Episode 46: Casey Moses, Cover Designer
What’s the secret behind designing a bestselling YA book cover? Are illustrated covers here to stay? Casey Moses, an Assistant Art Director at Penguin Random House, gives us some answers and provides insight into the role of a book cover designer. Listen to our in-depth conversation to learn about designing typography, special edition production, and the unusual methods for achieving perfect photoshoot conditions. Casey also shares her thoughts on international publishing markets and the importance of communication in creating covers that captivate readers and succeed in the market.
Note: This episode was recorded in 2024, and we’ve since rebranded to the Thriving Writers Podcast. Stay tuned for new episodes soon!
TRANSCRIPT FOR EPISODE 46: CASEY MOSES, COVER DESIGNER
Mary Kole (00:23):
Welcome to the Good Story Podcast. My name is Mary Kole and with me I have book designer cover designer Casey Moses. Welcome Casey.
Casey Moses (00:35):
Hello. Thank you so much for having me.
Mary Kole (00:38):
Thank you so much for being here. I am actually, so when I was looking over your website, I was startled to recognize so many covers that are just on my shelves, in the world. Why don't you tell us a little bit more what you do?
Casey Moses (00:57):
Yes, so I am an art director. I work at Penguin Random House, specifically in the Random House Children's Books division. So I work on a lot of your favorite YA book covers. I work on a lot of thrillers and romance and fantasy here and there. Yeah, I get to work with a ton of really cool, talented artists all the time to put packages on books.
Mary Kole (01:29):
Amazing. And I am so sorry to have a mis-titled, you art director of course.
Casey Moses (01:33):
Art director, designer. I do it all.
Mary Kole (01:39):
Can you tell us a little bit about what the differences are? Some people, clearly I am those people, do not know. I just didn't realize there was so much overlap.
Casey Moses (01:48):
There is a ton of overlap. Art director usually comes, it's a title that comes with experience. So I recently got promoted to art director officially.
Mary Kole (01:56):
Congratulations.
Casey Moses (01:58):
Thank you. So there's title, art director and then designer, but also the things that you actually do when creating stuff. So giving art direction, you're often telling—I work with a lot of illustrators where I am giving direction on what they should be doing with the art that they're creating and then also designing where I am, figuring out the best composition and layout and designing the type for the cover. So it is confusing, but yeah, it's a lot of crossover. No one's ever going to be mad if you say one or the other. It's all kind of in the same world.
Mary Kole (02:41):
Beautiful. Thank you for the rescue there. So it seems like a lot of the work is actually herding cats between, if it's an illustrated cover, we're going to need the illustration from an illustrator. We are going to need a beautiful typeface font treatment for the title and any other, the blurbs and the author name and anything else. And also the jacket, the full wrap. So what happens on the inside of the flaps where we meet the author and where we do the marketing copy, what happens on the back? All of those different elements.
Casey Moses (03:20):
Yes, you got it all.
Mary Kole (03:24):
I've seen a book before.
Casey Moses (03:26):
Yes you have. And somebody sits at their little computer and makes all of that look as pretty as possible. And that's what I do all day, every day.
Mary Kole (03:36):
I love it. I am not a visually talented person. I work with visually talented people because we have branding and even as a little company and whatever, I can't do it. And so I am just always in awe of people who can do it.
Casey Moses (03:53):
It's really cool. And also you have to think, you have all of these creative experts that are working on a lot of the visual stuff, but it's always with people who are not designers and artists in mind too. Books are for everybody. We're trying to reach the biggest audience for a specific book that we can. So we always think about how non-creative minds technically think, too when they're looking at visuals.
Mary Kole (04:21):
Yeah, I would love to get into the nitty gritty, but first let's talk about process. At what point does editorial—the book is acquired, it's a word file. At what point does editorial clue you in during the publishing process to get started on your magic?
