The Production Process Part Three: covers

A few months back, we asked Louise of Press Books (made up of several imprints, including HarperPress and 4th Estate) to write us a series of blogs about the production of a book, from start to finish. As Publishing Operations Director, we can't think of anyone better qualified to fill you in on what goes on behind the scenes...

The Production Process: the cover

It seems very apt that it has taken me several months to come on here and blog about covers, since the cover process can be inordinately long…why? Because the cover – that is the combination of the artwork, font, cover copy and quotes if any – is the main selling tool for any book. Yes, books are judged by their covers and it is crucial to get them right. What is interesting is that whereas the text is, post acquisition and during the editing process, usually only read by a few people, the cover process is one which everyone gets involved in. Everyone, from editor to sales director, wants each book to reach as many consumers, and tills, as possible and, since Amazon and the internet are the main tills worldwide now, what a book looks like is even more important than ever. Here’s how it happens. (And, just to remind you, this is how it happens in one part of HarperCollins, not in the whole of publishing…different divisions here, and different companies have different processes, though the overall effect will be the same.)

Scheduling

After acquisitions, the book will be scheduled. This means that the team decide the best time to publish it, and then the book is put on the ‘system’: to put it very simply this system is a database that feeds all of our consumer databases (e.g. Waterstone’s, Amazon), enabling them to order and sell our products. The schedule will depend on all sorts of factors (such as topicality, likely delivery, best ‘season’ for sales) but on average there are at least 12 months between the start of the process and the publication date. Once a book is scheduled, this triggers the book’s critical path to be set up: the list of key dates that need to be met in order for sales information, and obviously the book, to reach customers and the market at the right time. The first date on that critical path is the launch.

The launch

A book is ‘launched’ anywhere between 15 and 9 months ahead of publication, and usually in a meeting. It is the editor’s chance to remind all the sales, marketing, publicity and rights people why they bought the book (remember there may have been many years, and changes of personnel, between acquisition and launch) and the one occasion when the whole team discusses every element (price, format – the size and binding, hardback or paperback – and time of publication) and makes suggestions for changes or strategies. The meeting places the book on everyone’s radar for the year ahead so that they can participate in all of the discussions that ensue re cover and market and often it is where the cover will be briefed

The brief

Every acquiring editor, just like every writer, has an idea of how their books will look and a cover brief is a description of that vision: it will hint at the content but it will also reflect positioning and target market. For example, is it a commercial book that the supermarkets will want, or a more literary one, that only independent bookshops and Amazon are likely to stock? Should the cover reflect a well-established genre (like crime or romance) or break new ground? Should the font be big, bold and brash, all embossing and gold foil, so that the book will happily be seen as a ‘beach read’ or ‘airport novel’ or much more subtle and quiet, reflecting the literary readership to which it aspires? And who, if anyone, is the writer like and should the cover reference them?: publishing is notoriously copy-cat; when a book has made a fortune, the market is subsequently clogged with tons of other pretenders hoping for the same. All of these questions will be addressed by the launch/brief discussion and the information supporting that brief given to the designer. Sometimes none of these questions can really be answered and the designer will be given carte blanche, sometimes the brief will be very specific, even down to the use of a particular artist or picture, or sometimes only the direction will be chosen (typographic, illustrative, photographic).

The design process

Once started, the cover process, a bit like the acquisition process is an endless back and forth. The designer responds to the brief and the results come through, sometimes week after week, to a cover art meeting. If picture research is involved, the cover picture researchers will start looking for either a specific picture or a range of pictures or photos that match the brief (women’s legs have been very popular in recent years…). Those pictures will be shown and agreed with the editor, and then mocked up as a rough (as it sounds, a rough approach) for the cover art meeting. Otherwise an illustrator might have been briefed or initial approaches started, and the visuals will be taken to the meeting, first as artwork then mocked-up as covers (the artwork is layered with the title, author’s name and designed to the required format). The meeting (attended by the whole team) will then discuss the cover approaches, decide if one or more are working and then the designer will either revise or start again.

At any time during this process, but usually once an approach is chosen, the editor will send the cover roughs to the author for their opinions. Some publishers do this as a courtesy, but reserve the right to make the final choice, others give the author the final say. Hopefully, but not always, the author’s perspective coincides with those of everyone else in the building but the problems arise when they don’t…more of that later.

Sign-off, finishing and proofing

Once the author has approved the cover, it will circulate internally as a runout or dummy (which means the visuals and copy are put together for the first time) so that the final effect is agreed and signed off by the whole team. Hopefully, about six months after the start of the process, the cover is sent to be proofed. On the internal runout it is possible to see the layout and copy in situ but it is not possible to see how the cover will really look on the book once all the finishes have been added: a ‘finish’ is anything from a very simple gloss, the cheapest and most common effect, to the expensive processes of embossing (raised lettering) and foiling (those shiny airport novels are covered in foil…). So the printed cover is proofed to show how the cover will really look when ‘finished’. Proofs are starting to be used less and less, since they are very expensive and most sales teams present digitally but here as elsewhere the decision to proof will depend on the importance of the book and the complexity of the cover. Once, and if, printed, the proof is used by the sales team to sell the book in to bookshops.

The final corrections

Just before printing the book, about eight weeks before publication, the cover will be corrected again, often to add quotes or a revised price, and checked as an Epson proof (an industry-standard colour-matched proof). At this stage, when the sales numbers are in, and the production costs and print run are signed off, the finishes on the cover are one of the few things that it is still possible to change (since everything on the text and pictures will have been done and invoiced) so, if the numbers don’t work, some or all of the finishes may be removed. No one wants to do this but margins are so small in publishing, particularly in literary publishing, that even saving a few pence by removing a foil can make or break the profit line…

The author’s role

It is worth remembering, especially if you are a first-time writer, that the team behind the choice generally have a lot more experience than you. The vision in your head is the vision of one book that you are very close to and not as helpful as the experienced in-house awareness of a market full of books gagging for attention.

So although it may be hard to let go of that black and white photo you’ve been nursing in your mind for six years, the image that has kept you going as you pound out word after word in the middle of the night, if nobody in-house wants it, particularly if no one in sales wants it, then perhaps it’s not such a good idea. If you listen to the in-house opinions, and they contradict your own, don’t assume that they wish to sabotage your work. On the contrary, the editor and sales team want the book to sell as much as you do…their jobs depend on it. Just as you know when to cut a paragraph that’s not working, having read and reread your book ad nauseam, so the publishing team, who look at covers every day, week after week, month after month, know when a cover isn’t right.

The late J G Ballard once said to me, whilst discussing a paperback cover, that as long as we sold it he didn’t care what we put on it. He’d write the book; we just had to sell it. And, in my limited experience as an editor, the better the writer, the more they trust the opinions of the publisher…

The next six months

So the cover is approved, has gone out to customers and to the printers if it’s being proofed. The next step, and the one that you will probably feel most involved with, is the editing of the text. This, you will be glad to know, is not quite so committee-led. Unlike the cover, only the editorial team, and probably only two editors (in-house and an external freelancer) will do this; the next blog will cover the processes of editing and signing off the text. Hopefully, it won’t take as long as this one has!