Since our photo would portray the two of us not only as co-authors but also as a married couple, the dynamic between us would be as important as the way we looked individually. As a photographer (and okay, an image control freak) before taking portraits of others, Josh often gathers examples of images from his gargantuan and not-always-well organized files of inspiration. Since the history of photography is so rich with iconic imagery sometimes it’s better to steal a great idea than come up with a half baked one on your own.
We chose a few images of couples and possible poses and printed them out as a cheat sheet.
We asked our good friend Svend Lindbaek brilliant photographer and technical wizard to photograph us in his studio.
As in most photo shoots no matter how well directed, the majority of the shots are fails.
Our favorite image from our photo shoot was self-plagarized. The pose was based on an image (left) Josh had shot for a fine art project that he himself had plagarized from a Sixties’ era French fashion magazine. We felt and hoped the image of us leaning against each other would communicate some of the complexity of our working relationship, but with a sense of humor. If one of us moved the other would fall.
We couldn’t decide how far to crop into the photo. After much discussion and polling some of our design-minded friends, we chose the full body shot. That is until our editor told us that the picture on the book’s back cover would be so small that it wouldn’t “read.” We’d have to crop it into a head shot (right). Richard Ford’s porthole window from Part 1.
At the shoot our six-year-old daughter Roxie was flabbergasted that she was not included in the photo. She insisted on one more shot that she art directed. It was shot on Camille’s iPhone. In the end it might be the best image of all.
More great author photos and images here and here and here.
In the beginning, an aspiring author’s book is just a bunch of files in a bunch of folders on his or her hard drive. But at some point, if you are lucky enough, like us, to find a publisher, your book will become printed matter, a physical object—and it will need to have a cover.
“We bring stories to the public. And stories can be anything. But they all have one thing in common. They all need a face to give you a first impression of what you are about to get into.”
A cover for your book like any of these (above) would be a dream come true—a “face” so memorable and appealing it will be seared into the public consciousness for decades. But really, what are the chances of that?
So naturally, Josh, (a former designer by trade) created not one, but ten possible book covers (below) to get a feel for what people may or may not like. We sent the covers out to our brain trust of family, friends and allies. The more literate liked the design-y covers. Those who wanted us to go more mass market liked the simpler, bolder (and okay, cheesier) covers. Creating the great cover would be harder than we thought. No one cover pleased everybody, including ourselves.
Then we sent all of these possible covers to the publisher, which they graciously accepted and apparently ignored. You may be the author of your book but that book will be assigned a designer and that designer will come up with cover concepts that will be shown around the publishing house to the editors and marketing people until a design is agreed on, at which point it will be shown to you. It’s as if you’ve been set up in an arranged marriage. What you will see when you lift the veil? Your biggest nightmare: What if the cover is ugly?!
An author’s nightmare: the ugly book cover.
One day the email arrived from our editor:
“Attached you’ll find the proposed cover for THE ART OF DOING. I’m pretty excited about it. I think it does an excellent job of bringing together a complex set of elements and conveying what the book is while being visually arresting.”
Designed by Janet Hansen
Opening the email attachment was like lifting the veil. IT WASN’T UGLY! We liked a lot of the design elements. The arrows conveyed the sense that the book was about process and gave the book an appropriate how-to-ish sort of feel. The dialog balloons communicated the sense that a reader would hear from these high achieving individuals in their own words. But was the cover too busy? Would people get it? Did it skew too young? Too hip? Too yellow? Most importantly, would it sell?
Bill Gross, the brilliant founder of the Technology Incubator Idealab which has started 100 companies (we interviewed him for our book on How to Start a Startup) was adamant about testing a product or service before going to market. Not in a focus group but in an environment as close as possible to the real thing. Testing his theory of testing, we searched for a same-sized book with a yellow cover and found Philip Roth’s Nemesis was a perfect fit. So we printed out our cover, taped it to Roth’s Nemesis, and set out for Barnes & Noble.
We wandered the store, mock-up book in hand, trying not to draw the attention of B&N employees and guards. We had whispered discussions about which customers to approach, only to have our potential targets leave the floor before we’d worked up our courage. Finally Camille approached a young woman and asked: Would you buy this book? The target was a French tourist who barely spoke English. But we’d broken the ice and approached others. Younger shoppers seemed to get the book. Older ones complained about the small type size and couldn’t fathom what the book was about. One guy with Fifty Shades of Grey tucked under his arm, peered closely at the cover, and nodded, “I’m in.”He’d try anything he said.
Knowing that our power with the publisher was limited, and basically liking the design, we requested only a few discrete changes, larger type size, text revisions for clarity and an added “many more” line to let people know they’d get their money’s worth.
And here’s what we got. A face we can actually love.
Chip Kidd says,
“Book designers responsibility is three fold. To the reader, to the publisher and most of all to the author. I want you [the reader] to look at the author’s book and say, ‘Wow, I need to read that.’”
In the year 2012, with an estimated 180 million blogs online (more than the combined populations of France, Italy and Spain), and 40,000 blogs started daily you can’t help but ask yourself, “Does the world really need another blog?”
Well, as of today, it’s getting one more.
Luckily for us, we had already interviewed Mark Frauenfelder of the blog BoingBoing on “How to Create One of the World’s Most Popular Blogs,” for our book. BoingBoing, for anyone who’s been hiding under a rock for the last 17 years, has been on the Web since the mid-90’s, now with 2.5 million unique visitors a month.
One Mark’s best pieces of advice to wannabe bloggers like ourselves is
“Make the blog that doesn’t exist yet, but that you’d want to read.”
We hope that our blog—born of curiosity and obsession—about how successful people do what they do, will not only be something we’d like to read, but will appeal to all kinds of other people.
At the risk of being ouroborosian, we’ll leave off by quoting ourselves from our own book:
“Reading about how to produce a smash hit on Broadway, write a runaway bestseller or start a startup you may feel inspired and think: I’m going to get off this couch and go do one of these things!
Or, you may think: Actually, I’m not likely to do any of these things, but I can use some of these strategies in my own work.
Or, you may simply be delighted to be entertained by the achievements of others.
Whatever your motivation, whether you are college student, middle manager, entrepreneur or retiree we hope you enjoy the opportunity as much as we did of hearing directly from these extraordinary people and peeling back the layers of their vocational and life experiences to discover their Art of Doing.”
As in most photo shoots no matter how well directed, the majority of the shots are fails.