Casey Moses (04:42):
Because I work in traditional publishing, it's often taken two years to make a book happen and the cover design starts actually really early in the process. So a lot of times editors have acquired a book. They usually have at least a first draft of the manuscript in and that's when design comes in. Sometimes the manuscript's not even finished yet, but they're definitely still editing it, at least when we start because it's like a lot of other departments need the cover—sales needs it to sell it into different accounts. So marketing needs the cover to inform their campaign. So we're actually so early in the process that sometimes I feel like it's obviously the authors read the book, the editor and maybe their assistant or anybody else on the editorial team has read it and their agent and that's it. So I feel like I'm the fourth person to read a book sometimes when it's in its first form kind of we're starting the cover, starting it early. Sometimes it takes six months or nine months to get a cover approved just because there's always lots of things going on, lots of voices, lots of different people that hold a stake in it. So yeah, we're very early on working with editorial on the cover.
Mary Kole (06:01):
I would love to talk about that process of all the different stakeholder cooks in the kitchen a little bit later. But something that you said that I don't know if a lot of writers really take time to think about is that publishers have accounts—they sell into their retail partners, they sell schools and libraries on the children's side. They do this with catalogs and now those are digital. We have your Edelweiss. All of the Netgalley stuff need to have those beautiful visual assets to make the book pop for their internal sales process.
Casey Moses (06:40):
Yes, I'm always trying to meet those Edelweiss deadlines to get the cover into the catalog. Yeah, there's so much going on behind the scenes that I feel like a lot of people don't know about.
Mary Kole (06:51):
Now sometimes there is also a cover reveal where it is not leaked ahead of time, it is part of a marketing push. Of course internally people are working on it and all of that, but the cover is used as part of the buzz building process for a book.
Casey Moses (07:10):
Yes, we're not—I find we're doing less and less big media reveals. They used to do so many. I feel like even five, 10 years ago, most authors at least do their own social media cover reveal themselves. Sometimes they organize, they have a street team of influencers on TikTok and Instagram helping reveal it. So we're always, there's those dates too on my side that we're always like, oh yeah, I get this done by this date for this on sale date. This is when we want to reveal the cover because obviously it's like you know, when the cover's getting revealed, it's ideal that all the pre-order links are up with the cover on all the retailer sites. So there's so many moving pieces to get these covers out in the world and have everything ready to go.
Mary Kole (08:00):
So talk me through your process. We are the fourth person to receive this manuscript and do you read it? I mean I'm sure you are maybe curious if it's an author that you really love. Do you read the whole thing or do you get a gist? Talk me through a day in the life.
Casey Moses (08:23):
Yes. So I personally do this job because I love YA books. I love reading, so I almost always read the full manuscript. Sometimes an editor will tell me the draft is rough. We have all these revisions coming in in a month and I'll hold off and I want to read the best version I can that the author has gotten a chance to work with an editor and revise. So I'm getting usually a full draft. I'm reading it, the editor also, I work so closely with editorial. Editorial and design go hand in hand as I feel like the creatives on the book-making team. So I'm reading the manuscript. The editor will also usually prepare almost like a brief, a cover memo of here's all of the important technical information, here's the trim size of the book. We want to save money for a map on the inside, all this, what's the budget, setting, character descriptions, genre, most importantly comp titles, both sales comps and sometimes editors will include style comps if it's a little bit different than the sales comps.
They're doing all their research and what they've pulled out of the manuscript. And also the author will usually communicate if they have anything that they were thinking for the cover or at least other covers that they really like, things they don't want to see on the cover. And sometimes the editors will have some ideas. So I like to have all of that, but also sometimes as a designer when I'm reading something, I'll catch a visual that maybe the editor didn't think of that I am like, oh, that could be really interesting. So that's why I always like to read it too. But I am taking in a lot of information from—they're relaying what the author thinks plus their own thoughts. And then we also have a conversation about it too as I get started on developing the cover actually.
