Cover Me, 2: The Attack

Thanks to my old college chum Troy Cummings (who is now an author and illustrator), my Cambridge book will soon be judged by its great cover. Longtime readers will recall my original post here a few years ago when both the title and the cover concept were hashed out with my editors at Cambridge. As the book moved through the production process, I’d been carefully reviewing the different elements of the book, and a couple months ago I realized I’d never seen the final version of the cover (you may recall that we had several back-and-forths with Princeton about the final cover of War Stories, which I think turned out very nicely, indeed). I was a little surprised that the book was so close to production and didn’t have a final cover yet, so I asked the production manager if she knew anything about the cover’s progress. As it turns out, she was a cover buff and–although she wasn’t involved in its production–she’d seen it on the Cambridge web site listing for the book. Hopefully, by the time you read this, the cover image will have been replaced, but at the time, it looked like the image on the right. I was surprised and pretty displeased by the cover, but soon Cambridge allowed me to submit a replacement, so long as it fit their publication guidelines (which were extensive) and got the new cover to them in 10 days (blazing fast). Which is when Troy, super-hero-like, leaped into action and saved the cover. So sometimes a bad situation can lead to a better outcome than you thought possible just by pushing you away from the status quo.