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Author Archives: mybookcover

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LIKE YOU’D UNDERSTAND, ANYWAY

September 27, 2012 by mybookcover

(Vintage, 2008) Most writers I know don’t dream of a cover they adore when considering their next book; they just hope to avoid something they don’t like, or worse, they hate. I didn’t at all hate the first cover design that Vintage, and its designer, John Gall, ran by me for Like You’d Understand, Anyway, but I instantly knew it was misleading about the book. It was a nicely surreal image of a young man floating halfway to the ceiling in the aisle […]

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THE VANISHERS

September 20, 2012 by mybookcover

(Doubleday, 2012) Emily, whose work I love,  graciously solicited my input before she started the jacket. Not jacket ideas, per se—she wanted to know what visual cues had inspired me while writing the book. No designer had ever asked for my input before, and I, of course, had many compelling visual ideas to offer! One idea was to pivot off the the Vitra Design Museum poster—it’s a large poster with a grid of many, many tiny chair photographs—but try to […]

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VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES

September 12, 2012 by mybookcover

Editor Gary Fisketjon launched Vintage Contemporaries, a paperback imprint of Random House, in September 1984. There were seven initial titles. By decade’s end, there would be close to 100. The line was a mix of reprints and originals, and nearly thirty years later the checklist found in the back of the books reads like a ballot for some Cooperstown of late-20th Century fiction.   At the time, however, the series was far more renowned for its design: the checklists, color-banded […]

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MAGIC HOURS

September 5, 2012 by mybookcover

(Believer Books/McSweeney’s, 2012) One of the things I do here at McSweeney’s is design many of our book covers. I’m a longtime fan of Tom’s, ever since I read a short story of his, “God Lives in St. Petersburg,” many years ago in McSweeney’s Quarterly. Tom’s essays for The Believer have always been a highlight of that magazine, and I read each of the Believer “Magic Hours” essays when they were first published. So when it came time to figure out who […]

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THE POSTMORTAL

August 29, 2012 by mybookcover

(Penguin, 2011) The cover process for The Postmortal was actually fairly easy, because when I sent the manuscript out, I had already asked Jim Cooke to do a little mockup of the Dead Reaper (a drawing that appears in the novel at one point) because it seemed like a cool, iconic thing I could use as both a calling card for the book and a Twitter avatar. So I said to Penguin, “Hey, I have this nice, clean icon here […]

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I WAS TOLD THERE’D BE CAKE

August 22, 2012 by mybookcover

(Riverhead, 2008) When I first saw it, I was dubious. I liked the mattress and the color scheme very much but it wasn’t love at first sight. The good stuff: I knew it was the right kind of feminine…so what I had assumed would be the hardest part was already taken care of. The last book of essays I had read by a woman (or the last full collection released in recent memory) was Megan Daum’s My Misspent Youth, and […]

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TOO MUCH, TOO LATE

August 15, 2012 by mybookcover

(Crown, 2006) Too Much, Too Late was probably like the second or third cover I ever worked on. I designed it roughly in the spring of 2005 for Crown. At the time, I had been sending out lots of promotional stuff and my stuff at the time was very influenced by the punk aesthetic. Especially Art Chantry, who is still a hero of mine.   The book itself is the story of an early ’90s indie rock band who never […]

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WHAT HE’S POISED TO DO

August 8, 2012 by mybookcover

(Harper Perennial, 2010) Often, I’ve been very involved in my covers, and more so when they’re paintings or photographs that I already know of, in another context, and am bringing into the book. For Superbad, I met with Mark Tansey and he allowed me to use a painting for the cover. For Superworse, I found an image online by Kim Weston, Edward Weston’s grandson, and got his permission.   When it came time for What He’s Poised To Do, I knew […]

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MOONWALKING WITH EINSTEIN

July 31, 2012 by mybookcover

(The Penguin Press, 2011) This was the only version of the cover I ever saw for the US edition, and at first I wasn’t wild about it. I thought the colors were a little too South Beach, and that it was altogether too enigmatic. Since the title of the book is already something of a mystery, I thought the cover should do a better job of telegraphing that the book was about memory. I also felt that given the playfulness of […]

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