Book Cover Illustrations

It isn’t rare to read a book and discover that the cover illustration didn’t have much to do with the story. One reason for this is that with many publishers cutting back with their budgets, cover artwork often suffers either in how well it is done (you do get what you pay for) or in how it matches the story.

In the case of self-published authors, a poor cover can be due to the dictates of the writer. I’ve found that the majority of writers have good cover ideas, but there are a few that just do not. I suspect that large publishing houses have learned the hard way to keep writers out of the cover design process whenever possible.

Yes, this is unfair to the many writers that would do well giving their input, but this practice does keep an occasional disaster from happening. That said, over the last year I’ve done some work for publishers who’ve given a say — or even full control – of the development of the book cover illustration, so the old practice of keeping the author out of the cover creation loop may be ending.

In the 1950s-1960s, US science fiction publishers would buy paintings for covers without having manuscripts in hand. That meant covers often were whatever came close to what was in the book (and some cover illustrations missed the mark completely with sometimes humorous resutls — unless you were the author of the book).

During this period authors would occasionally even be asked to write a story (or at least add a scene to their manuscript) which fit a painting the publisher had purchased but couldn’t fit to a book.

As far as I know, publishers no longer have the money to buy illustrations before they have manuscripts to illustrate, but I might be wrong. More commonly (and rationally) most presses buy the manuscript first and then hire an illustrator to supply the cover artwork.

However judging from my narrow experience in the publishing industry, it appears that sometimes if an art director is pushing a deadline, they may buy the cover rights to artwork that has already been created, so in the end the result can be much like in the “good old days” when artwork was selected because it was available, rather than because it precisely matched the story.

Full circle.

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Duncan Long is a freelance illustrator for HarperCollins, PS Publishing, Pocket Books, Solomon Press, Fort Ross, and many other publishers and self-publishing authors. He hopes his book cover illustrations always match what is inside the covers. See his book cover illustrations at: http://DuncanLong.com/art.html