Backstory – Cover Story

Having learned about cover design in publishing Five Ferries in 2018, I was able to jump start the process for Backstory in 2021. This time I went directly to 99designs.com.

Unlike my first novel, where I incorporated the hitchhiker logo created by Lorenzo Contessa, I had only vague themes in mind for Backstory. I submitted to the design site a brief about the story and a selection of images from the story. Unfortunately, both this brief and the images I presented overemphasized Ansel’s Aston Martin, Charlie’s Jaguar, and Tess’s arresting beauty. Below are some of the images I posted—along with several shots from the internet of winding mountain roads and my own photographs of rolling hills in the Hudson Valley:

Backstory speaks more to how the past is never really past rather than about cars or a beautiful woman. But many of the design submissions I received made the book look like a spy story or a romance novel:

I apologized to the designers and revised my brief to ask for designs without cars or women. The next two submissions blatantly ignored these instructions:

(And the woman was supposed to be a brunette.) But seriously, I suspect these last two submissions came from a disgruntled designer unhappy with time wasted following my original instructions.

I sorted through all 144 submissions to come up with eight finalists, seven shown below:

In the end I chose as the winner a design that didn’t vary much from one artist’s original submission. I then learned the designer was Mikhail Starikov, doing business as michaelstar*. Mikhail lives and works in Moscow, which has led to conversations about Tolstoy and St. Petersburg and the Battle of Borodino. Unlike many of the other designs, which seemed merely to combine stock images with creative fonts, Mikhail’s employed true artistry to incorporate elements of the Trinity Campanile, Breakneck Road and the view from Mountain House. I was very pleased with the result and feel fortunate to have had his help. I am pleased to report Mihail’s design was named a semifinalist for the 10th Annual Kindle Book Awards for best book cover of 2021.