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S5.E7 - How Much Input do Authors get on their Covers?
100 Plays10 days ago
We are chatting about book covers, being asked to make mood boards, cover art "leaking" early online and Naomi gives an exclusive reveal about which of her covers she really doesn't like!
- Naomi Gibson, author of Every Line of You, Game Over Girl, Man Muse Monster
- Melissa Welliver, author of The Undying Tower, My Love Life and the Apocalypse, Soulmates and Other Ways to Die, To the Death
- Jamie Greenwood, creator & host of The Write and Wrong Podcast
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Transcript
Listener Engagement and Publishing Stories
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello, we would love to hear from you. If you have any stories or anecdotes about publishing, good or bad, we would love to hear about them and we'll talk about them. Or if you just have any questions or if you think it's anything we missed in in this episode or any of the previous episodes, reach out to us. You can find all of us on social media, on Instagram, or wherever it might be, or you can head it to the Right and Wrong podcast website. Yeah, all our DMs are open. Send us messages, let us no you know what what you've been up to in publishing. We'd love to talk about it and and hear about it.
Toxic Characters and Media Enjoyment
00:00:29
Speaker
Shrek and Christian Grey are different characters. Wow. You heard it here first. After every episode was like, oh my gosh, I'm so angry at these toxic characters. Like, shove more food in my mouth, press next episode. because I loved it, but obviously I hate it. This is so much fun.
Humorous Book Review Misidentification
00:00:45
Speaker
This is my Malfoy-Himaili fanboy.
00:00:50
Speaker
She shouldn't have done that. I'm trying to make Neville happen. It's too
00:00:57
Speaker
too like my but ah would I think this is a pretty easy one star review for you guys. oh yes they're not ever Certainly not life changing or anything. The plot was hard to follow and the editing was horrible. The characters were painfully one dimensional and delivered some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard. All in all, I found it too long and it took itself way too seriously.
00:01:23
Speaker
The fact that it sells so well is beyond me and the way people hold it up, you'd think God himself had written the damn thing. Is it my book? Which one? There's just too many choices. It refers to all of them. Is it the Bible?
00:01:41
Speaker
It is the Bible. Oh my gosh, that's brilliant. yeah There's a review of the Bible. I was going to say Twilight because they all just seem to be Twilight. Well, the same disc, the Bible, Twilight.
00:01:51
Speaker
Yeah, that's the same. to be honest, it works for Twilight. Yeah, take this up too seriously. One dimensional characters. Worst dialogue I've ever read. works for me you give my good reviews.
00:02:03
Speaker
It's funny. depends um Okay, could good let's do
Reiterating Audience Story Sharing
00:02:08
Speaker
a podcast. We would love to, ahead of the episode, we would love to hear from you, our wonderful audience, if you have any questions or stories to share about your experiences or things you've heard about in publishing. we would love to hear them. we we We will keep everything anonymous, but we we want to give our two cents um and kind of chat about stuff and hear about things that's going on with with everyone and their experiences in publishing.
00:02:30
Speaker
But without further ado, let's get into this episode.
Indie Authors and Cover Artist Selection
00:02:34
Speaker
And the topic is covers artists and ah the aesthetic brand of authors.
00:02:42
Speaker
ah So at the top of the episode, let's just nip it in the bud right away. um If you're indie and self-publishing,
00:02:53
Speaker
ah if you're doing it yourself, it's entirely up to you. You have total control who you want to work with, you know, what you want to do for your cover. Easy. um And I think generally indie authors I've spoken to, a lot of the time they find their artists through Instagram or sort of online art forums and things like that. And it's very common for an indie author to stay with the same artist throughout many, many of their books.
00:03:19
Speaker
um i think that without going into depth on it kind of covers indie or self-publishing anything else that you guys think i should add before we jump onto traditional publishing no i don't think so yeah indies indies pretty simple like you can literally do whatever you want and that's your cover and you can do it however you want do it don yeah the freedom is must be nice as well like that is definitely a pro for indie publishing Must be nice.
Traditional Publishing Cover Design Process
00:03:45
Speaker
So let's talk about traditional publishing.
00:03:50
Speaker
ah You guys have both done this. You've both done this more than once. um Good starting point. So what at what point in the process after signing a book deal does the cover come into it or do you start talking about it before you've even signed? Oh, yeah.
00:04:06
Speaker
No, not in my experience. Yeah. Yeah. Comes later. Definitely. I'm kind of going it. Not as late as you think, though. You don't have to like finish editing the book. they'll just They'll start putting together a cover quite early. Yeah, that's true.
00:04:19
Speaker
Yeah. So i I signed my deal in March and I think i we did a cover brief in... June and I'm waiting to see a cover mock-up I think I might get one next week actually so that's August now so there you go that's timeline for you okay so is it a kind of thing where you're doing edits and things like that and then in the background the publisher is already kind of doing stuff to do with the cover Yeah, pretty much. I mean, and the your editor, my, okay, so for me, my editor put together like a cover brief and she basically looked at other titles that were around um that we wanted to compare our book to and just like what we were talking about before we start recording, like to just position it into the market to see where it fits. Yeah.
00:05:13
Speaker
And then so I think she's looking, she was looking at other dark academia stuff and what their covers are like. And then in her cover brief, she's picked out three that she likes.
00:05:23
Speaker
and and And she said, we we're thinking something along like this. We want to fit with the dark academia vibe. and But Naomi's book is different in that it's set in the art world. So we want to bring that out as well. And and so I think the brief itself looks at what is similar and what makes you different. And then you package that up to ah the art department in this case, and they go away and do a mock-up.
Author Involvement in Cover Design
00:05:49
Speaker
um I believe my editor has seen a mock-up, but she wouldn't share it with me. She's like, no, no, we'll wait till it's finished. And I'm like, I want to see it. common though like yeah and i don't know if it's so obviously that's the thing if you're doing indie publishing so my good friend stuart white who runs around a mentor he does um indie self-publishing and he gets really involved every stage so he has a great um cover designer and he will like give her a sort of markup with literally like drag and drop little figures like want the figure to be here and a vision of mars through the window here and And then she'll put it together and like make the vision work. But yeah, he absolutely like there's a sketch stage and he'll go back to her. Now, obviously a publisher is doing all those stages where they're coming back and saying, okay, what do we think of the positioning of this? What do we think of the font? And they go back and say, okay, could you move this around? Could we change the color? But yeah, I found,
00:06:43
Speaker
i've wi I've been lucky enough to work with four different publishers, two very small publishers and a medium publisher, now a larger publisher on covers. And they do all do it differently. And I don't know if it's per project, per person or per publisher, I must admit.
00:06:58
Speaker
Like, I don't know if, it depends how strong their vision is, I guess. and So I only saw a finished cover for My Love Life and the Apocalypse, for instance. And I think the same with Soulmates. My Love and the Apocalypse, I think we went through a couple of colorways because it's got a really block cover. and the but block color pardon ah cover But we basically just sort of finished. Whereas um Undying Tower at UCLan or Fox and Ink Books, as they now are, They gave me loads of input and they were showing me we've got all these different ideas and there were like 10 ideas on a PDF. and That was Amy Cooper there. It's um Michaela Alcano at Chicken House for Love, Life and Soulmates. And so it's just very different. And it might be the way the artists work as well, which would be quite interesting. So I'm not sure. But yeah, I definitely feel like I got, and I don't know if this is just because they're smaller, but the first Undying cover as well was with a much smaller publisher that's now sadly gone under called Agora. And they also gave me quite a lot of input.
