Five Steps to Designing a Book Cover

Your novel will do the talking, but the cover starts the conversation

Thank you, dear readers, for your enthusiasm for the publication of The View from Lake Como, coming July 8, 2025! Nothing like a cover reveal celebration, and your shares are keeping it going across the country.

The View from Lake Como is a story about Jess Baratta, who is living in her parents’ basement in Lake Como, New Jersey. With a one way ticket to Italy, she decides to build a life she can live in and the house that goes with it.

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There are many creative elements involved in the publication of a book. The author delivers a manuscript to the publisher, and then the novel’s creative life begins. Details are everything. We examine endpapers, typeface, page breaks and margins so you have an effortless reading experience. Sometimes artful elements are added to enhance the storytelling. The View from Lake Como contains original artwork from the great New Yorker cartoonist, Bob Eckstein (I hope you join him on Substack).

The View from Lake Como is a story with intercontinental sweep and personal emotion, so we had to create the cover it deserved. This required research. My editor, Maya Ziv, and cover designer/artist, Vi-An Nguyen (also a New Yorker cartoonist!), spent months and many tries to create the best cover for the novel.

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I always turn to my brilliant friends for their input. Kristin Hannah (her books and covers are well, stupendous), Jake Morrissey (Executive Editor of Riverhead Books who works down the hall from Maya), and Michael Patrick King (award-winning television and film writer/director) are generous with their queries, reactions and ideas during the process. Andrea Rillo, in our office, has a fabulous design sense, and, having designed our book jackets for the Origin Project, is always happy to try something new and pitch fresh ideas.

I grew up in Big Stone Gap, Virginia and originality is very important to me. “I don’t want to see myself coming and going,” my pal Jane’s mother, Betty Cline, used to say, and I feel the same way. I want my book to stand out- not mirror or copy or refer to another jacket- no matter how fabulous that cover art was received. I want it to be beautiful, exciting, original and different. Inspiring.

From left to right: Adriana, Addison Toney (Betty’s granddaughter), Jane Higgins, Betty Cline

When my debut novel, Big Stone Gap, was published in 2000, there were very few jackets with green art palettes in the bookstore. The folks at Random House loved the Appalachian mountain theme, so there was road, a sign and lush mountains on the cover. It reminded me of home, so I was all in. It ended up that green was a fresh choice. It was new and said “debut novel” and was memorable for readers.

Dolly Parton holds up Big Stone Gap as one of her favorite reads for Marie Clare’s “Shelf Portrait”

When it came time to leave Appalachia for New York City, the setting of my third novel, Lucia, Lucia, Allison Saltzman went to the photographer Louise Dahl-Wolfe for inspiration. Allison found an image from the 1950s that defined the character Lucia Sartori.

I received a call one day, out of the blue, from Mary Jane Russell, who was the model on the cover of Lucia, Lucia. Retired and mother to three boys, now grown, she was living in the south. Mary Jane was in Target shopping and saw the book jacket. She said, “That’s me!” and decided to reach out. That’s how Mary Jane Russell (via Louise Dahl-Wolfe) became my cover muse. She appeared on Lucia, Lucia, The Shoemaker’s Wife, Kiss Carlo, and Tony’s Wife.

Mary Jane and I became long distance friends. She told me stories about her modeling life and working with Louise. She had happy memories of her time in the spotlight, and loved raising her family. After Mary Jane passed away, her family came to see me in Connecticut on a book tour. Everything I do, including the book jackets, somehow goes back to family.

Mary Jane Russell, Vogue 1953

Rococo was a cover created and staged from scratch. The designer had an idea, built a set, and hired a model to pose for it. Details were added- I asked for a black and white check marble floor and gold Rococo style framing. The designer was all in. I enjoyed our collaboration and have with all my designers. It doesn’t matter how you get to a great cover, but the author knows that it’s essential to get there. A book jacket, like a well-cut tuxedo at a black tie event, or a gown tailored to fit, says it all about the designer and the person wearing it. So it goes with the creation of cover art. Your novel will do the talking, but the cover starts the conversation.

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Here are the five steps to designing the ultimate book cover. Now, every author has a different approach, and that’s as it should be (see Betty Cline above). Read on for my prompts/hacks/guidelines when it comes to cover design. I hope you have fun reading about the process. Our goal is to tell a good story, and that includes the cover art.