry, to think about our problems creatively and then sell our peers on why our solution is better than the direction we’re headed.
I believe these challenges we’re facing, this uncertainty, is the fuel we need to create amazing things.
Recognizing that online sales are good for design
The second reason I believe we’re entering a golden age is that I actually think cover design is becoming more important in the buying process.
Traditionally, most books would live spine out in the bookstore. Your cover only got displayed if you were popular or willing to pay. With online sales everyone’s cover comes up in a search.
Once you get past home page promotions, online bookstores are, actually, quite egalitarian. This means most books are getting more cover design exposure than they were before, and since everyone gets the same amount of space when the search results come back, it’s becoming more and more important to have an irresistible cover since it’s the first thing that differentiates you from the competition.
Designing for the format
Third, I think we’re realizing that the format of the book should determine it’s cover design, and that as the number formats increase, we’ll actually be designing more.
We’re accustomed to creating an alternate cover for the paperback edition of a book, and, I think, we’re going to expand that precedent so that we create different covers for each format.
My prediction is that very soon we’ll see lists of cover design deliverables looking like this:
- Regular hardcover edition
- Limited-run, collector’s edition
- Paperback edition
- Ebook edition
- Icon version for social media
As we accommodate more ways of selling books and spreading the ideas in them, I think we’re going to be designing more than we were before, and designing new things that aren’t limited by precedent or convention.
For example, at The Domino Project, we’ve started selling limited-run, collectible, editions of our books. We create something geared toward the collector. The person that wants not just the the ideas and story in the book, but something beautifully crafted that they can keep to remind them of how much they love the book. These editions aren’t for everyone; they’re for the die-hard fans, and because they’re limited in quantity they can be more expensive and more bespoke.
I look forward to the day when a book comes out with 100 copies of a collector’s edition, each with a different handmade cover. I look forward to the ways the changing industry will create opportunities for new and beautiful things.
Moving past “Cover Design”
I want to transition here and talk about why I think the term “cover design” is a limiting way to to think about what we do. We’ve seen that “one design to rule them all” doesn’t work. Each format has it’s own needs and best practices. Damian pointed out very clearly that what works in print doesn’t always hold up online or on the screen.
I believe we need to start thinking about what we do, not as cover design, but as identity design for ideas and stories. The further we can distance ourselves from the assumption that we design stacks of paper bound together with four-color covers the better. More and more, we’re going to see authors engaging directly with their readers online using blogs, facebook, twitter, virtual book clubs, and by selling their work directly to readers.
For all these purposes a four-color jacket with flaps just doesn’t cut it.
We need to start thinking of about laying out titles like logotypes that can be used wherever the book is promoted. We need to start designing front covers that can double as social media icons. We need to start thinking about providing authors and publishing companies with color schemes and font stylesheets so that when they create promotional materials or websites they can easily transfer the branding of the book to everything else they create. We need to think about how the component pieces of our design can be used fluently in other media.
We need to start creating identity packages for books, the same way they’re created for businesses and individuals. And we need to recognize that the cover design is just one of the many things we deliver.
Embracing change
At The Domino Project we’re serious about questioning what works and what doesn’t. We’re committed to adopting ideas that are great, that we didn’t come up with. We’re invested in the mindset that the landscape is constantly changing, that it’s a swelling sea and not a stretch of land.
The more we can accept that change is not a one-time thing to survive, but a contestant element of the work we do, the less frightening the evolution of our industry becomes.
I want to touch briefly on our covers without words.
Damian talked about the importance of this for online buying, and why it makes a lot of sense. So let me talk about why I thought it was surprising that it was newsworthy. Maybe it’s because the publishing industry loves words, or maybe it’s because I’ve spent more time designing for other industries than I have for publishing, but, honestly, I was surprised that creating covers without words was new.
If you take a look at album design and the music industry we’ve been seeing covers without words for years. Here’s a collection of twenty album covers without words that I found in five minutes:
In the music industry, covers without words are par for the course, but in publishing it’s news. I think this is a really strong indication that we’ve been too insular. We’ve got to start looking to other industries for inspiration and stop thinking that the way we’ve been working is the best way to work.
The response, both anecdotal and in terms of sales, to books without covers has been overwhelmingly positive. So why’d it take so long for this to happen when we’ve been selling online for years and we’ve seen examples of it succeed in another industry?
Embracing technology
There’s a lot of talk by naysayers about how how the internet and ebooks are killing publishing, but I think there’s not enough talk about how the internet and the collective wisdom of the hive mind can actually help publishing evolve. We need listen to good ideas and adopt them.
Ian Greenleigh wrote a great article about why publishers should include official twitter hashtags in their books so that readers could easily find the discussion about the book online and join in.
We totally agreed with him, so we assigned hashtags to the books we’d released, added them to the covers of our future books, and blogged about it. The whole change in direction took us less than a day, from learning about the idea, to discussing it, and then adopting it as part of our workflow.
Ian’s idea was great, and because his blog allows him to put that idea out in the world quickly and cheaply we were able to learn about it and add value to our books because of it. The same tools and technology that we think are killing us, are, actually, our best shot at creating a vibrant industry that flourishes when met with change instead of recoiling from it.
Prove me wrong
The internet is filled is great ideas and predictions for the future, and we need to do more predicting and more listening. That’s the future of book design, as I see it. Prove me wrong with a better prediction.
Quote Art: Not by events
“Man is affected, not by events, but by the view he takes of them.” – Epictetus
Thanks to Jeffrey Fry for the quote, and Diego Da Silva for the photo.
Book Cover Design