00:07:57
Speaker
So I don't know if it's an input. It depends what you want to call input. You know, is it making a massive um Pinterest board and saying, if which I've done for pretty much all of them, yeah or is it being in every single stage, seeing the sketches? Sometimes I think at Chicken House, they said, we were worried about showing you the sketches because they weren't quite right yet. And we had a very particular vision for the brand.
00:08:17
Speaker
Because obviously this is where your brand really feeds in because it's the first thing people see. And books are all judged on my cover. End of discussion. Whereas I feel like because it had been a pre-published book and already had a bit of a brand at UCLan slash Fox and Inc., I feel like they were happier to work with me more and kind of wanted me to have that input.
00:08:37
Speaker
It was a little bit different. So I don't know if they do that with all their authors. I think they probably are quite involved. They can be like that as well because there's less of us, less publishing each year. um so I think it's such an annoying question to answer because it like massively depends. But often I have not been involved until the later stages of a book. Like I've seen a fairly finished cover.
00:08:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's fair. Yeah. In terms of initial
Using Pinterest for Cover Design Inspiration, is it effective?
00:09:04
Speaker
inputs, obviously you mentioned the the Pinterest board or like a mood board. Is that general is that generally the kind of what they ask for? Is that, oh, give us a mood board? Or is it more like ah they want like a written kind of description of what you're kind of um envisioning?
00:09:19
Speaker
Oh, no, I've always been asked for a Pinterest board. And then Agora, which I thought was quite good. And I think I mentioned it at Chicken House. And it was Kezia Lupo at the time, my editor. And she was like, oh, that's a cool idea. Yeah, send those across. We did two, which I had to make private because was so worried. We had two Pinterest boards and it was like covers I loathe and covers I love. And so they were like, anything you really hate. And of course, trying to stay within genre a little bit, you know, so any like dystopian covers I really hate and any love. And of course you're panicking because you don't want to offend anyone. Everyone's got different tastes. So I made the loan one private because I was so scared. I put a password on it. Like, Oh, scared. So I was going to see this. I think as soon as they were done, I like deleted that one because I was scared.
00:09:59
Speaker
That's, that's a really good idea as well. Like what i really don't like? Yeah. yeah What do you hate? Exactly. Cause I have no visual artistry at all. Like I'm terrible. I'm not saying I'm not a visual person. Like when I'm writing, I see it like a film in my head. Like I'm a very visual writer. But um in terms of like art and stuff, I've no idea. If I was self-published, I would need someone to really help me with the design because I would not have. Whereas when I was talking about Stuart, why earlier he has like a really clear image in his head of what he wants the cover to look like. I do not. I absolutely do not. When they it comes, I'm surprised.
00:10:32
Speaker
Like, wow, good job, everyone. This is great. Well, i guess as an indie publisher, when you're, you know, Stuart's doing it himself, he kind of needs to have that vision. I guess he i guess you could reach out, but he'd be reaching out to an artist to be like, what do you know, you you they now have to kind of read the book. Exactly. They have to kind of get their sense of it.
00:10:51
Speaker
and Yeah, which is tough. Whereas obviously if you've got a publishing team, so that's another thing that's interesting is um it's actually, well, I think anyway, unusual for a cover artist to read the book. They'll usually be directed as an artist to basically commission this piece of artwork for you and the publisher will give them a rough outline of the book, the themes they want to evoke, that kind of stuff on the brief, which you don't usually see. And that's another thing. They're always like, we didn't want to show you the brief because with the way we break down your magnificent magnum opus of a book might seem a little bit strategic and marketing-y, which it is, obviously. and Whereas I know that Michaela Alcano, who did ah my covers at Chicken House, she always reads the books.
00:11:31
Speaker
which is really interesting. I think that's quite a rare breed. is, yeah. i I would really struggle if I was an indie author, I think, because like you were saying, you know, you're never really sure what you're going to see. You don't really have like much in your head. And and if I was an indie author, you would have to like package something up and give it to an artist to
Cover Artists' Role in Personalizing Designs
00:11:50
Speaker
do. Yeah. And I think I would really struggle with that because... so and I think you're paying them for their time to design the cover. You're not paying them for their time to read your book. If they want to go and read your read your book, that's like an extracurricular activity, I would think. And think it'd be quite rare for someone to put that time in in order to get your cover
00:12:10
Speaker
So, right. And, but I mean, that's probably why Michaela Alcano wins awards. because she does yeah she is Yeah, she's an awardee. And it's not that my other covers where they haven't read it are still great.
00:12:21
Speaker
So you don't need to read the book. A hundred percent you don't need to. And if you get a good enough brief, obviously, I suppose, why would you need to? But to her, she really wants to feel connected to the, but that's just the way she works. So she'll do really great things like um she'll put really intricate details on the cover that weren't in the cover brief. So I remember um Echo in Mile of Life and the Apocalypse has a barcode on the back of his neck and she is very tiny, but she put it on the front cover. And I remember when she wrote back, she said, she look, I've put the barcode on because i have like a bit of like, she I was copied into emails with her. and It was very sweet because she read the book and she enjoyed it So she could put those little details on the one necessarily in the brief, which is very cool. Yeah.
00:13:03
Speaker
That's nice for a reader as well, because if you read a book and then you look and there's like these really little details that you spot and you're like, oh, that's the thing. And that's, that's, that's always fun. Yeah. Yeah. But the other thing I think is when a publisher is figuring out their brief to give to the artist, um I feel like often they're starting from a point of ah where is this going in the bookshop? What does the market yeah think this should look like?
00:13:28
Speaker
And then the it's for the artist to kind of expand on that and give it the individuality whilst being within genre. That makes sense. Yeah. Which is why there's a lot of books that look like the Thursday murder club. Well, yeah, this it. For that reason. but I think as well, though, the cover brief is pitched to the editorial team before it actually goes to the design department, if there's a design department. So the team decide, like, yes. and So i think I think your editor stands up and they present and say, I think it should look like this, isn't this and this. And we'll bring in these details and this book's about this. So we'll put that on it as well. What do you guys think? And they all say, yes, yes, yes. Or no, no, no. And you come up with a different brief and send it to the designer. i i don't think, um ah like like we were saying, I don't think that it particularly for an in-house team, i think the designer relies pretty heavily on the brief from yes and from from your editor. I don't think they really go away and read the book to to work out what it should be. Yeah.