Mary Kole (10:22):
So some writers—comp titles are huge inside the industry. For a lot of my listeners who are hoping to publish comp titles are also part of the pitching process. That's where we would know them from before the publishing side really gets going. But I can easily imagine myself thinking like, well, wouldn't you want to design a cover that has never been seen before? That's unlike any—are comps necessary? And I'd love to hear your take on the never before seen …
Casey Moses (11:03):
I feel like it's something that we're always chasing. Obviously everybody would love to do the cover. That's going to be the next big trendsetter. Everyone's like, oh my gosh, we haven't seen a cover like this. I need to read it and buy this book immediately. That's always the dream I feel like everyone's trying to achieve. How often does that happen? Not that often.
Mary Kole (11:29):
The person who did the first illustrated rom-com cover is laughing all the way to the bank because we are in a glut right now.
Casey Moses (11:40):
At my brain where I pinpoint that starting is actually Red, White & Royal Blue. I feel like that is when that cover came out, everybody was like, oh, what's this illustration? Not in a bad way. It was just like, oh, it's illustrated with this really fun type treatment. And then that book was everywhere and obviously has had so much success, but I feel like that's one of the ones in my mind that I've identified as fueling the illustration boom.
Mary Kole (12:09):
You’re totally right. That’s where I’m going to take my pitchfork to Red, White & Royal Blue. I'm going to make it no secret that I'm so sick of illustrated covers and I'm one of those people that's like, I'm ready for the next thing.
Casey Moses (12:20):
It's one of those, especially in romance, because romance readers tend to be like some of the most voracious readers. They will tear through paperbacks so fast that I feel like publishing's conclusion is one of those, if it's not broken, don't fix it thing. So I am so sorry to say to you that I do think it's going to be sticking around for at least a little while longer. I think it's evolving. I think it can evolve. But yeah, we are just turning out the romance books lately.
Mary Kole (12:52):
Oh, and that isn't going anywhere. If only, if anything people are getting more, you know, I read smut and come at me. There is absolutely just no stopping romance readers.
Casey Moses (13:05):
I feel like BookTok has emboldened the romance smut community to be just so loud and proud and I think it's a great thing. Everyone read your book. It is interesting though to see the difference between traditionally published covers like these illustrated romance covers you see in bookstores versus the Kindle Unlimited covers because a lot of times it's the same reader or crossover or somebody's very heavily on Kindle Unlimited reading romance books or they're going out and physically buying books because the covers do still look different. I feel like Kindle Unlimited, you have a lot of, it's so much more accessible to indie authors to publish, especially if they're only doing an ebook format. And that's where you also see the difference in what an author can achieve by themselves. They obviously don't have a huge traditional publishing book budget or a team of people working on the cover. And a lot of times it's people doing the best that they can, whether they're doing it themselves or hiring a designer that is within their budget. And a lot of times stock images are something that's very cost effective for a cover. So that's where we're seeing a lot of photographic romance cover still in that space.
Mary Kole (14:21):
I was going to say a lot of hotties with some lace or floral detailing, a lot of photos.
Casey Moses (14:29):
Yes, which again, a lot of those readers, that's what all the books they read look like. So if it's right into that readership and what they're looking for and recognizes things that they like. So I feel like that's going to continue in that space too.
Mary Kole (14:48):
And illustration costs money, to hire an illustrator to draw a cover specifically for your book people, the haters who are over here being like ugh, illustrated covers, you might even say it's a flex to have an illustrated cover.
Casey Moses (15:08):
You're right, it kind of is because yeah, it's a lot of times you do have to hire somebody who has that talent that can execute a cover illustration. Obviously not everybody has the budget to do that or a friend who can help them, you know.
Mary Kole (15:25):
But I think one of the things that has come out in our chat so far is the comps are important not only internally, so readers can identify this is for me. This is an Emily Henry dupe or whatever.
