Jennifer Crusie | Argh Ink | Blog

So with Don’t Look Down out in paperback, I thought you might like a look at that cover process, too. Of course, I am often wrong, so if you’re sick of covers, just skip this one.

Don’t Look Down was a tough, tough cover because, like The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, it was selling something new that the industry and the public probably weren’t going to understand at first. Usually when two people “collaborate” on a book, the larger name doesn’t do much except give her name, and the lesser known author does the writing. This is why people don’t trust collaborations, I think. But this was a real collaboration, Bob wrote half and I wrote half and then we rewrote together, so we had to sell that idea of two-authors-in-one-text. That,in fact, was the real impetus behind both the logo and the old He Wrote She Wrote blog, although that quickly changed into something completely different. Still, it did what it was supposed to, showed people that we were equal partners. The book cover was going to have to communicate that, too.

Then we had to get people past the idea of romantic comedy because this wasn’t going to be one. We brainstormed what to call it and decided on “Romantic Adventure” and put a lot of effort into pushing that, on the blog and in interviews, and we knew the cover really had to communicate that.

And then we had to get the fun-sexy-exciting-Crusie-Mayer-book feeling on there. So we knew it was going to be tough.

So this is the first one they sent us:

Everybody liked it. Except me. I hated it.

It must catch the eye across a bookstore.
Weird colors, hard-to-read font, obscure graphic, can’t see the title.

It must be pick-up-able when the reader gets close.
This cover had one huge thing going for it: those little alligators in the background were going to be embossed and then the back would have been matte and they’d have been glossy. Other than that, up close this cover was just butt-ugly with a amateurish graphic and an unreadable type.

It must capture the mood and the content of the story.
The type, the colors, the graphic, they all look like a retro/forties murder mystery. It so missed “funny, modern, romantic adventure” that I could not understand why anybody liked it. Bob still likes it.

So I went through in detail and they sent us another pass, in six colorways:

Here are three more of the colorways; I’ll spare you the other two.

Basically, they took the shadow off the type and made the title bigger. That didn’t solve the majority of the problems, so after a some more back and forth, I gave up and hired my own designer. She gave us these (among several other designs):

MUCH closer but still not right, so she tweaked, and while she was working, the art department at the publisher came up with this:

If we’d started with that, I’d probably have been happier, but now I was hooked on the stuff the designer was doing, so when we got her revisions, I was thrilled, and we picked the turquoise one. Actually, I think I picked the turquoise one; Bob was refusing to answer my e-mails at that point.

It must catch the eye across a bookstore.
The colors, the clear graphic, the great title, yep.

It must be pick-up-able when the reader gets close.
The detail on the figures, the gator, and especially that great helicopter with the whirring wings. Great detail.

It must capture the mood and the content of the story.
Hot colors, good graphic, lots of movement, two people clinging together on a rope, it nailed the collaboration and the vibe of the book.

I was so happy.

Then the publisher came back with this, and said, “Marketing really loves this, what do you think?”

And I knew it was over. It was a great cover for a chick lit book. DLD is not chick lit, but chick lit was going to sell better than romantic adventure, the people who bought Bet Me would grab this cover in a nanosecond, it was going to sell like crazy. (Which it did, BTW.) And then they were going to read a romantic adventure that was not romantic comedy or even a romance and throw the book against the wall. But at the point, I had pushed my luck with the publisher pretty far. And I wasn’t going to win. In the words of the great Kenny Rogers, it was time to fold those cards and accept defeat gracefully. Or as Bob said, looking at all pink and baby blue and sunny infant yellow, “We should have taken the first one.”

Then Bob came up with the brilliant idea of making the book underneath camo colored and the publisher said yes immediately and gave us camo with little alligators in it which still makes me giggle whenever I see it.

It really was a great combo, chick lit on the outside/camo undercover, but the vast majority of romance readers only saw the chick lit cover. And boy howdy were they upset when they read the book. The most common complaint we got was variations on “This isn’t like Crusie’s other books,” and yeah the two names on the cover should have been a tip-off but really? The cover promised them another Crusie romantic comedy. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that the cover promise the book that’s inside it. Expectation is huge in reader satisfaction.

So when it came time to do the paperback, nobody wanted the pink, baby blue, and yellow again. We started with this:

This is a stepback cover, something publishers do on some mass market titles so that they can have a cover and then an inside cover with lots of words or a more detailed/explicit picture to sell the story (mass market covers are small . . .). This was not terrific but so much closer than the hardcover chick lit jacket that I thought, “This isn’t bad.” And we tweaked it–got the guy out of dress shoes and into boots, changed the image so that with the first cover closed there was an alligator (adventure) instead of a woman in high heels (chick lit)– focused the colors better, and ended up with this:

Which I loved. Mollie and Bob not so much, but I LOVED it.

It must catch the eye across a bookstore.
Those colors will get you.

It must be pick-up-able when the reader gets close.
I loved, loved, loved the contrast in the two gator patterns. I liked the anything-goes adventure feel to the type. I loved how busy and gaudy and over-the-top it was. Just loved it.

It must capture the mood and the content of the story.
As far as i was concerned, this was DLD: busy, colorful, moving, exotic, with two different patterns/authors working as one. Can I say, I loved this?

If you bought the book, you may have noticed that it doesn’t look like this. Marketing decided it was too busy and made it plainer. It looks very nice now. And like every other red cover out there. They said, “Is this okay?” and Bob and Mollie were hating the one I loved, and Kenny was singing again, so I said, “Yes.”

I still think it’s a mistake, but it’s over, moving on . . .

And the Agnes cover is PERFECT. I’m giddy over the Agnes cover.

Some day I’ll tell you about the Getting Rid of Bradley cover. When I can stop banging my head against the wall.