ReCovering (and a contest!)

Happy Friday!

Big thanks to all of you who took the time to comment on the cover for WAY TO GO! From the sound of things, everyone else loves it as much as I do, which is great to hear.

Here’s the thing… a couple of days after I revealed the cover, I got a call from my editor.

This is a difficult phone call to make - she said – there’s been a bit of concern around the office about the readability of -

OF WHAT!? Of the book!? Chapter One? All the chapters? The whole damn thing?

- the readability of the title on the cover design… so… the decision was made to change to a more readable font…

Okay, I can deal with this.

I’m not going to lie, I was in love with the tape scrolling out of the cassette, spelling out the title. That was a pretty epic design, and the art director and her team deserve a lot of credit for coming up with that idea and executing it so well. That said, a couple of people had mentioned to me that they’d needed to adjust their eyes for a moment before making out the words – and these were people who already knew the title. It’s really important – crucial really – that the title be instantly readable. My friends and family are going to buy the book anyway (ed. – they’d BETTER buy the book anyway) – the challenging part of book publishing is marketing and selling to people who have never heard of me or the book. If they can’t read the title right away, there’s a good chance that they’ll skim right over it and keep on walking.

So. New font. The good news is that the rest of the cover is pretty much the same – same cassette, same (awesome) color green, my name is still written on the cassette label (I love that, I do.) The only other difference is that there is now some purple on the spine and the back cover – I love purple, so that’s all good. So without further ado, here’s my new cover -

Ta da!

I know, it’s not really all that different. I still love it. I am going to frame the shit out of this design and put it on my wall. (possibly poster sized – too much? too much.)

Anyway, that’s the cover, unless it changes again. A lesson to us all – in publishing, it ain’t over till it’s over.

In another quick bit of cool news, on MONDAY JANUARY 16 (cap-locks, so you know it’s important) there is going to be an amazing opportunity to win some prize packages full of books and other stuff from some of the Apocalypsies. For those of you who are late to the blog, the Apocalypsies is a group of YA (young adult) and MG (middle grade) authors whose debuts are coming out in 2012. I’m a member of the group and I can tell you that this is a super cool bunch of people – so many great-looking books to read! It’s been really cool to hang out online with these guys and talk shop and get excited with each other about imminent book birthdays. Now that 2012 is in gear, several books have already been released – one of them (CINDER by Marissa Meyer) debuted at #10 on the NYT bestseller list this week – exciting!

But I digress – on Monday, at 12 noon EST (that’s 1 pm in Atlantic Canada and 9 am on the west coast) go to the Apocalypsies homepage for the starting line of the YAmazing Race with MGnificent prizes! This scavenger/blog hunt will be up for a week, and will basically involve following the directions on the homepage to visit the blogs/websites of over 50 Apocalypsies (I’m one of them!) and answer questions in a challenge format to be eligible for prizes! Clear as mud? Don’t worry, the instructions on the Apocalypsies page will be crystal clear. I’ll be facebooking and tweeting about it once the contest starts, and you’ll have a whole week to participate.

Best of all? Several great prize packages full of books, bookmarks, and lots of other swag. One of the prizes is a signed ARC of WAY TO GO! Be sure to pay attention to the individual authors’ blogs as well – there are going to be lots of individual give-aways, which is pretty cool.

I also want to give a quick shout out to Gina Damico, who organized the whole damn thing. Her book CROAK will be coming out in March, and it looks wickedly funny. Can’t wait to read it.

Anyway, that’s it for now – thanks again for the continued interest in the book and have a great weekend!