You should absolutely judge a book by its cover. To do otherwise, to ignore the image and text on the front of a book and skip right to the words printed on its pages, would be to discount the work and talent of Cover Designers. And that would be a shame. Because a simple glance at the shelves in your local bookstore shows that there are a LOT of people doing some really cool stuff in the world of book covers.
These people are responsible for crafting the first impression many people will form about the book you’ve written. The tone, the voice, the style–all of that needs to be conveyed in a single image.
Some authors have very strong opinions about what the cover of their book should look like. Some even go so far as to design it themselves.
Others, like me, want absolutely no part of that headache and are more than happy to turn over the reigns and trust in the genius of people like Alenka Linaschke, the designer at Blackstone Publishing who took the few morsels of guidance I provided and turned them into the straight-up fire cover you see at the top of this post.
Alenka grew up in a small village in Slovenia, a former Yugoslavian state. She graduated with a degree in Media Communications from the University of Maribor and worked as a graphic designer for several ad agencies before meeting her now-husband on a trip to Spain and moving to America to be with him after five years of making a long-distance relationship work. Once in Oregon, she began working as a cover designer for Blackstone, one of the biggest independent publishers in the business. After over a decade in the States, she and her family moved to Maribor, Slovenia this past summer. She enjoys spending time with her family, traveling, biking, hiking, and baking. In between all that–and designing kick-ass covers for other Blackstone authors–she took some time to answer my questions.
So how did you get into designing book covers?
When I first moved to Oregon, I was looking for a graphic design job and luck would have it that I found one 10 min away from my house. It was for an audiobook publishing company, Blackstone, which later expanded into print. I’ve designed hundreds of book covers in the past eleven years.
Magic! Haha, I wish. It really comes down to experience and always trying to make something that stands out. It also comes down to how much freedom you gave me from the start, which can be daunting and freeing at the same time. It’s the best feeling when an author trusts you.
That is hard. I always try to put myself in the position of an author that spends countless hours on their book, making it perfect. Of course, most authors feel very strongly about being involved in cover design, sometimes to their detriment. I think it comes down to good direction, but also allowing the designer some freedom. Even though your direction for The Recruiter was brief, it had the right key words that culminated in a memorable cover. My goal is always to make a cover the author will love and a cover I will be proud to show as mine.
I have designed covers for many different genres. Thrillers, romance, historical fiction, detective, literary fiction, post-apocalyptic, young adult, non-fiction, memoirs…but my favorite genre would probably be historical fiction. I love history and literary fiction, because it can be more abstract than most other genres.
In today’s world of social media, it should be relatively easy to find a great designer. What’s most important is that their work resonates with you. That being said, I really should be sharing more of my work online.
Since holidays are upon us, I wish everyone a joyous and peaceful time, hopefully with a bunch of homemade cookies in hand.