Casey Moses (15:44):
Exactly, yeah. So it's like we were saying it's so nice to be the new trendsetter. Never been seen before, never been done before. But also if you talk to somebody in sales in traditional publishing, they'll be like, no, you got to make it look like the other book that sold a million copies that worked. They're thinking numbers. So that's why we have the sales comps because a lot of times those are being picked out and used because of their content and their track record with sales. So a lot of times we have those people being like, it should look more like this other book that is a bestseller. So we kind of have to find that balance between doing something unique. No one ever wants to just rip off another cover. But like you said, you want to find the readership that knows, oh, I like this other book.
This one kind of looks like that. Or there's something that signals in their brain that they will also redo this book. So you have to kind of toe that line while still getting away with what you can. But very much at the end of the day, I think the goal is always to, you want to reach as many readers as possible. A lot of these books, it's like these are these authors’ babies, they've worked so hard on it, these great stories, and you want to do the story justice and get it to all of the people who are going to love it and it could become their favorite book. So that's the goal at the end of the day.
Mary Kole (17:14):
So we got away from the workflow. So you read the whole thing and then your wheels start turning and take us through that process.
Casey Moses (17:25):
So as I read, I take notes, I'll highlight and add notes with the manuscript. I will notebook, I take notes, and as I'm going to, sometimes I'll start building a mood board or if a visual is starting to form in my mind and I think of an artist who I really wanted to work with and maybe I remember seeing something in their portfolio that is aligned with the idea I have, I'll start pulling artists samples together. So I'm kind of doing bits and pieces as I go while I'm reading, just so I don't forget anything. I am always trying to write down and save stuff as it's coming. If I try to remember later it's not happening. But once I'm totally done, that's when I really sit down and get into, I'm creating a cover strategy deck and pulling, if it's something we want to hire an illustrator for, I try to have at least three different artists pulled and I want them to be kind of different from each other for concepting. I'm like a big stick figure thumbnail drawer.
Mary Kole (18:32):
Amazing.
Casey Moses (18:33):
So I doodle little ideas that I can remember what I meant by it. And sometimes I do hand those to artists and be like, here's the idea, but do your thing that you are great at and make it into something that is going to be amazing and cool. And a lot of times they can get it from those concepts.
Mary Kole (18:54):
So if stick figures are the barrier to entry … I am coming for your job because that is my skillset.
Casey Moses (19:02):
It's so funny because a lot of designers, art directors, there are people who can't draw a stick figure. A lot of us didn't go to school for illustration or anything. Design kind of is its own discipline. And then you also have a lot of illustrators and artists who do not have a typographic bone in their body. So that's why it's so nice we have both working together on a cover because sometimes one can fill in gaps where the other can’t. So you absolutely don't need to be able to draw to be a book cover designer because a lot of times you're hiring somebody else to do that part, which is nice.
Mary Kole (19:41):
Which is what you were talking about. And sometimes it's an illustration. So as an example, this isn't a Penguin book unfortunately, but one of my friends, a friend of the podcast and also a friend of me, the person, Rebecca K. S. Ansari had a, I thought it was the coolest thing. So I think it was for The Missing Piece of Charlie O'Reilly, which is a middle grade novel, had this cut-paper artist who was doing this really cool diorama where different, it was like layers of paper, almost like different scrims in a theater set and they were lit in different ways and then there was a picture taken of this. So it was a flat image, but it was very three dimensional with light and shadow and stuff. They hired some brilliant person who just, that is their art style that they do. So it can be an illustration, it can be a really cool three-dimensional thing. How elaborate do these things get sometimes?
Casey Moses (20:43):
I was on set with a photographer, Christine Blackburn, who is brilliant and amazing and I adore working with her, but you might know a little book A Good Girl's Guide to Murder.
Mary Kole (20:56):
A little, a little book.
