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Good Morning, John. They say that you can't judge a book by it's cover but
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I say you can't not judge a book by its cover.
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That's what the cover is for! There's a reason that this book, and this book, and this book all look kind of identical.
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Like take a real fast look -
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Fantasy novels, right?
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You can tell 'cause there's like chiseled words over high contrast illustrations and all the fonts have serifs.
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Oh my gosh look at baby Neil Gaiman! He's so cu-
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Boom!
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That looked different but very similar, but it's sans serif font so it's sci-fi.
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That's the difference!
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So for obvious reasons I've been thinking a lot about book covers lately.
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And I want to share with you today the cover of my book,
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An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, it's available September 25th and you can get it for pre-order now.
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But first I'd like to give, like, a deeply subjective and incomplete list of some of the best book covers from the last 10 or 15 years.
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Let's start here, with a book that came out in 1986, but I promise it's going to make sense in a second.
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This is Watchmen.
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If you've read the comic, you know what this image is, if you haven't then you probably don't, and I like that a lot about it.
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It's mysterious, but it's bold and eye-catching
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So bright!
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And I like the bold, very sort of logo design alternate title placement.
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I mean obviously iconic, one of the most iconic covers ever,
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but it's not really one of the things on my list.
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This Is! This is It Devours by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor,
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and when I first saw it I thought of the cover of Watchmen. Obviously the color, but also the really sort of
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bold comic-y font. I love this image. I love that there's a lot of like radial, interesting things
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happening in covers right now.
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Here's another really good interesting, radially-designed thing. And I also like that, in this case, the title kind of becomes the cover rather than
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there having to be some external design element.
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Now maybe this is going to be a little bit surprising.
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I don't generally tend to like photographic covers but the pale, white arms and this bright
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red centerpiece of this like lovely pure thing that you really,
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is the kind of thing that you'd like to take a bite out of.
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The color scheme here, um, obviously was imitated a lot.
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And I also really like the tinyness of the title, like the insignificance of the title and the author name.
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That's a bold choice and, and, like, maybe you didn't expect to see "Twilight" today but there it is.
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Let's go more recent: "Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda". I like this book cover so much.
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Again, bold color choices, something I'm a huge fan of.
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There was a trend for a long time in young adult fiction to chop people's heads off
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and I think the idea was like, give people looking at the cover something to relate to, but not too much.
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This does that in a really interesting way and also it is reminiscent of, or evolves on,
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a similar sort of cloud-based handwritten font thing.
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Which leads me to, one of the be—, like I might be a little bit biased here, but one of the best covers from the last ten years.
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This was such a departure.
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When Rodrigo Corral made this for "The Fault in Our Stars" I feel like it really leveled-up young adult literature.
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It feels kind of almost branded.
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And I think that it started off, or was part of a really important and necessary trend in cover design.
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My second-to-last cover: V. E. Schwab's "A Darker Shade of Magic".
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Again, really interesting, thoughtful color choice happening here.
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This cover to me feels, kind of, full of institutional knowledge,
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like it knows a great deal about the book that I don't know yet.
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I like that about it.
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And finally, the last thing on my list...
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Bam ba da ba ba ba ba ba ba ba!
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...is the cover of my book!
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I realize that I'm biased but that's ok. I think I have the cutest cat in the world too.
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And it's not like I designed it. I had minimal input.
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It was a very scary process, and I'm so happy that I'm happy with what happened.
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To me this font feels very, like, pulp. It feels adventure, it feels comic.
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But then in the background here it feels like you're getting drawn into something
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that's a little bit mysterious, a little bit creepy, which is exactly what I wanted.
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Like it feels a little bit ostentatious in its color choice which, if you know the main character of the book,
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which none of you do yet, that makes a lot of sense.
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April is a graphic designer herself, the main character in the book, and she's very into color choice.
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But I think that she'd be into how it kind of stands on its own as a design
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and a little bit of, you know, an identity for the book.
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All of the English language publishers really like this so it's gonna be the same cover in the U.K., in Canada, in Australia.
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My book has a cover!
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John, I'll see you on Tuesday.