It’s that time of year again. Time to make a cover for a new book.
The Adventures of Jake Long, in: Softbone.
I’m starting with what’s in it for you, the reader. More important, what’s not in it for you. I’m then going over my ideas for the design. I’m ending with the logistics and call to action. If you know anyone who is into the genre, have them subscribe for free to get updates.
As always, there’s a great contemporary fictional story of a man torn between keeping a promise he secretly made to his mother to never be his father, only to become his father; or to break the promise and enjoy his adult life without covert contracts.
It’s called the Dog Walker and it’s awesome
What it’s not. What good stories are.
It’s a cyberpunk dystopic story with a Red Pilled premise: What happens when you put multiple methods of family creation (divorced dad, single guy, single mom, incel wanting a harem) into peak technological dystopia, and give them a method to use tech to reclaim their biological imperatives.
I have noticed that every good story takes a concept, moral message, or premise, and juxtaposes it with a genre.
The Neverending Story is a movie about a kid learning to grieve after losing his mom, juxtaposed in a apocalyptic fairy tale
Die Hard is the story about a flawed workaholic cop who wants to rekindle his marriage, juxtaposed in a heist movie based on the Towering Inferno
The Goonies is about a group of kids who want to have one last adventure before they lose their homes, juxtaposed in a quest to find pirate treasure.
Vonnegut had it right, there are only 6 different stories. But in the same way we only have 5 different flavors (salt, sugar, savory, bitter, sour) the different textures, smells, and combinations give us an infinite amount of food.
So I love the genre, but I don’t like my options. If you’ve wanted different, this is going to be a fun couple months for us all.
I like Cyberpunk, gut not what I see out there. I’ve been through Gibson. I’ve seen some of the other stuff out there. It’s a whole lot of a genre that I had never heard of and immediately disliked: Literary RPG.
Yeah, it’s like a letsplay for DND.
Then the only other one I could find was one from another Susbtack author, who wanted a Lovecraftian horror with strong female leads in a futuristic city.
I wish all of them well, but I don’t want any of this.
And I’m picking the popular examples. I’ve been reading samples like a mad man. I’ve gone back to read many of the classics, Gibson, Dick, Stevenson. I’ve tried samples from newer works, but they make me depressed.
I hope it’s not because I’m being hard on everyone else as a way to self flattery, but that’s just what an egotist would say before fluffing himself, so you’ll have to decide for yourself.
So I went with my flavor combination of a story about familial creation in a heist story with cyberpunk settings and satire about current medical/internet/feminist insanity.
Cover Design
I’ve done this for the last 3 books, feel free to review the back catalogue if you’re interested in graphic design or have a book of your own you want to design.
The system is simple, but takes work. Start with 20 samples, varied in typography, image, color and tone. From those 20, narrow them down to 5. Take those 5 and redo another 20 samples per book. Narrow those down to 3. Make 5 comprehensives and you should have the one you want.
What I select for is:
Does it capture the tone of the book?
If I want it to mix with reader expectations, how does it blend with other books? If I want it to stand out, does it not blend with other books (there’s a whole essay I could write about the implications of this)
Will someone leave this lying around on their coffee table or will they be embarassed to read it on the subway. (e.g. nudity, edgelord titles like “Why women deserve less” or stranger expectations like a Trump book getting sideeye)
My initial thought is I would love it if mirrored a 1960s and 70s pulp or science fiction oil painted cover design. I like how older books have image bleeding issues and so have to play creatively with borders.
So the next step is inspiration. Since AI exists now, I’m not tethered to downloading a large amount of example book covers and can start with a style and a premise.
I won’t just take an AI prompt and slap a title on it because prompts suck at composition, framing and occasionally detail. I can see separating assets from AI work to create a DADA inspired collage of pieces into a coherent work.
As you can tell, I do not want to copy the contemporary cover designs out there now. for an example, I have
Devon Eriksen
theft of fire (which is a good book) and your standard Memphis corporate design (which isn’t)
The implications of not doing these are that readers don’t want to take risks on what they read. they either need word of mouth or consistency in design. If you read Lia Rileys book you know what you are in for. The word they use is ‘safe horny’ and it’s just what you think. Devons book has that airbrushed collage look. He’s changed the style so that it stands out from contemporary works, which tend to have a sort of commodity work aesthetic to them. Technically competent but missing soul, like Elevator music.
However, I’m not Devon. I am not writing a book that fill the ‘If you like X then you’ll love Y’ niche.
If I were to copy that style then readers would not have their expectations met, which only hurts in the long run. I’d argue that setting expectations matters more than how good the book is, since you could offer the greatest fried chicken in the world, but if you sell to a vegan he’s going to give you 1 star
The Inspiration board
I’m already hooked on the Doc Savage oil painting style. I am going to have so much fun playing with this one too.
For the characters, I’m still developing but in order:
Jake Long: programmer who must decide between living a life of opressive control under Fem-law. Think of the modern anti-male laws and feminism, but dialed up to 12. He wants a family, but the law forbids it. So he makes a radical decision to win his freedom, but at a cost
Fatahl: Slavic femme fatalle who offers Jake a chance to live free, but with her own agenda. She’s the cock tease to end all cock teases, and her charm is a better weapon than any Laz-Rifle
Buck: A soldier with a past. Genetically unaltered, techno luddite who deals with his pain and loss through grit and loyalty to his team.
Nancy: Bartender and good girl. She is a simple woman with simple wants. Something unheard of in the future. She doesn’t work as a girl boss, she doesn’t want SSRI’s. She would rather live beside the danger because it’s better than Fem-law.
Cindy: Wife and feminist bio lab expert. Women have the power over creating life, and technology has allowed them to amplify this and weaponize it.
And the last guy is supposed to be a Japanese man, sole survivor after the Japanese genocide by CCP. He wants to rebuild his nation, and needs a team to do it.
Typography
My initial choice is Avant Garde. You’ll see why in a bit. I’m leaning towards very bright and funky colors for the cover and a retro style. But this is where I’ll be making a ton of variations to see what works better for my intentions.
So this is a few hours at some rough comprehensives. I’ll do another hundred or so and you can follow along as I work
Summary
Half the work of writing a book is writing. The other half is convincing people that:
It’s really damned good
It’s worth buying and spending 10 hours reading it
It looks great on a coffee table
And for people who see it in the store, they feel compelled to click
And hey, 7th times the charm!