Branding and Genre Influence on Covers
00:14:31
Speaker
Yeah. And I think there's like elements of, so when you look on the back of a book, you can often see the copyright. Well, you should be able to see the copyright of who did the cover. yeah So as an example, it might say, so on the back of my Undying Tower book, it does say, designed by Amy Cooper. So I know Amy Cooper does a lot of the UCLan, Fox and Inc. books, but also She's not necessarily in-house because it's such an unusual publisher in that it's at a university. So it's not exactly how it works. She's sort of freelance, but sort of not almost maybe, maybe on a retainer or something. Have to ask Amy. and
00:15:04
Speaker
But there's also, you know, she says that she got some images from say, Shutterstock. And she says when she got those. And then on some books, I noticed it says like artwork by this person designed by this person. So would be someone in-house has got some amazing artwork. Like I've not seen,
00:15:19
Speaker
the exact details for my book ah to the death, ah which is obviously with Hachette. But I do know that before they did, they they showed me the cover. They'd done the brief and they said, we found this great artist we really like. He's called Paul Blow. and and they showed me like the way his images are. And it was like really cool, like shaded dystopian pictures of like microphones, like breaking out of houses and stuff like really avant-garde.
00:15:46
Speaker
cool stuff and I just remember thinking like even though this wasn't obviously the cover and I could then look up this person's art a bit more it was exactly what I was thinking of so it'll be interesting to see whether he just did the artwork or he designed the cover I've seen him post about other covers and he said like this is the artwork that was used in this cover So it's always interesting, I think, how they like work together sometimes, because the problem is if you have an in-house team, I totally get that. If if you're like Penguin and you're publishing like a thousand books a year and you're only using an in-house team for all the artwork, they're going to look the same, aren't they?
00:16:17
Speaker
Which would be weird. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think that would work. So I guess they have to go out of house to find different vibes. Yeah. Is that not where your art director comes in though? I don't know.
00:16:28
Speaker
Like, cause every, every cover, every art department will have like a director. and so I, I think that does happen. I think they do look, you can tell sometimes like for a scholastic particularly, I think you can tell that's a scholastic cover.
00:16:43
Speaker
and and i Oh yeah, they definitely have like a a house brand and then there's your brand. And then as Jamie was saying, there is like a genre brand such as the crime thing with all of the, this is the problem, isn't it? There's like all these layers of brand and the the absolute skill of a designer and an artist, or if they're the same person, is to come up with something that as soon as you look at it, you know it's a penguin book or whatever it may be, let's say penguin. You know it's a crime book and also you know it looks different to any of the other crime books you know it's a new one and you want to pick it up. And I think that's such a hard balance. Yeah, it's a few things to take into consideration. Yeah. yeah
00:17:19
Speaker
as someone who doesn't read much crime, all crime books look the same to me. It's just... like a ah gray kind of object sometimes with blood on it and then there'll just be the the author's name massive in red in like yellow usually and then would be just the title which is smaller than the author's name one of the only genres where the author name is like way bigger than the title of the book and that's that's to with the brand right so like yeah you're really reading it not because you actually are not maybe as fussed at say the premise because you're not looking for something super high concept you're fussed about i love the way that this person tells mystery stories
00:17:55
Speaker
yeah i want to get that one that's another thing to take into consideration isn't it yeah absolutely whereas if you look at like non-fiction the the title is like the entire front cover yes because unless they're a really famous person doing the non-fiction so they're like a famous doctor that's been on tv then obviously their name would be bigger but if they just have a lot of ah experience in that particular area but they're not famous yeah exactly they'll be different Yeah, like the history of so and so and so and so and that would just be the whole front cover. Yeah.
Authors' Input Strategies for Cover Design
00:18:27
Speaker
um
00:18:28
Speaker
I thought I'd ask this to be interesting. If anyone listening is like, is that that kind of early stages of or that may be on submission um early stages of kind of a book signing, things like that.
00:18:40
Speaker
It seems like a daunting thing when the publisher will come to you or your editor will come to you and say, so do you want to make a mood board, which will be the the cover for your thing? And I would imagine that I would suddenly go, well, I have no idea idea what I want to do for this mood board or anything like that. Like, what am I supposed to like? What if I ruin it by doing a stupid mood board? What kind of stuff do you guys put on your mood boards?
00:19:03
Speaker
That's a good question. I do put, especially when i was at Chicken House and we were doing like heavy romance, sort of almost like rom-com vibes. um There was a lot of what do the characters look like in your mind? So I did put in a lot of elements from the book. So I would like try and think of, as well as doing these covers I loathe, covers I love. I would try and think I'm going to try and put together, you know, like 10 actors that i could see as this character.
00:19:30
Speaker
And I'll also put in, I put in their clothes. So like in a love life, Echo wears very specifically like nineties and noughties clothes from TV shows. He's been watching. So I put in like very specific types of clothing, which then did end up, I noticed on the cover, like I could see the image that Michaela had looked at and gone, oh like that, okay, and put it in, like her own spin on it on the cover. And then I also try and put in settings.
00:19:53
Speaker
So I try and find, like, I mean, mine are like ruined cities. Mine are really depressing. so and What is a broken thing? And I try and put that in, like to create like a a vibe.
00:20:04
Speaker
So I just kind of throw everything at it because I always think I'd rather there were more things that you could scroll through than there being like five images and they're like, well, okay, we don't really know what to do with this. There's not enough to go off and they're obviously not going to go off everything.
00:20:17
Speaker
So I think it's better. Sometimes I have started then collecting stuff in advance, as I'm say, writing the book. I know lot of people make Pinterest as they're writing the book. That's a good one to share. Like you can always curate it if you're worried like, oh my God, I got really embarrassed because my main, like my love interest is Pedro Pascal and I've got a thousand pictures Pedro on mine. Pinterest boards you can just delete the pedro pictures of Pedro before sending it um yeah a lot people have those like that's useful because it gives like a vibe of the book that you were using as your own vibe when you're writing it so I put that sort of stuff on yeah okay what about you Naomi for my most recent one um similarly I i just hunted through Pinterest so like my my my book is quite gothic so I picked like a load of like gothic architecture and some gargoyles and then It's also sort of set in the art world. So I picked a load of like um pictures that were to do with like lots of brushes, um lots of people painting, like kind of like moody kind of aesthetic ah vibes where people are painting these mysterious paintings. And then there was also one image that I found that I thought was really, really cool where it was like a black and white image and someone was holding a paintbrush and they had like, it was obviously paint on their hands. but because it looked it was black and white, it looked like blood. and And I thought that was quite representative of my book. So I guess it's just like hunting through and Instagram and and putting in, sorry, hunting through Pinterest, putting in prompts like Gothic architecture and art and painting, you know, and just sort of picking out the things that you think ah fit the vibe. And then I shoved them all together and made like a little aesthetic and sent that off to to my editor. and And also because the book is about,
00:22:05
Speaker
paint is about an artist and what he paints and i I did a degree in art history and so I went and looked at I had a very clear image in my mind of what kind of paintings this guy would be producing and what they would look like so I went and Googled some, some famous paintings that I really like, um, and sent them off to her as well. And was like, this is the kind of thing that he would be painting. I don't know if that's like what the cover would look like, but that's kind of what is going on in the book.
00:22:32
Speaker
Um, and she said she thought that they were really helpful and just like a nod to, and she packaged them up and sent them onto the designer who, um, just, so just, just to give him more information of what is actually in the book, you know? yeah.
00:22:47
Speaker
I guess, yeah, they can always ignore certain bits if you're giving too much information, but it's never going to hurt. Yeah, it might not end up on the cover, but it's just to show them what the book is about, I suppose, but because they're probably not going to read it.