Casey Moses (21:00):
It’s amazing. Holly Jackson is amazing. The TV show is out. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend. The photographer and I were on set in her studio building a murder board. So it goes as far as we get very hands on. I was ripping up paper and stitching, cutting and she's pinning yarn and different pieces together across, we built a whole murder board that then the photographer, she lit it and that one didn't have blood on it, but we had smear fingerprints like me and her assistant and all of our fingerprints are all over the cover. And then yes, and she photographed it in all these different lightings and then afterwards we had a retoucher work on it more. So there's so many things involved and so many different kinds of creative people. Even on some other covers with illustrators, I've hired both an illustrator and then a lettering artist to do the title working with the illustration. So there's endless possibilities—if we can conceive of a cover idea, we can find the people who can execute it. If the budget is there.
Mary Kole (22:13):
Oh, the budget. I follow some food photographers and just they share their tips and tricks and it is mind blowing what people do to reproduce normal food. But of course it's like Vaseline in a spray bottle.
Casey Moses (22:33):
And shaving cream for—yeah, there's all these, I've seen TikToks before of food stylers. I'm trying to think. So Christine Blackburn, the photographer I mentioned, she's shot all of Holly Jackson's covers, we've done together and not her last book, the one before it, Five Survive. It's looked like a dirty windshield. There's windshield wipers and a piece of paper stuffed in the windshield. But I was like, are we going to get New York City dirt for the windshield? How are we going to do this? And she whipped out a Ziploc bag, she was like, I have the dust from my vacuum at my apartment. And she's like swishing it over the glass and then we're dragging the windshield wipers through it to try and get this dirty looking window and it worked. But photographers have endless tricks for what to, we just did another cover where I was like, can you get fake snow? And she was like, I can get you three different brands of fake snow.
Mary Kole (23:36):
You want a toe? I can get you a toe. Big Lebowski.
Casey Moses (23:42):
Even when we were doing the windshield concept, I was like, do we have to rent a van and be on location somewhere else? And she was like, no, I think I can get us a big piece of plexiglass. And this guy rolled in with it was like eight feet long, rolled into deliver it morning of and yeah, I feel like she always knows how to source everything.
Mary Kole (24:09):
Bag of tricks. So that's images and we've talked a lot about illustrations and then you're even talking about hand lettering and font styling, so that's a whole different ball of wax when we start to talk about typography, would you characterize yourself as a big font gal? Before we started recording, you mentioned to me that the fonts inside your computer were fighting and canceling each other out and you can't even read what's on this website that we're using to record. So it seems like fonts are a big part of your world.
Casey Moses (24:47):
Yes. I think a lot of book designers, we have to put so much type on these books. It definitely comes with the territory to be a lover of fonts and all things type and we have really cool font management systems that I just get to search through and try and find keywords to get the vibe that I'm wanting. And yes, I do have a million fonts on my computer right now and one of them is breaking in the background and I cannot read any text on this platform that we're on and that is later Casey's problem to figure out. It's funny when I talk about book cover design, it's like every book has all these different elements and we always have to have the title and the author on the book. So sometimes it's even the title is the main image if we're not having character art or something on it, is a typographic title focused cover.
So sometimes it's like the art is so detailed and beautiful that you want the typography to be more simple and compliment it and let it do its thing. And then other times the type itself is like I can hire a lettering artist that's doing just something so cool and custom to fit something that is conceptual to—we can have type that's water and type that's turning into other things and things inside the type and beautiful swashes that fill up the whole cover. I love hand lettering. I do a lot of hand lettering for some of the covers I work on and I also hire out other lettering artists. It's one of those things where I don't always have time to do it. So if I can get an illustrator who can do characters and do really beautiful customized type, I'm like you can do both things.
But other times, if I have the time, I can have some fun play with customizing a font that already exists or kind of creating something bespoke, especially for a lot of thriller, YA thrillers. We do a lot of serial kid or scrolled handwriting that I'm sitting with my iPad drawing with my left hand instead of my right or different markers that are out of ink that I'm doing on paper and then scanning in. The possibilities are endless.
