Cover Story
(and a new paperback!)
Ever wonder how much say authors have on the cover of their books? I suppose if you're J.K. Rowling or John Grisham, you can pretty much call the shots. But if you're not, you're usually at the mercy of the marketing and art departments.
Which is why, a few years ago, I fought a losing battle over this cover for my historical fiction, The Vanishing Point:
The novel's protagonist is a Renaissance painter, a teenage girl at the time the novel takes place. Does this dumpy dough-girl look like a teenager? Does anyone, anywhere have a thumb like the one stuck the wrong way through the pallette? Does this scream Renaissance? Or Queen Elizabeth with a serious eye condition?
I humbly suggested, when shown this masterpiece, that I'd prefer the artist's own work on the cover, since her skill had stood the test of time and I wasn't at all sure the same would prove true of Houghton Mifflin's illustrator. But the powers that be informed me that using my protagonist's work would be "old-fashioned." Hello??? She lived four hundred years ago! I even suggested they slice up an authentic painting, use it as part of a collage, if "now" was the look they wanted. But they told me the cover art had already been bought and paid for. To give them credit, after enduring my wailing and moaning and after the intercession of my terrific editor, Kate O'Sullivan, said powers did agree to put the artist's self-portrait on the BACK cover. Now I ask you, who looks younger? More interesting? -- the double-chinned wonder on the front cover above or this young girl relegated to the back:
But wait! Just out from the Good Guys Can Actually Win If They're Willing to Wait Long Enough department, here's some great news. The book's coming out in paperback this fall 
And guess what's on the cover? The artist's portrait, cut up and used in a fresh, intriguing collage that really captures the spirit of the book:
So let's hear it for a marketing department that finally listened. And an art director who actually read the book. And an editor who hung in there and knows which battles can be won. Yeeeeehawww! Or as my heroine might say, Alé!