00:23:00
Speaker
Yeah. And did you do something similar to what Melissa did with like, ah here's a bunch of covers I like, here's a bunch of covers I don't? um So I did for Chicken House. um I didn't for Renegade. and But Saida, my editor, she sent through her cover brief and she had bunch of covers in it that were other books. And she basically said to me, do you like all these? do you like this sort of vibe? And I was like, yeah, they're all fine. And so i think I would have said that at that point, no, I don't like any of these. Don't do this. Okay. Yeah, yeah,
00:23:32
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. um In terms of when you guys, you know, you guys have done this, at least this is your third time, Naomi and Melissa, this is your fourth?
Growing Confidence in Cover Design Involvement
00:23:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's fourth. I suppose technically fifth, if you include the first version of Undying Tower, which I did not design all my life. Have you guys, do you guys approach this process differently now? Like, are you more kind of bold and saying like, what you, what you kind of inserting yourself or, or to say like, you know, what to put in the mood board in a more kind of directional way, or is it kind of the same as when you did it the first time?
00:24:12
Speaker
Uh, no, cause I'm, so I've been spoiled. I'm spoiled brat. I've been spoiled. I've always had really good covers and you hear these arguments people have about bad covers or covers. It's not necessarily even bad actually. you I think that's unfair. Again, it's all taste is the problem. And they have a particular idea for your brand. You as a writer on your Word document have never even thought about brand. You may have thought about a cool cover, but let's be honest, you haven't thought about brand. And they're thinking, especially say if it's a multi-book deal,
00:24:42
Speaker
We want things to look a particular way. And I've got books out with other um publishers. And at this point in time, as we're recording, I have not revealed the cover for To the Death. But i do think it fits with my other covers. Now, I have no idea if they had a quick look at that for my brand I don't know, but they'll also want their own brand because it's a new publisher.
00:25:05
Speaker
So I think because I've always been spoiled, I just kind of am happy to go with the flow because it's not something I am somebody that kicks back more if something's gone wrong before, quote unquote, which is a bit of a dramatic way to put it. but If I've not been happy about something, but luckily I've always been very happy with the covers. The one thing I would say is that Fox and Ink, UCLan, they sent me so many different types of covers. When Amy was looking at initial designs, she put together some sort of cover roughs and there were so many different ones. And I think, I don't even think the cover we have now for A Dying Tower was on there. And I think I wasn't keen on most of those, but they were really good. I just got back and said, I don't think this is the vibe yet. Have you thought about using the snakes? The snake's a big motif in the book. And I think there was no real any snakes on any of the covers. It must have been like 10, 15 different ones, completely different. All of them. So, so different.
00:25:59
Speaker
and So yeah, actually she went away and was like, yeah, got it. And she came back and it was like, boom, I've got this. And I always i almost wonder, I can try to remember, did I send her a cover brief? Maybe I didn't because the book had already been out before. So we didn't do whole lot of editing and stuff. So that the timeline was a bit different. Whereas as soon as I spoke to Amy, yeah, she nailed it. So it was fine.
00:26:17
Speaker
So I think because I've been spoiled, I don't do it any differently than... but also I'm not a very visual person and I'm just so thrilled to have a team that do that bit. I know. So perhaps I'm not the best person to ask, but have you changed at all, Naomi?
00:26:31
Speaker
um don't think so. i I will say that I learned a lot my Every Line of You US cover.
00:26:42
Speaker
And because so that was Scholastic in the US and um this book came out like four years ago there now and we haven't spoken since. So I'm pretty sure it's OK to say all this. um i I really don't like that cover.
00:26:58
Speaker
um And I was involved. Actually, I saw an early mock up that they did and I thought the mock up was very cool. And then when I got the final thing through, i was like, what the hell happened? This is like really far removed from the mock-up you guys sent me. um And and i remember I got an email from the editor at the time. and i basically said like, oh, I'm really not sure about this. And I got an email going like, oh, well it it was quite like a, and it it wasn't like a defensive email, but it was kind of like, oh, we're going in this direction. this is the cover. Um, so it was just kind of like, I didn't really have much of a choice and I just kind of felt like, okay, well it's in the U S it's not like I'm going to be signing many of them anyway, because they're not going to be on my local water zone shelf. So that's fine. So I just kind of made my peace with it.
00:27:47
Speaker
So in terms of that, I just kind of learned that yes, if if that happens again with renegade and that they I don't think they will but like because because my editor's like the cover brief she sent me was like yes yes yes so I'm pretty confident that's going to be a good cover but like um if if I have something that I don't I think ever presented with something that I don't like in this country um I think I probably having learned with that experience of with scholastic us I think I would probably be like um no we're doing something about this but It's just whether, because you're going to have to go in a bookshop, you're going to have to hold it, you're going to have to photograph it and you're going to have to talk about it. It's going to haunt you for a long, long time. And if you're not happy if you're not happy with it, then um i think you need to really be speaking up within the within the process. so and yeah, I think I have learned...
00:28:45
Speaker
ah to two what to do. But at the same time, I didn't really fight it very hard because it wasn't in this country. So yeah, hit your bows in it yeah that's it. So I guess like, we'll see. Yeah.
00:28:59
Speaker
Yeah. And that I mean, realistically, I think I've spoken to enough authors who will say, oh yeah, I'm so lucky. I love both my covers talking about UK and US, s which is usually, you know, the the most common two to have for someone from this country.
00:29:15
Speaker
ah They'll say, oh yeah, i love both my covers. I've been so lucky. But I think realistically, they're always, you're always going to prefer one to the other because they're often very different. The UK market and the US market do very different covers a lot of the time. And I feel like realistically, you're always going to prefer one to the other. Yeah.
00:29:36
Speaker
And I think that's so interesting because You know, like it's what what do they always say about the UK and the US separated by a common language? Like, why is it so it's so strange? It's so different because so I've had ah Soulmates um has sold to Germany and France and Apocalypse has sold to Turkey.
00:29:54
Speaker
And then in Turkey, it came out last year and Soulmates coming out in Germany in September of 2025 and they used the same cover they kept the same cover for both of those books in those territories one yeah the uk cover so the uk cover was used in turkey and they just obviously changed it to um turkish language font and then in germany which is quite common in a lot of different european countries they've kept even the english title and So it looks pretty much exactly the same. They've moved my name and made it smaller at the top.
00:30:29
Speaker
I assume that's a stylistic thing for Germany. No idea. and they've put the publisher quite prominently on the bottom. but Apart from that, it you wouldn't know. Like Man on a Galloping Horse, you wouldn't even know it's a different cover. um And I do think that's quite interesting that they decided not to change them. Again, like you said, Naomi, like Michaela is an award-winning artist. They're very good covers. yeah i don't problem with it. The other interesting thing was I had no idea they were using the same cover until, well, the Turkish one until it came out.
00:30:54
Speaker
the Because you lose track of these things and it's through like an intermediary that you're finding out. And obviously there's a language barrier. And then suddenly I'm being tagged in Instagram and there it is. And I'm looking at it. And for a minute, because it's a completely different alphabet, I was really late at night. it was like 11 p.m. i was tagged in this post and it was my Turkish book in someone's hands in Turkey. And I looked and I looked at the like alphabet and i thought I thought, I was like, is this an AI version of my cover?
