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Alchemy of a Memoir, Pt. 4: Choosing a Cover

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If it’s possible to identify a “hardest thing” about publishing a book—and there are many things that were harder than actually writing the book—I might choose picking the cover. It’s the first thing potential readers see, whether on a screen, in a bookstore, or in the library. It  conveys the genre, the writing style, the book’s personality, and the story  to be discovered. We do choose a book by its cover. No pressure here. This is how it went down.

First step: Input

The She Writes Press cover design team asked for a detailed synopsis of the story from beginning to end  (with spoilers), ten adjectives that describe the book, the main characters and what they look like, the story’s emotional mood, an object or place that captures the themes and tone, the book’s message and how you would like the reader to feel when they read the last page page, photos of book covers you admire . . . Oof!

Second step: Narrowing options

Some weeks later, I received ten possible designs. I opened the file eagerly, interested in what they came up with. Too trite, too white-skinned, not this story, not my mother. Then I got to the ninth one: a ripe, red tomato smashed against a white background, its juice and seeds flying. Now that told the story, and most importantly, got my attention.

I picked four others that were not impossibly wrong and sent them to a few trusted friends and family for opinions. (Which, I learned later, the publisher did not recommend doing.) Family liked Smashing Tomatoes. Everyone else rated it last choice. “Too bloody,” one said; “It was bloody,” my sister said. Some liked the lily white hands reaching for each other. “Too white,” one said. “Too ‘hand of God,'” my sister said.  “Wrong hands,” I said. They were mine and my daughter’s hands. Stock photos don’t include 16100-year-old hands, which I think are amazing but no doubt make many  uncomfortable. Some liked the string bag of tomatoes. Food was definitely a theme in my mother’s and my life together, and there is a tomato story in the book. I could have asked them to start over, but I decided to go with the grocery bag idea.

Third step: Revisions

I use cloth grocery bags; I don’t own a string bag. I needed the cover to be recognizable to my reality—one reason I rejected the two covers that included an elderly woman that was not my mother and the hands that were not our hands. I found a stock photo of a cloth bag of groceries (not just tomatoes) with a hand coming from the top edge, the bag straining with the load, and sent it to the publisher. “Something like this?” I asked. “No place to put the words,” they said. Also, the hand was white, and I really did want to steer clear from making my story exclusive. Caregiving does not have racial bounds.

They sent some options, one with a paper bag at the bottom of the page. I wasn’t crazy about it, but I didn’t like the others. As a new author, I didn’t know how much push they would tolerate, and I was loathe to be the difficult client. I wanted them to like me. I had read that traditional publishers don’t necessarily give authors any input at all, so perhaps I was lucky. I suggested adding chocolate and a bottle of wine, a request they didn’t respond to. They don’t, I supposed, employ actual artists.

Fourth step: Making a decision

I said yes . . . to a paper bag with groceries at the bottom of the page, that I didn’t love. I wanted to love my cover. I asked for a different font for the title; the block letters weren’t doing it for me. They complied.

Fifth step: Living with the decision

And that was it. My book was going out into the world, to be seen across the internet, and hopefully on brick and mortar bookstore shelves, with a baby-blue cover, orangey-red title font, and a bag of groceries. It’s like naming a child. Once you sign the birth certificate, that is their name forever, or until they are old enough to change it. There are no do-overs.

Last step: Learning to love it

It’s been five months now, and the cover has grown on me as I consider it symbolically. The vegetable lode is arranged in a careful balance. One slight tilt of the bag, and they will topple, ripe tomatoes smashing on the floor. And is the loaded bag sinking off the bottom of the page, or is it rising from the depths? You’ll have to read the book and decide for yourself.

When my daughter-in-love was creating art for my book trailer (you can view it here, now it I love!), I asked her to add wine and chocolate to the bag, for my personal use, and to make them clearly not look like a photograph. I didn’t want anyone to confuse it with the real cover. It makes it perfect. Just before the book went to the printer, I made one more plea to the publisher to include wine and chocolate. She said no, it couldn’t be done to match the rest of the image. Yes, it could have, with artist skill and an amazing computer program, it could look indistinguishable. I let it go.

The Beginning

A book is born, with a cover! Coming October 18 (officially)  and available now for preorder wherever books are sold. (See special offer and links here.)

For posterity, here is my working cover (and title) for years, and the cover with wine and chocolate (as featured in the trailer opening). You can view the trailer, which I really love, here).

