Grant Faulkner

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    • Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story
    • The Names of All Things
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For the Love of a Good Cover Design

February 12, 2015 by Grant Faulkner Leave a Comment

Grant Faulkner FissuresI’ve now been a part of two book cover designs, and I adhere to one overwhelming principle. You’re going to live with your book for a lifetime. It’s a little like getting married. It’s a little like buying a house. Make sure that every time you look at it, you love it.

You’ve worked so hard on your story, after all. It’s a gift you’re giving yourself and the world. So make sure your story is dressed to the nines, that you’re proud to be seen in public with it. Don’t take a short cut; don’t be too frugal.

Your cover design needs to accomplish two things:

  1. Catch a potential book buyer’s eye
  2. Capture the book inside in some fundamental and perhaps unforeseen way.

Peter Mendelsund, a designer at Knopf who is reputed to be one of the best in the industry, describes his job as “finding that unique textual detail that … can support the metaphoric weight of the entire book.”

Ideally, you want a designer who will read your book and look for relevant details to work with—not just mindlessly follow the conventions. I was fortunate enough to be introduced to a designer, Patti Capaldi, who did both. I admired her aesthetic, but beyond that, I most appreciated the way she worked with me. We worked as partners, creative collaborators.

Here’s how the process worked. For my most recent cover, the collection of 100-word stories, Fissures, I filled out a questionnaire that included listing such things as the adjectives that described my stories and the adjectives that didn’t describe them. Then I sent on images of my favorite covers from other books.

Patti followed up with a phone conversation to talk through everything. The conversation was important because it was critical to make sure we were on the same page and had a trusting relationship. As a result, when Patti later sent me comps to look at, it was easier to give feedback and weigh different options because we had a common point of reference and a shared vision.

I offered to help Patti research images (to cut down costs for my publisher). I learned one thing: it’s really difficult to find the perfect image. I sent on a handful of possibilities, but none of them were quite right (and thank God Patti offered her guidance on why they weren’t right). We ended up going with an image Patti chose.

There are amazing image resources online, though, so I want to pass on the ones Patti sent to me.

Big agencies, huge collections

http://www.gettyimages.com ($700+)

http://www.corbisimages.com ($700+)

More specialized agencies with consistently arty, sophisticated stuff

http://www.arcangel-images.com ($600+)

http://www.panoptika.net/index.html ($500+)

http://www.gallerystock.com  ($600+)

http://www.wildcardimages.com  ($500+)

http://www.milim.com  ($600+)

http://www.trevillion.com  ($700+)

http://www.magnumphotos.com  ($700+)

http://www.glasshouseimages.com  ($500+)

Insanely cheap, huge collections with lots of junk and a surprising amount of good stuff too!

http://www.dreamstime.com (practically free!)

http://www.istockphoto.com (practically free!)

Historical photos/fine art

http://www.loc.gov/pictures (Library of Congress, great free stuff but make sure image information says “no known copyright restrictions” or take note of information provided)

http://www.akg-images.co.uk  ($300+)

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary (wonderful collection of papers, letters, archive materials, photos, often very high resolution and free)

http://www.bridgemanart.com ($300+)

http://www.npg.org.uk

http://photofestnyc.com/contactus.html

http://www.everettcollection.com (entertainment, $300+)

http://www.theimageworks.com ($300+)

http://www.vandaimages.com/collections.asp

http://www.maryevans.com ($300+)

http://www.picture-desk.com ($400+)

http://www.artres.com

http://www.granger.com ($300+)

News photos

http://pictures.reuters.com ($300+)

https://www.apimages.com ($500+)

Travel/nature

http://www.lonelyplanetimages.com ($500+

http://www.nationalgeographicstock.com

Illustration/cheeky art

http://www.theispot.com

http://www.csaimages.com

http://stockart.com

Random photographers

http://store.shehitpausestudios.com

http://www.photographymuseum.com (a photo collector’s site—great old civil war and other historical photos)

http://www.jamesrobinsonpictures.com

http://marcyankus.com/site

http://www.charleskleinphotography.com

http://www.juliablaukopf.com

http://www.joannedugan.com

 

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: cover design, Self-publishing

First Self-Publishing Project: The Names of All Things

October 22, 2013 by Grant Faulkner Leave a Comment

The Names of All Things CoverOne of the toughest questions a writer faces is, “What is your story about?” I’ve awkwardly stumbled through so many answers to this question—with loved ones, with fellow writers, with strangers—until I instituted the policy of not answering it. The answer the question is to diminish the story itself. To say that Moby Dick is about a man obsessed with catching a whale is to reduce it (not that I’m claiming to have written Moby Dick).

Still, it’s a question every author must ask himself or herself. I’ve noticed that most of my stories follow certain motifs: transience, desuetude, drifting states of abeyance. As one who grew up in a small rural town and saw so many putting on Norman Rockwell smiles of good citizenry to cover up any deviant behavior or thoughts, I’ve always been interested in, and sympathetic to, those drastic lunges of what I’ll call selfhood—the daring jail breaks from social norms, whether misguided, doomed, or embarrassing, that are often so necessary for a person to feel alive.

I guess that’s where “The Names of All Things” started. I had moved to Tucson, Arizona, with Heather Mackey, who is now my wife, while she got her MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. The Southwest was a new and arresting place for me. I worked all sorts of jobs in a place that didn’t offer many good ways to make a living. One of them was as a substitute teacher at a somewhat sketchy private school for rich, wayward youth. I was struck by how transient and uncommitted the other teachers were, and how the kids, despite regular drug tests, seemed to have been abandoned, let loose upon the world in their privilege or loss of privilege. Let’s just say that these ingredients made it a very dramatic, if not combustible, place in my mind. I wanted to follow one of those combustions in a story.

The other impulse of the story was simply a desire to write about the Southwest in all of it vast craziness and sweeping beauty, to capture its ragged, desultory rhythms, inhabit the burns of its textures, lose myself in what I’ll call its sacred godlessness. This is a spiritual story in its way.

The story underwent many outright revisions and many more tweaks, largely because of the number of times it was rejected. Perhaps those rejections were a good thing. I wish I had an accurate count of the number of lit journals that rejected it, but it’s safe to say 30 or 40 of them. It finally received second place in the Southwest Review’s David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction, and then the Southwest Review blessedly decided to publish it.

The path of most creations has to wend through a dark forest of rejections. I like to think each rejection made the story a little better. Each rejection helped me better answer what this story is about.

And now, since the story has been available only in print, I’ve decided to self-publish it as an ebook. It was a goal of mine this year to learn about self-publishing, and the only way to learn about these things is to do it. Fortunately, I discussed the project with Brooke Warner at She Writes Press, and she guided me to Patti Capaldi, a masterful cover designer, who then found a ragged, moody photo by Alice Grossman, which adorns the cover. I felt as if publishing this piece was an extension of the original creative act, except with the help of others.

Also, kudos to Jim Brown for formatting this as an ebook.

I don’t really expect to make a dime, even though it sells for $0.99. It’s always just nice to have a story in the world, and to work with good people to make it so.

Filed Under: Blog, Featured Tagged With: Self-publishing, Short Story

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Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month, co-founder of 100 Word Story, writer, tap dancer, alchemist, contortionist, numbskull, preacher. Read More…

The Art of Brevity

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All the Comfort Sin Can Provide

Book Cover - All the Comfort Sin Can Provide

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Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo

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Fissures

Grant Faulkner Fissures

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Nothing Short of 100

Grant Faulkner Fissures

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The Names of All Things

Grant Faulkner Fissures

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