00:31:19
Speaker
Why has someone tagged me in this? Because the writing looks wrong in my head. No, the writing is not wrong. It is Turkish. Like, is it Cyrillic there? And was like, oh, okay, that's completely different. Whereas with um the German publisher, they're quite big on um TikTok social media and they've been posting a bit about it. And they also have sent me loads and loads stuff along the way. They've been quite in contact. Again, Germany, obviously... the very good English language team so they can chat to me about it and my translator actually even lives in the UK she's German but she lives in the UK so um I've been able to connect with them a lot more anyway so I've known for ages it's going to be the same cover I've have no idea what's going to happen in France because that's not till next year so yeah we haven't had any conversation about it I might hear absolutely nothing and that's just what happens
00:32:03
Speaker
Right. Because I know Naomi's had loads of different for, I would say, ah for Henry. And didn't they call it I Henry in some countries? Some of them did. well I loved that they kept that. Yeah. Yo Henry. Yeah. But it's funny the way different territories take... and the direction, art-wise, because, so in the UK and the US, s they were like, no, no, this isn't a sci-fi book. no No, no, no, no, no. This is a thriller, okay? We're switching this as a thriller. Whereas in Europe, they were like, oh, this is sci-fi. This is cool. And like, I got um i got a really techie cover ah for yeah check for Czech Republic. um I got a really techie cover for Germany and ah Spain. And they just...
00:32:46
Speaker
They really embrace the sort sci-fi side of it and the AI element of the book. And it's fascinating actually to see where they were going position it in the markets. So, um yeah, it's not always the same ah throughout. But, I mean, I would imagine, like, for your for your cover, and but the ones that Michaela Arcano did, she – I wonder if she gets royal ah like ah royalties or like payment or some kind with it being in other territories because surely they must buy it off her.
00:33:17
Speaker
um and yeah It's a good question. I'm not sure. She is interestingly, on the German listing, I noticed that she is listed it's like and i and I think she is listed on the Turkish one but in Germany it's very prominent that they'll say pretty much when they list us underneath the first person often that pops up is Maria Schmidt who is a translator yeah then it'll be me as the author and then Michaela and we get equal billing I think there's even a am on the one in Germany I think there's Flaps Very exciting. And I think on there, there's like little pictures of us and we have like equal billing on the thing. So I think it's quite interesting how differently they do it. And it could just be that they, you know, less let's be honest, for better or worse reasons, English language in publishing is usually the dominant part of the field and is being translated into lots of languages. yeah We very rarely are patient enough to translate stuff into English. We're quite lazy like that. But yes um yeah, I think like, cause English things go into other languages a lot. They've obviously come up with an entire system for that, for handling that. So I assume, I would hope that she's, it's licensed. I don't have the licensing works. Yeah. Like territory wise. Cause that happened with. It must be to do with whatever the contract was with the publisher initially for the author. might be that they just bought the outright, the rights to the cover. Yeah. It's working out. So yeah, you'd obviously, you'd have to ask. Michaela, but i do know that she certainly, she knows about this cover being used in Germany and has not launched a massive legal campaign. so yeah game yeah yeah
00:34:49
Speaker
um We kind of skipped over a little bit, but I did just want to mention that, especially we're talking about every line of you the US cover, which wasn't your favorite, Naomi, but it's, as far as I'm aware, when it comes to contracts in traditional publishing, it's,
00:35:05
Speaker
uh the author will often have final say on the writing and like you can kind of really pick your battles there and and and put your foot down and bit like no we're keeping this but i believe most contracts will give the publisher final say on the cover and the title is that um is that your experience um so I never really fought it that hard.
Negotiating Cover Design Influence with Publishers
00:35:29
Speaker
Um, but when I expressed my feelings, like, are we sure about this? um I got back that kind of like, this is the direction it's going in. It seemed pretty Um, and I didn't really take it beyond that. and I have had friends, um, who did not like their cover in, in the UK um,
00:35:55
Speaker
I think you are right in that the, um, the publisher is like, no, no, this is it. Um, and it happened to, to one author I know where they had to get their agent involved and their agent was like, yeah, guys, come on, this sucks. Um,
00:36:10
Speaker
and the publisher still didn't do anything about it so i think it probably depends on your publisher um and how because it because a lot of staff time has gone into generating this cover right and um the team has all agreed it they've all decided yes this is what we want it to look like this is how we think it's going to do great in the market looking like this and so to try and convince it's it's not just your editor it's like that entire team um that you've got to convince no this isn't working this won't do well and it just because your personal taste um you know you don't like it does not mean that other people won't um i know people who aren't mega happy with their covers and other people and like ah readers have come up to them and gone like oh i love your cover it's so great you know and so i think sometimes there's like an element of trust uh you have to put into the team um that actually they do know what they're doing Yeah, they're not trying to sabotage your book. That be crazy. like they're not They're not here to just ruin your life. And like I think ah it's really difficult when you say like final say.
00:37:16
Speaker
The negotiations do not stop after you decide, we're going to pay you, Naomi Gibson, a million dollars for your book. And you can have 50% royalties. Wow. What an incredible deal you would get. That is not where the negotiations end. Like it carries on the whole time. There's negotiations and edits and there's negotiations around covers. And if you're very unsure, I know people have had conversations. I've always been quite lucky, mostly because I think I just don't know what i want until it's there. And then they've known, and they've had this vision. And it's not fair to just completely bulldoze them because you're the author, because they do care about the book. And as Naomi says, they have thought about it and they sell books. They know what sells. So often what I've heard when people have been struggling is there's a conversation between... you know age to be fair an author might if they panic seeing that email go straight to the agent have you seen this cover that you've been put it into I hate it and then maybe the agent might talk to them understand why they've picked that then come back and calm them down a bit like talk them down like actually there's some good reasons they've picked this and then maybe they can talk together and I know people that have maybe like changed a bit of the font or maybe colorway on the front cover that kind of thing So it's important, like you're saying, were saying earlier, like pick your battles. And also these people aren't here to harm you.
00:38:32
Speaker
Like they are trying to help your book sell. So I think sometimes you can be really caught up in a very particular vision, which again is what's so great about self-publishing is that you don't need to be beholden to anyone. It's your vision. Like you do what you want. Yeah, which is great. I'm not saying the publisher's always right just because they sell loads books. Obviously, sometimes there's some stuff you should push back on, but you've got to work out what they are. And I think often in these things, it's not necessarily... There's like a final say and they put their foot down, but more that there's a compromise come to where at least you feel like you've had some input.
