Judging a Book by Its Cover

by | May 14, 2020 | Blog

A book isn’t real until it’s in my hands. This is my author mantra, uttered throughout the process of making a book, from pitching it as an idea, to writing a book proposal, writing a draft of the book itself, turning in a “finished” manuscript with all of its figures and figure captions, and revising, revising, and oh yes, revising. Yet all of this process seems ephemeral and vulnerable, as nearly all of this so-called “book” is conceived and composed on a computer, inviting hard-disk crashes, email misunderstandings, or other digital mayhem to wipe out everything. Electrons are important, but they don’t have heft.

OK, it’s officially a book. Tracking the Golden Isles: The Natural and Human Histories of the Georgia Coast has finally arrived! (Photo by Anthony J. Martin)

A cover design helps to alleviate such anxieties. A visual image of a cover encourages thoughts of a book’s physical presence, while also putting myself in the place of potential readers picking it up for the first time and thinking about what they feel. In that sense, my imagination was properly piqued by the cover design for my new book, Tracking the Golden Isles: The Natural and Human Histories of the Georgia Coast (University of Georgia Press). Its main image is a photograph I took of a few large alligator trackways on a Sapelo Island beach that seemingly converge on my wife, Ruth Schowalter, as she stands at the base of coastal dunes there. The rest of the design was sublime. For instance, its title, subtitle, and the author name (that would be me) were in simple typeface and rendered in colors reflected by the natural palette of the landscape. This was a very attractive cover, and if I spotted it in a bookstore, I would be drawn to it, if for no other reason to take a closer look at its tracks and the sinuous trails between them and wonder “who made those?”

I love a good cover design, and if you love books, so will you. Nice work by the production crew at University of Georgia Press!

So I’m pleased to say that the book is real, and it’s spectacular. It arrived in our mailbox yesterday, but it wasn’t addressed to me. Instead, it was for Ruth. Why did she get my book, but not me? It was her complimentary copy for having contributed several photos to the book. Also, my author copy was evidently delivered to my office last month, which I haven’t visited since March because of the you-know-what. So, here it is.

Writing and producing a book is hard work. But holding a finished book, and knowing that other people will soon be holding it, too? That somehow makes it better. (Photo by Ruth Schowalter.)

What were the two biggest big surprises about this physical copy of the book? The first was the lack of a jacket cover: the cover design was actually integrated into the cover. This is the first of my books to have this feature, and I’m happy to say it works. As much as I love book jackets, the book feels more compact, less fiddly, and whole. The second surprise was the book’s spine. Yes, that’s an alligator trackway traveling up it and beneath the title and author name. How cool is that? (Mental note: buy dinner and drinks for the cover designers when this you-know-what is over.)

If you’re like most readers browsing books in a library, bookstore, or someone’s personal collection, book spines are important for catching your eye, too. And I will argue that few things are as eye-catching as alligator tracks. (Photo by Anthony J. Martin.)

Would you like to hold this book, too? Good news, you can! It’s official release date is tomorrow, Friday, May 15, 2020. But would you like to know more about what’s inside that cover? Ah, that is the topic of tomorrow’s post. So be sure to come back for that.