Book Cover Illustration: Wrong Side In
filed in Book Cover Illustrations and Artwork on Nov.30, 2010
For years I’ve been working on a science fiction novel Wrong Side In. The story takes place in the near future and travels around the word with a little time hoping to boot. The central character is a juvenile delinquent at the beginning of the story and slowly is transformed by events and his own motivations.
Today I created cover artwork that I’m happy with, so I think the book cover illustration is finally done. Hopefully the illustration captures both this anti-hero’s petulant nature while hinting at his possible greatness.
The manuscript is at a publishers for consideration (fingers crossed on that). It’s doubtful that the publisher who finally bites for the story will want the cover I’ve done, though one never knows; publishers generally have their own artists and it’s rare for a writer to actually illustrate a cover for his own book, even though that seems odd to those outside the industry. (It makes sense if you’ve been in the process — generally writers are kept out of the loop for creating the cover at established publishing houses.)
That said, it’s nice to feel like I finally have this story “out of my system.”
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When not wearing his writer’s hat, Duncan Long works as a freelance magazine and book illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, ISFiC Press, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. See his book illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html
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December 1st, 2010 on 12:00 am
The most intriguing thing about this cover is the chair: it hints at the sci-fi aspects, but also gives a kind of time-travel flavour. Mayan? Egyptian? It’s like a throne the boy reached after a long voyage. The celestial elements are powerful, and they are what suggest constancy… with regular shifts.
As to choosing your own cover: difficult. Small to medium publishing houses are much more democratic than the larger houses. A writer rarely sees a book in the same way as an editor or designer – and designers rarely read the whole book (if they did, design would take much longer than it already does).
In your case, though, Duncan, an exception could very well take place because your work is truly ‘exceptional’.
December 3rd, 2010 on 3:31 pm
Good for you, Duncan.
Getting a novel to the finish line is no easy task… and even after you get to the manuscript finish line there’s still so much work left to do— and for those of us who decide to self-publish (like myself) there’s thankfully great illustrators like yourself that can make at least the cover art part of the process much easier. :)