00:39:00
Speaker
Yeah. So that's a really good point. So, um, one of the things that really disliked about the Scholastic US cover was the fact that, um, they gave me this cover with a girl on the front and she had blonde hair and I was like, okay, this is so minor. but actually one of the main points of my book and the way my character feels is that she has this golden sunshine younger brother with blonde hair and blue eyes and she specifically does not she's like his total opposite she has dark hair dark eyes and she feels like he is the golden child and i was like you're giving me a cover with a girl blonde hair on it and I was like
00:39:31
Speaker
I can just tell that you, you haven't read it. yeah i was like, come on. And so I said like, um yeah so I didn't say like, I hate this cover. I think I was just kind of like, um are we sure about this direction? and also the fact that she does not have the correct color hair. Like you're,
00:39:49
Speaker
that's quite important actually to the story and the way she feels and the way she runs off and does all this bad stuff. And, and they were like, Oh, okay, fine. Yeah, we will change that. And so I got through this cover with, they just like digitally altered her hair. So it's a really obviously blonde change to brown in Photoshop. And I was like, whatever. so I mean, they made that so yeah, there was a kind of a compromise and they did take that on board, but the the overall aesthetic of, of the design did not change. um But yeah.
00:40:17
Speaker
Yeah, but that was worth fighting for. I feel like that was worth you pushing for. think so I didn't want to be like one of those authors like, oh, her hair's not the right colour. But was like, it's actually like a point that she doesn't have blonde hair. Yeah. It's sort of core to a lot of her character decisions and things. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, motivations. Okay. um the I have one more thing to talk about. But first, I wanted to ask, Melissa, did you say your cover has not been revealed yet?
00:40:46
Speaker
Uh, yeah, it's being revealed. So what what am I looking at on Amazon right now? So how it works is, probably by the time this comes out, it'll be revealed. So we can talk about this. It's interesting. So essentially how any bookshop works, like you can go on a independent bookshop and you can search up a book. So my mom did it for Shakespeare and co in Paris. I went to Paris recently and my mom out of interest looked up my books in Shakespeare and co. It doesn't mean Shakespeare and co is stocking my book.
00:41:18
Speaker
But they do they are plugged into the central system, the nervous system that provides all the books to all the different types of bookshops. And they can order my book directly online or you can order it to pick up in, say, Shakespeare and Co., which is really cool.
00:41:32
Speaker
ah But really all they're using is every publisher has like this central system. When I was self-publishing a little bit and I used Amazon and IngramSpark for most of my delivery system, I learned a bit how this works.
00:41:44
Speaker
you have um a sheet of advanced information and AI sheet that you basically fill in and all bookshops pull from the sheet and it includes the cover. So um ah i was told on this occasion, earlier you get a cover up, the better for the algorithm. This magical God called the algorithm that seems to exist everywhere. I don't even understand if any of this is even working, but the algorithm like rules our lives.
00:42:12
Speaker
um So yeah, you can usually find covers before they are revealed. and You can often find, you know, I think people who are really obsessed with certain authors, obviously they're going to try and keep that as quiet as possible. I've seen before on Goodreads, people have been like, we need to add this because like this book has come up on like a small Goodreads thread, which is obviously pulled from an an advanced information sheet. saying that this author has an untitled book coming out in 2025 because they have to sort of feed that information in so early and it takes so long to leak everywhere else.
00:42:43
Speaker
So interestingly, at the time of recording, my cover is available on some websites, but not other websites. So like it depends which ones, how often they pull the information. um So that it has been uploaded. The other thing you want to, which is really hard to match up because of this, this is all like the boring background stuff that you don't even think about and that you're not in charge of, is that when you do the cover reveal and you say, hey, pre-order the book, look at the pretty cover, that's all you need. You don't need to know what it's about. Just look at the cover. You want to give them a link that sends them to the page with the pretty cover. So you want everything to be matching
00:43:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:25
Speaker
the page and it's no singular person it's no one's fault it's just the way that we sell But it's very complicated and there's a lot of like moving parts. So yes, you can often find, if you're interested in someone's cover or someone's type book title or something, and you really love that person and you've followed them, say, on Amazon, where you can follow authors, often it'll pop up and you can actually find it early. It's not as secretive. It's secret and you have to keep everything till midnight. I mean, flipping out, books come out early. Like I've got a friend who's publishing in August and her books were popping up in in July. yeah No problem because they were already distributing them to get them in place because everything takes so long. Whereas obviously, I think I remember the last midnight thing I saw was for um The Testaments, which is the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, and which came out a couple of years ago, Margaret Atwood. Because she's Margaret Atwood. And it was such a big thing. It was proper midnight release. That's why you get those. They have to keep them embargoed, it's called. They can't tell you anything about it. Like even in the bookshop, I remember there like people could social media age, like booksellers going into Waterstones and seeing the giant box and it's like, dude. not open until 11 59 like you can't open this and they couldn't even touch the books and then you know there's people that oh it's come out early and like in america i've seen like oh in target where they sell books uh but they're not really like bothered about these kinds of rules that they come out early so there's all this stuff about it coming out early it's actually not a big deal if you're a first-time author and loads stuff come out early whether it be the books themselves or whether it be the cover or anything it's fine like the majority of people won't look at that stuff
00:45:03
Speaker
just as book nerds look at it. Don't worry too much. Most people will genuinely be like, oh, wow, what a great cover. I think I've had loads of my friends say like, oh, I'm excited to see the cover. And I'm thinking, no, I mean, that's great. but I'll take it. But yes, its yeah it doesn't really matter too much. I don't think I did panic about it the first couple of times. though It feels like everything should match up perfectly. it It doesn't matter.
00:45:24
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Right. That's good to know. And then on from that, the final thing I wanted to talk about was, uh, cover reveals
Cover Reveal Strategies and Engagement
00:45:33
Speaker
actually. yeah um so when it comes to it, what's like, what happens with the cover reveal? What, what, what can people expect? Like, what do you need to do as an author on on your side of things? And does it vary from book to publisher to, to whatever?
00:45:49
Speaker
probably does vary yeah sure and i think it probably varies if you're a lead title or not yes and oh yeah if you're a lead title they might ask an influencer or somebody or a I don't know, like an organisation like Fair Relief or someone to do a cover reveal for you and so that you get lots of attention.
00:46:12
Speaker
Waterstones, like a bookseller sometimes. If they really want to put money into you, they might do it in the bookseller and they might pay for a front cover or something yeah on the magazine. and so it it really depends ah where where you sit yourself in their internal workings but right generally they'll probably do it online themselves um because most publishers have quite a good decent social media following so and they'll probably do it themselves um yeah what do you think melvin
00:46:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that a lot of book influencers follow publishers and will quite happily... Like, if I'm going through and stories, Instagram stories, quite often they've shared covers.
00:46:57
Speaker
So people go and share a cover that they like anyway. And if it's somewhere obvious, like, of all book influencers are following, like, every publisher, especially publishers of books they like. So that that's quite easy for them. um I did have...
00:47:10
Speaker
trying think which one now was it? Love Life or Soulmates. One of them, Chicken House. We did organize um for several different people across different social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, X or whatever, bloody calling at the minute, and to reveal it at a certain time. and So they were all supposed to go live at a certain time. I remember they gave me the list of all the usernames I could go and have a look. A couple of people were a bit later because various things popped up in the day, but also it just meant it was across lots of different platforms. It doesn't all have to be at the same time, as you say, if you're not like a lead title, that everyone's holding bated breath, waiting to see what it's like. Sometimes it's fine to just have people across a whole day. So that's always nice. and Often, if you have to reveal it yourself, which I'm making sound really dramatic because a lot of people reveal their own covers, what you want to do is have what I think is called like a street team, which feels weird say online. But basically, if you've got like... um
00:48:03
Speaker
like ah a debut group or whatever, like 50 people, you just go in there, share the links to stuff and say, please, please, can you share? Share for share. um I will share yours if you share mine. um And you usually get quite a few shares from that. And that's quite useful when you have a yeah cover reveal. and Sometimes you might get like a little trailer. They're quite cool. Or they like use all different elements make like a pretty trailer. I've made my own book trailers before for cover reveals. I did that for...
