A gifted and creative graphic designer friend is noodling on cover ideas for my new book. (The inside bits are done: The Words. I still have a some illustrations to add, clean-up, rescan, and a couple that I will toss a coin as to whether they are in or out.) I wanted the book to have a bit of the feel of one of my sketchbooks, without the messy pages. There's art on vertually every two-pqge spread.
I have also been playing with cover ideas—hey I was a graphic design (and marketing) major at the Minneapolis College of Art & Design, so I can't help but think about the cover. And as a visual thinker I think out loud in my sketchbook and on my MacBook Pro. To keep it simple, I have created all my cover concepts in the most elegant, user friendly word processor on the planet: Nisus Writer Pro. Every one of my designs was done without using any Adobe suite-n-sour tools. No Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, FlashWeaver, FontClunker, GraphicHelper ...
Several of our cover design efforts are on display in this post. Others can be viewed in the photos section of the book's Facebook page. WHAT? You still have not stopped-by, logged-on, and Liked-in to "Hatch! by McNair Wilson" on Facebook? Go now. Here's the link: HATCH!
Along the way to creating and finishing this book there were five complete rewrites (and numerous polishings, sandings, and tweakings, and nearly two dozen titles. The manuscript was profe$$ionally edited twice—a very helpful process. And version four was submitted to nearly twenty big publishers of business and innovation books. Then it was rejected by all of those same publishers—even though there were three or four editors who liked the book ... a lot, but were unable to get their marketing geniuses buy into the book. The "Smell of Felt Pens ..." title (RIGHT) was too longed when coupled with the subtitle, but it survived the cut as the title of the opening chapter.
Now we have a a book I like very much. It a much different—better—than it was at the beginning and even quite different from just a year ago. Between starting this project and and now I wrote and published my memoir of growing up in an avidly church-going family, RAISED IN CAPTIVITY, Memoir of a Life Long Churchaholic (2003). I am thinking of reprinting it—and one of my other books that has also gone out of print. Stand by ... in a seated position.
That means I have lived with this project for nearly a decade. I can see the finish line from here, really.
The challenges of getting a strong cover for this book are the conflict between on the one hand: It's a book targeted at the business market (specifically managers, directors, VPs, CEOs) and, on the other hand: It is a very playful, conversational guide to building creative thinking teams in your organization.
Business books are not famous for colorful, exciting cover design. In fact, few business books are famous at all. Ninety percent of their covers are two or three colors, max, with lots of typography (typically only two fonts, if that many, on the cover) and no art—or something obvious. It is changing but at a glacial pace.
[Above: Edison, Tesla, Disney, and da Vinci]
Hence, for Hatch, I poured through (and reject) eggs (whole and hatched), light bulbs (on, off, exploding, and being held by Thomas Edison), clouds, lightning, rainstorms, art supplies, flip charts, storyboards, Mr. Tesla (with and without coil), and coil sans Tesla, and Walt Disney and Da Vinci. (All above.)
So we are still sketching, playing, and thinking (maybe too hard).
A book cover is a poster. The rule on posters is that you can read it in a few seconds and be impacted. The optimum impact for a book cover is that it gets you to pick it up, turn it over, and read the info on the back. The "back matter" is intended to get you to but the book. That back stuff is most likely a a brief bio of the author telling you clearly why this person is qualified to write on this subject, a compelling ("He looks interesting") author photo—and not just a head shot. There should be two to four quotes from famous people or people from known institutions (big companies, prestigious societies , or organizations) who praise the book and/or author. And there will be a short "here's what it's all about" paragraph that may well be a pithy excerpt from the book itself.
My new PR photo (author photo for back cover) can be seen at the top, left-hand column, of this blog. It was shot by my long-time friend, MaxPaul Franklin, award winning cinematographer. 
I was sitting at my writing desk in my home studio. No props were added, it's are really there all the time. I did put on a clean shirt.)
Now I know, that a good number of copies of this book will be grabbed by folks in my workshops and other speaking settings, plus those who have heard me, hired me, had me my blog bookmarked for some time now. For all those folks a white cover with McNair's Brainstorming book written on a Post-It not would do nicely. (Don't think I didn't mock-up that cover idea at one point.) None the less, we are working to design a zinger of a cover that "fits" in the business world but is more than a bit more colorful and creative (there, I said it) than all the other design-free book covers. I have interspersed this article with a few of our cover "sketches."
Please do visit the Hatch page on Facebook (HERE). Do tell a friend—or fifty—and keep watching this space (and @mcnairwilson on Twitter nation.)
The first run will be discounted and there will be on-going discounts when you buy multiple for your company or organization. Stand by for the secret word.
We hope to have books a month from now ... or sooner.
On-word!
<<< P.S. Still playing with cover ideas—created Labor Day weekend. click to enlage.