Mary Kole (27:13):
That’s really cool. And then you manipulate it digitally?
Casey Moses (27:19):
Yeah, Photoshop is a book cover designer's best friend.
Mary Kole (27:26):
I love that. Wait, so you brought up something really interesting. So in the decision tree, how do you know and or how do you decide whether you're going to do a representative cover or a conceptual cover?
Casey Moses (27:41):
So part of that with the cover development as I am preparing concepts, artist options, different directions to share with the editor, we have a meeting where I'm presenting all of my visuals and being like, are we on the same page? What do you think? What am I missing? Sometimes it's we're way off and they're like, oh, actually the comp title should be this and we actually don't want a character on it at all and we will regroup, go back. So it's always just conversations with the editor, they're sharing with the author. Obviously we want the author to love their cover so if the authors are on board, we will regroup. Then there's the challenge of sharing with sales, marketing, publicity, all these other departments that sometimes they have a completely different idea about the positioning of the book that me and the editor were on one page and they're like, no, we want to highlight the romantasy in this fantasy book. There should be the couple on the cover. And it's not just a beautiful magical type-led cover. So it's really just a lot of meetings and conversations to get everybody on the same page with how we're positioning this book, what's going to sell the most copies? Is everybody happy with it and onboard? So lots of things to consider.
Mary Kole (29:04):
So talk to me about the author. Oh, the author. No, I'm just kidding. Cover disappointment or cover shock or surprise. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it's just like it's never going to be exactly what was in even the most image forward person's head and there's a reaction. How does an author deal with that and how do you deal with that internally if it does come back that the author isn't really feeling it?
Casey Moses (29:40):
Yes. So I will say most of the time a lot of authors who have chosen to go the route of traditionally publishing their book, I think with that it comes a level of giving up control over everything. You picked this house to publish with, you have your agent in your corner and you're working with a bunch of people who are pros at what they do. So a lot of authors are so happy to trust the process, which is very helpful and a lot of times I will say I can't remember a case where we, the publisher forced an author into a cover they hate. There's always trying to compromise and come up with a resolution that's going to work for everybody. It does hurt my heart when an author is like, I hate everything. I'm like, cool, no worries. I'll go back and I'll figure it out.
But a lot of times it's like we'll work to identify well what don't they like? Is it just the artist styles that we pitched? They absolutely didn't want that imagery on their cover and it wasn't relayed. So it's always communication is the most important thing and we can always figure it out. The editors are super helpful because a lot of times I'm never talking to the author myself. All communication is usually going through the editor and they do a great job too of managing the expectations of … or explaining. There's always a reason why we're making the decisions that we're making. So sometimes the author just needs that reassurance of, oh, this is how your sales team is positioning this book. This is why you are presenting this concept and this artist to me. Cool. That makes sense. A lot of times it's really great, I just get four emails, I'm screaming, crying, throwing up. I love it so much. I will say it is mostly a positive experience. I try to get out in front if something is starting to go south where it's like we course correct and I want them to be on board and like it. I don’t want to draw out and we get a final cover and then they're like, but I secretly hate it. I don't think anybody ever wants that to be the case. So it's honestly communication and working it out.
Mary Kole (32:06):
And agents help too. To your point about these different kind of layers of people working together and communicating. I sit in on these meetings all the time and it really is a collaboration and illustrators are presented ahead of time and depending on the author, sometimes they have more input, other times a little less input into the whole process. But to your point, everybody wants to be excited to go out and sell this thing rather than we're going to force, you're going to like this.
Casey Moses (32:44):
It's not the ideal outcome. It's not a good working relationship for everybody then either. It's always great when everybody believes in the success of the book. So yeah, agents—super helpful. Also, it's like sometimes decisions too are coming from like, well if we don't figure this out, we're going to have to move the book, but the book is such a Fall book, so is it Fall ‘25 or is it Fall ‘26? All these other things too that factor into can we figure this out? Can we compromise in this timeline that we're on? And most of the time it always works out, we get there.