00:48:30
Speaker
Undoing Tower, um i made a, like in Canva. So I have like access to the work Canva. So I abuse it horribly. And I made like a book cover of it. I've done that a few times. I've quite enjoyed doing that. know sometimes with big five publishers, or it might not just be big five publishers, but um i had a friend, and I think they were also with Hachette, and they ah politely asked not to make their own um like little video just because they wanted all of the branding to look exactly the same. which I totally get you've got an entire branding team trade that actually trading using Canva, unlike me, who's just like hacking at it with a saw. Then obviously they want it to look really nice. So I totally get that if they ask you not to share it like that. So it'd be interesting to see what we do with this one. I'm not quite sure exactly what we're doing yet, but they have a plan.
00:49:18
Speaker
But it gets totally different every time. Right. But the most, you know, what you what you can expect unless you're a lead, unless you're, you know, obviously a very established author or it's been this kind of spectacular level deal, most likely it's going to be a sort of group synchronized social media rollout. Yeah, social media is is the one. I have seen, oh the odd one at YALC. So YALC has now become such a and I really think it's such a, m in a way, very cult, very niche type of fan at YALC. I think it's the sort of fan that is so obsessed with books, really needs to have them early, ah will shout about them a lot on their social media presence, et cetera. And they're very much fantasy. There's some adult fantasies now creeping into YALC. And I have seen at YALC, some of the stalls who do all sorts of games and stuff throughout the day they'll have on their board oh and at 12 we're going to do the cover reveal for Naomi Gibson's book and they pull off like a little cloth it's like a little even yeah like an a1 poster board I've seen that for anyone listening who doesn't know what Yalke is that's the YA literary convention yeah which is what runs at the same time as comic-con I think Yeah, yeah. so it used to be July, but now it's November, but it's still part of Comic-Con.
00:50:32
Speaker
So yeah, it's it's part of a a a larger kind of massive convention. So there's a lot of footfall, a lot of people there. And it it does feel like it's growing every year. Yes, it is. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I think the people who are there are just, when I say like that cult following, they are so excited, the people who there. Like yeah if you have a giveaway for a proof or revealing a cover or something, you'll have like a crowd of 50 to 100 people all taking pictures on their phone and posting it immediately to their Instagram. That's which is great yeah so and it sounds not very many you're thinking like oh just 100 people first of all it's so important to like thank the people who care that much that they come to all of those events etc and it's great that they get the first dibs on this thing because ha ha it's not online it's right here and I bought ticket and I was there and also you know for every 100 people another 100 people might share so these things start small and then get bigger so I've seen that before That yeah that that'll be a cool way to ah that would probably be like the most fun and interactive way to reveal it, going to something like YALC. Yeah.
00:51:28
Speaker
And be like, hey, here it is. And lots people are like, ooh, cool. And then we'll need to talk to you about it and stuff. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. Chicken House did something like that for me at YALC. They had all the different colorways for Game of Girls. So it had like pink and blue, ah pink and yellow, green and blue or whatever. And they got people to vote for the ones that I voted.
00:51:46
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think it was, they knew which one they were going to go with anyway, but it's just like, made people interact with it. Yeah. I had that with the German publisher for the um sprayed edge. They had people vote what the sprayed edge would say.
00:52:00
Speaker
There are people like debating and they did like a different emoji for each vote. And it was like, and is it like love is love a choice or love is a choice? And it like you know brought a little bit of debate. then you get the algorithm.
00:52:13
Speaker
Then you get some people like commenting, which pushes up the algorithm. Yeah, interaction. Exactly interaction. So it was like, like with a purple or a yellow heart for this. Well, that's more interaction. So, you know, they also use your cover reveal as a big boost. I've been told before by my agent and by lots of other people, to be fair, that um often it is hard, even though publishers literally know all about all this. It can be quite hard safe sell foreign rights until you have a cover.
00:52:39
Speaker
Like once you have a cover and it feels real and it can be quite attractive to. So, for instance, and you might time your cover reveal for around YALC if that's good timing for when your book's coming out. But you might time it around a book fair.
00:52:51
Speaker
and that would be a good idea because then it's getting a little bit of buzz about your book right before the book fair so people might be googling it looking up it might come up in their timeline plus there's a nice shiny cover for the fair itself where they're like oh I've not seen this before so yeah they can use it for other things as well it's not I think you get so wrapped up as a when you're first writing I got really wrapped up about the cover and then whilst so it's really important I've been banging on about how important it's the whole time actually the inside of the book is obviously more important Yeah, course. Obviously, and actually the cover, I can kind of let go a little bit more now. But and yeah, I do think it's useful to be used for other types of promotion. It is incredibly difficult making TikToks and Instagram about your book. Naomi, you'll know this. Before you have a cover, it's just your face on every, and I'm like scrolling through my TikTok, like this is actually embarrassing. Like who is this narcissistic weirdo who's just posted their face on every single video? But it's because I don't have anything else to hang the book off yet. Same. You know, i have a holding cover, but that's it.
00:53:46
Speaker
So funny you should say because I've been posting so my book is my book cover at the moment is just white with a Man Muse Monster final cover to come soon. And I've been posting that and someone actually messaged me the other day and said this is the cover to me. It'll be so weird when you actually have a cover. And I was like, oh dear. Maybe I've been plugging this a bit too much. Whoops. Okay. No such thing. No such thing. That's the problem though. You're like plugging this so much and then suddenly you've got a cover. And I know so many people I know.
00:54:14
Speaker
So the cover does matter. Number of times I've been plugging, plugging something for pre-orders or whatever it may be. And then the cover is revealed and I start making really the exact same content. And people who followed me for ages go, oh, well, you've got a book coming out.
00:54:26
Speaker
I'm like, are you freaking kidding We've been talking about this for months. But now the cover's there. It catches their eye more when they're scrolling and it makes a difference for it. Yeah, that was that that was my last question. It was about cover reveals. I i didn't have anything else that that came up to me. Was there anything else that you guys think is important for people to know about covers and and cover art and things in the world of being an author and publishing?
00:54:51
Speaker
If you don't like it, get your agent involved. Yes. um But that doesn't necessarily mean that it will change. Exactly. And it also doesn't necessarily mean that it's, it'll, it will do badly. I think readers yeah might respond differently to it than you. So just be aware of that.
00:55:10
Speaker
Yes. And the publishers, the team from the publisher are like, we've like we've mentioned, they are focused on the marketing side of things when they come to the design. If they think it's a good design, it's because they think it's going to fit well in the bookshop, then that it's going to yeah get people to pick it up off the shelf.
