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[music]
I'm often also asked do I design my own covers for my own books,
and I sort of, more sort of art direct and orchestrate them.
So, I basically wanted to be like a scream, a person screaming, but with a twist...
so I wanna get a face, so I'm gonna use this guy on the right.
Get rid of the uni-brow, and then I want the cover to sort of be cropped...
and it's almost like a sash going across diagonally.
And this was the first type of treatment I tried.
I swapped out my name with the title for better balance.
And I was going to get my friend, Chris Ware, to do hand lettering for the title.
So this is basically just to sell the publisher on the idea.
I actually publish my novels with a company completely outside of the one I work for.
For a variety of reasons, but basically I just, I don't want the whole nepotism thing...
you know, it's hard enough to take me seriously as a writer as it is.
If I'm not publishing for the company that I work for.
Anyways, so they liked this a lot!
In fact they liked it too much.
They said, "Okay, it's done."
And I said, "No. We're going to do the real thing now...
and basically it's gonna look like this only it's going to look better."
So I contact Charles and I give him this truly dreadful drawing.
I'm a terrible draftsman, as you can see.
But I am also a narcissist, so I want this person to be me, basically.
With my glasses, etc.
And so I give him that. I give him some photo references as well.
[audience laughter]
And then he's going to do the...so he takes that and he turns it into a pencil drawing.
And that's fine.
And then he goes to ink.
And that's great. And then on the back, when you turn the book over, my eyes will be closed.
So he figures that out.
And then we need to do this shock machine, or a facsimile of it, so there's his reference for that.
And then he turns that into that with, of course, the needle bent over to the right.
And so then Chris does the cursive lettering by hand.
Of course, if you know anything about Chris Ware, you will also know getting him to do this is like asking Frank Loyd Wright to design an outhouse.
Egregious waste of his talent.
But he's a good friend, so he does that.
And so then we put it all together.
And there it is, and Chris also did the hand lettering for my name.
And of course when you take the jacket off, instead of the mouth you get the shocking thing there.
And this just recently came out in paperback, so then it's interesting the transition from a hardcover...
cover, to a paperback cover.
That's another question I a lot,
and it varies, it varies book to book...
and basically, often, if a book is perceived as not selling the way it should have in hardcover,
the publisher will scrap it all and start over.
Then the opposite is true, if something does really well, then let's not break it, let's not fix it if it isn't broken.
This fell somewhere in between.
I wanted to change it, but I also wanted to hold on to the essential elements.
The other thing was Chris Ware was actually never happy with his own hand lettering and he wanted to re-do it.
So the answer became to swap out the colors, and then feature Chris's new lettering there.
And then you have to stick some quote on it from a review.
So that says it cured my cancer and all this kind of thing.
[audience laughter]