Getting the Cover Just Right

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but on the other hand, a great cover tells the story before you start reading. The cover has to tell the reader as much as possible about the main character and his but it’s not possible to send the entire manuscript to the cover designer. This is the letter I sent to my cover designer, and in one take she nailed the essence of the entire story:

“Looking at the back of a little kid, maybe he has a baseball cap on, maybe he’s got a glove or a bat in his hand. He’s a ghost with form, but he’s real. You can’t see his face but you can tell he is looking up toward the outfield fence at a stadium. It’s an old school baseball stadium, maybe like Yankee Stadium but not exactly. There are bleachers to the right and a regular baseball fence to the left. Over the fence to the left are dark menacing storm clouds – obviously a storm is brewing that is going to ruin this kid’s day at the ballpark. For colors, I have in mind a sort of cream old-school look with the rest of the scene in brown, except for the storm clouds – they’re dark. For fonts I’m thinking something that translates old school baseball, maybe sixties or seventies in feel and definitely not the cliché’s baseball font you see on shirts and what not.

“This book is different than what’s out there right now, so I want to convey an old-school feel with a sort of slap in the face to the current publishing world.”

She took it one step further, and translated through her art that the main character either came from a place – or was heading to a place – that was obscured by storm clouds. In that interpretation, she perfectly summed up the pages inside. Many thanks to Freya Jensen and her artistic vision.