00:55:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. And also don't worry when you talk to, we haven't talked about this all, but ah I have friends and family when I told them Michaela Arcana was doing my cover and I looked up her other covers and she has such a broad spectrum of stuff she does. And she does a lot of ah fancy and like Greek myth retelling with the most beautiful ornate like covers with like floral things coming in and they weave into like a gate and it's amazing. Yeah. And they were like oh, yes, I really loved the cover for, you know, insert Greek retelling. She did a lot Greek retellings but because she's very good at them. And when they actually saw my cover, which is a cartoony, fits really well with the genre. It's cartoony. It's block colour. It shows the two main characters. Both books are like this. And I could tell some of them were like, oh, this isn't like as pretty as I thought it would be. They didn't say
00:56:19
Speaker
I was expecting something stunning that you would get in like a fairy loot box. And it's like, well, that wouldn't fit the genre. No. i wouldn't fit And I think a lot of them were expecting like, oh, you've written a book. Oh, it's going to be amazing. And I bet it's going to have this cover. My favorite covers are these beautiful like gold foil covers. And maybe your book is not a gold foil cover. ah They don't worry too much about that because they know what they're doing. And also, I think it just takes a while to get used to. When I first got my covers, they just didn't look real. They look like mock-ups. I didn't really get, even when i was holding the book in my hand, like the first time I got sent it before came out, it doesn't feel quite real. Whereas now they're just so obviously my covers.
00:56:55
Speaker
And I would always accept that cover and that even title, everything. Like it's so obviously mine. So yeah, don't worry too much about You're like your initial thoughts, also your friends and family, non-publishing type initial thoughts. It's fine. It'll all be fine.
00:57:08
Speaker
It'll all work out in the end. fine Okay, great. Let's round it off. has anyone been watching anything new, reading anything new, any recommendations to share? ah Well, we are still on our physical media binge. So I actually went into HMV. They still exist. Who knew? Wait, do they?
00:57:27
Speaker
Yeah. And do you know what? I actually had the best time just walking around DVDs and looking at titles and stuff. It was so much fun. And so we've we've never had Apple TV. We've always only ever had Netflix or Amazon Prime. But we've been there sort of at the start of the year and we've just been on like discs since then and and we found this tv show called c in hmb and it's got um jason mamora and we we watched that and i was like um it's it's cut so there's a lot of plot holes i think in it and um i have to continually remind myself that these people are blind even when they're doing jujitsu and stuff and um like the way that they walk through a forest i'm like i'm sorry but you would have fallen off a cliff um so there's like so many plot holes but um i'm really actually enjoying that um it's i don't know it's really well made it's really highly produced and i just think it's ticking a lot of boxes for me in that respect so there you go what do you see
00:58:28
Speaker
Yeah. As someone who does have Apple, I can tell you that they, everything is very highly budgeted in terms of production value stuff. yeah Also that Jason Momoa has a new series called chief where he's a war chief again. Yeah. He looks like the same character, just, just not blind. like yeah you um Melissa, how about you?
00:58:53
Speaker
Anything new? Any new stories? ah Yeah. So I, fat right. So two things are wildly opposites. And this is like a little inkling into how stupid my taste in anything is. And you should never listen to me. So I finished Andor.
00:59:08
Speaker
Let's go. finally finished it. Because as you said, it's in like little trilogies. So we kind of would pause after every trilogy. That was good. It was sad, but also like, I don't feel like it's spoilsing as sad just that bit because you've if you've seen like the Rogue One's been out for a long time. Rogue One has been out for a long time and it's just a prequel. So we knew how it's going to end. and so that was good. And then obviously Whiplash swung straight into the summer I turned pretty.
00:59:34
Speaker
nice in i go and then also my life the water boys has come out what is there anything else even on tv um yes so they're basically both the same show a young girl is choosing between two hot brothers which one will she choose i guess the stakes would not be higher uh they're literally the exact same show like they're the same apart from one family is kind of richer than the other it's not really any different Summer I Turn Pretty, the entire internet has suddenly become obsessed with it and I'm pleased that I was here first. I'm like, yes. Finally, it has come into its own. It is absolutely wild. um And then yes, the my life with the Walter boys will tide me over when it finishes in. Still three more episodes and I'm very scared in Summer I Turn Pretty because someone reliably informed me that the last episode that we watched ends four pages before the end of the book, but we have three more hours and I just want peace. I'm Teen Park. I just want peace. with team comrade. That's all I want in life. And yet there are three more episodes and there must be conflict.
01:00:31
Speaker
And I am scared. So I can't believe I'm getting scared. The summer I, a 34 year old woman, became obsessed with which hot rich boy a young girl will choose. The stakes could not be higher. Yeah, I'm really enjoying it. It's great.
01:00:45
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Well, speaking of things that the internet is losing its mind over, I recently watched K-pop demon hunters, sweet a full range in what we've all been watching recently.
01:00:58
Speaker
I liked it. I thought in the, the, it's mainly about the music. The music is the main thing. The other stuff's cool, but the music is doing all the heavy lifting. I think in that, uh, it's definitely a vibe.
01:01:08
Speaker
Yes. The art's lovely, like the art style. yeah nice art style and then some bangers if you like k-pop um yeah and then i'm reading still working my way through the sort of third trilogy of the jarabar crombie's first law sequence and um oh what was i gonna say yeah naimi aren't you about to start rebecca kwang's new book I am yes I had it i it arrived like two days ago and I've got it lined up for my holiday yeah okay i don't know is it is it catabasis or is it and might be is there a different pronunciation for it oh so I was gonna ask you because I've been pronouncing it carter basis but I don't know so I'm like all short vowels very stopper of me catabasis there you go three ways that sounds that sounds better
01:01:58
Speaker
say That makes, I feel like that sounds like more sensible to me. I think I saw her talking about how to pronounce it somewhere, but I forgot she find it. I think she basically said she doesn't mind how anyone pronounces it because she she's not entirely sure how to pronounce it. Yeah, that happens to me all the time, Rebecca, with Kindred Souls. I've got a book I'm editing at the minute and I keep getting asked. And this character, Seren? soren sorry and i'm like sure yeah i get that whenever you talk to i read a lot of fantasies when i speak to someone else who also has read the fantasy book and the amount of times where if we've both just read it we'll both we'll say a name and they'll be like oh that's how you're pronouncing that name that's interesting intonation all over the place yep okay great well that's what we've got for this week i'm looking forward to hearing about catabasis next week uh or whenever we get around to that i'm excited for ketosis let's find out what you thought ketosis the sequel
01:03:01
Speaker
ah Okay, awesome. ah Like I said at the start, if you guys have any stories or any like questions or stuff about publishing that you want us to give our two cents on, we would love to hear from you. Send us. we All our DMs are open, I think, on various different platforms. yeah Yeah.
01:03:18
Speaker
We'll see you next time.
01:03:22
Speaker
Thanks for putting up with our nonsense for another episode. To stay tuned to everything we're up to, you can follow the podcast on all socials at The Chosen Tropes. Follow Melissa at Meliva, Naomi at Naomi G. Writes, and Jamie at Jamie X. Greenwood.
01:03:35
Speaker
Don't forget to check out Naomi and Melissa's books, as well as the Right and Wrong podcast. Thanks again, and we'll see you on the next trope.