When we sent our first book, “The Art of Joinery,” to press 15 years ago, I was teaching a class at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking in Kentucky and got a phone call from the pre-press shop.
“The interior folio looks fine,” the voice said. “But what are you going to put on the cover?”
I stood there, dumbfounded. John and I hadn’t even thought about the cover.
So on my lunch break I grabbed my laptop and whipped up the cover above in about 15 minutes. I laid out the text and thought: Should we put some image on the cover? I quickly scanned through the images in the book and – with about two seconds of thought – threw the dividers on there. I sent the cover to pre-press and ran back to finish the class.
And that is how we got our company’s logo – dividers.
Believe it or not, it took a while for us to catch on that our books needed cover images. When I worked in corporate publishing, the cover and title were things that were settled and discussed by people way above my pay grade. So it wasn’t something I thought much about.
So “The Essential Woodworker” went through the same oh-crap-I-forgot-the-cover process as “The Art of Joinery.” It really wasn’t until “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” that my head really began thinking much about our books’ covers’.
These days I spend more time working on the cover – though we don’t fret over the marketing aspect of it. Like all aspects of our books, the cover is a joint decision between the author and me. So many times the cover is remarkably unmarketable. Which I love.
Now that we have Megan on board as the full-time editor, I have more time to breathe, think and look beyond the flaming crisis of the day. So this week I spent some time redesigning the cover of “The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing, which is one of our core books. We are in the process of reprinting it for its 11th printing, and I don’t know when the new cover will appear. Likely this fall. And I don’t know if the cover cloth will be blue. Cloth shortages are wreaking havoc with our titles. (Have you seen the new cloth on “With the Grain?” I like it, but it wasn’t our first choice – or our eighth.)
Some days I am amazed we are still in business.
— Christopher Schwarz
“Some days I am amazed we are still in business” – quality products, fair pricing and extreme generosity in terms of sharing your knowledge and experience!
There are some really famous designers who’ve made entire careers out of just designing book covers. LOL
The first cover of Art is pretty strong. Sometimes the pressure of deadlines can force us to cut thru to the heart of an idea.
Love the chonky dovetails on the new mock up.
There is definitely a “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” joke here somewhere….
In my opinion the two books which a beginner should be advised to get are the ATC (spares you a lot of pain in describing how the mistakes have already been made for you) and The Essential Woodworker which basically says, “Here it is, now get stuck in.” All the beginner then has to do is practice and produce and save with a view to getting the icing on the cake in the form of the Hayward books. Anything else is a bonus or indulgence (and there’s nothing wrong with that.)
only other I’d add to that list of ATC+tEW is the Studly Chest book because every workshop needs a pinup.
All joking aside (the professional teacher in me talking)…. keeping a hero or ideal picture front and center is one of if not the most important element in developing ANY skill. That goal makes all the grunt work of repetition and failure seem like nothing. Lose sight of the prize and watch how fast you give up and quit.
Most often, what I read these days are ebooks on a tablet. It has advantages. But some of the disadvantages are not seeing the cover every time I pick the book up. So I no longer associate covers with their contents on electronic works.
It’s nice to see the covers on your physical books, every time I pick one up. Little things matter.
I like the understated look of your book covers. Lie Nielsen tools come in understated boxes. It could also be that I like Shaker (and Arts & Crafts) furniture too much. Having said that, I’ve worked with Nobel prize winners in chemistry in the past. They were also humble. I think understated is the way to go. Under promise and over deliver is my personal motto.
It might just be me but I don’t pay much attention to the cover. It could be any color and I would not care. As long as the book has the title on it im fine. But im also not a designer so these things don’t bother me.
11 printings? It’d great that there is so much demand for quality books. Either you way underestimated each run or you don’t want too much sunk costs in inventory.