Alchemy of a Memoir, Pt. 2: To Self Publish or . . .

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“What would you do if nothing were standing in your way?” I would be a writer—you know, spending my day in a turret with a 360º view, writing best-selling novels. I probably should have turned down a different path long ago. Since I didn’t, I am lucky to have lived into the age of internet. I started writing a blog in 2009. I sat, not in a tower every day, but in cafes on Saturdays, faithfully publishing a weekly post about life lessons learned from my garden.

I left my job and my home in 2012 to return to the Pacific Northwest to support my already very old mother. With the time not spent supporting a living, I thought maybe I would put together a book based on my garden blog*. Mama thought that was what I was going to do too, maybe it’s why she “let” me come and live with her. Then I switched paths.

When I began blogging about life with my mother and attended a week-long writing workshop armed with a few posts, I began dreaming for the first time of a real book, a memoir. Sitting in a circle with other writers, reading aloud, receiving their encouragement, is much more sustaining than the turret idea. I went home and devouring memoirs and books on the art of memoir.

Though it was too tender an idea to consider back then what I would do with a finished manuscript, I learned about arcs and themes and the heroes journey. I turned the back room of my father’s workshop over the carport into a writing studio and wrote on sticky notes that I stuck on the wall, moving color-coded story stickies around under the theme stickies. I looked for the narrative arc, the reason for the book, aka why anyone would want to read  it.

I have long considered myself a dabbler, and made my peace with it. I get interested in something—anything from various crafts to a career as a school counselor—and then lose interest and move on to the next thing. But I became uncharacteristically determined to see this book idea through. However, I was not confident enough to believe I could successively navigate the increasingly impossible odds of traditional publishing; nor did I want to subject myself to the endless cycle of writing pitch letters or attending conferences with an elevator speech in search of an agent and receiving rejection letters. You’re not good enough rang in my head, in spite of encouragement by my writing workshoppers. I  assumed I would self-publish, it was just more practical and felt more doable. And I wanted to be successful. I felt lucky again to be living in these times when such opportunity is available to ordinary humans, those of a “mature age” to boot.

In 2019, at a the fourth writing alumni retreat for attendees of the one in 2012, I read about She Writes Press (SWP), a small hybrid press (a cross between traditional publishers and self-publishing) that in a bit of serendipity was born the same year I moved across the country and began writing my memoir. I was intrigued. They offered manuscript assessments. I wanted to know if my work was even worth pursuing, and it seemed like a good way to get to know what they were about.

I had a finished draft, that is I had something with a beginning, a middle, and an end. I made a snap decision to submit it, knowing if I waited I risked continuing to edit for months or chickening out altogether. On the last day of the retreat—on my father’s birthday—I sent them what I guess I’ll just call the first draft (though it was more like the 100th). Bottom line: The publisher (and co-founder of SWP) said yes! There were several suggestions, chief among them to cut at least 10,000 words. At 115K it was already down from 138K a year earlier.

Over the next year, at the beginning of the pandemic, after cutting thousands of words until I no longer knew what to cut, I hired a SWP editor and also sent the manuscript to several people who had agreed to be beta readers. I cut more words and made some major changes to the opening chapters that had been the first words I’d written seven years earlier. In October 2020, I signed a publishing contract.

It was very expensive, but unlike self-publishing, it came with support, professional designers, knowledge of the book publishing world, and traditional distribution. And not least, a group of sister authors—some first timers, some experienced—who meet (online) to share ideas and high fives, like my writing sisters had. I had inherited some money that, practically, I should save for old age, but I decided to invest it in my dream instead, in my present rather than in a future that may not even come, because who really knows? The publication date of Fall 2022 seemed so far away. It has, of course, flown by, the time filled with professional copy editing and proofreading, many of my own read-throughs (including aloud), negotiating cover design, writing synopses and bios, decisions about where or if to spend even more money, and learning about marketing. Lots and lots of learning.

And now it’s nearly here. October 18, officially Pub Day, is also the 47th anniversary of the day I was married. That was a happy day, and I am pleased to repurpose the date with the fulfillment of another dream.

 

Why this book? You can read Part One of Alchemy of a Memoir here.

 

* I did put that little book together, during the Great Pandemic.

You can receive the PDF as my gift for your pre-order of Mother Lode!

Details coming soon.