Mary Kole (33:25):
How many times have you heard or written the words at the end of a cover presentation email? We hope you love it as much as we do.
Casey Moses (33:35):
I have written those words. I will say a lot of times it's me verbalizing them because if I'm trying—I'm first showing the editor and it's like I want to get you on my side with the thing I really love, I work with a lot of really wonderful editors that have no problem being like, Casey, no, we're not doing that. And then a lot of times they're like, oh my gosh, this is great. I trust you. So sometimes I miss and sometimes it's everybody's like, this is the best idea, this is it. We all love it and I don't have to do the groveling thing of “I hope you love it as much as I do” trying to sway everybody, I tend to try and let the visuals speak for themselves too. Because when a reader is picking out a book on their phone or they're in the bookstore or on the library app, whatever, I'm not standing there telling them why we made the decisions we did for the cover. So if no one's going to be there talking to them and they need to get it just by looking at it, I try to, I am a yapper, but I don't want to talk too much and let the visuals do the work.
Mary Kole (34:55):
And you have to design for thumbnails too, which even 15 years ago wasn't as big of a deal.
Casey Moses (35:01):
Even since 2020 it has become everything because it's like everyone's seeing books on TikTok and Instagram and it's people holding up the book, so it's even tinier and everybody online shops. So the thumbnail is a huge consideration. We actually, in a lot of meetings where we're sharing covers, it'll be a full size cover and then a little tiny thumbnail next to it. So everybody can in that moment visualize this is what it looks like when you're holding it in your hands at this size. And that's what going to look like on someone's phone because we always get the comments of it's hard to read at thumbnail size. So that's why I've noticed this. And sometimes I get a book in my hands and I'm like, ugh, the titles so big and it has to be big. Or the author name has to be big so that people can see it at thumbnail size and I get in my hands and sometimes I'm like, looks a little ridiculous. But I guess if people need to see it on their phone.
Mary Kole (36:03):
So speaking of changes that TikTok has wrought on your side of the industry, we are now seeing a lot of these special editions and just beautiful edges and how has that sort of been to design with that in mind?
Casey Moses (36:23):
It's funny because a lot of times we all know there's a special edition upfront. A lot of times that comes down the road when the sales teams are talking to different accounts and Barnes and Noble’s like we want our own exclusive special edition. And so then you have editorial and the author scrambling for exclusive content in the inside of the book. And I'm over here brainstorming sometimes I'm like, well a lot of times they'll want a color shift. And I'm like, well, this art was made with this color palette intentionally. And so when we shift it, sometimes it works out and it looks great, but sometimes other color options do not work. And that's when we will lean more into a sprayed the edge or a pattern and paper or my personal favorite thing is a really beautiful foil stamp design on the case under the jacket, a full cover stamp design. That's my favorite special effect.
But yeah, it's kind of down to the wire figuring it out. And sometimes it's me or—I say me, it happens to everybody on my team where everybody would be like, hey, so-and-so wants a special edition, so what can you come up with? And you just spend a day kind of brainstorming and mocking up what could work with the current cover. And then it goes through the thing of like, okay, well how much does that cost? And we like production, figuring out costs with different vendors. Do we have time to print it overseas? What does the P & L look like? And then the finance department is calling up the editor, you need to drop half of these special effects.
Mary Kole (37:59):
No it’s spot gloss, put it down.
Casey Moses (38:01):
So the special editions are always a scramble, but they’re so cool when they're done and then everyone forgets what a big rush and how much extra work it was to get them done. But yeah, a lot of publishers are definitely leaning into that. I feel like we're seeing more and more like Barnes & Noble special editions than ever before and the go-to spec it seems lately is sprayed edges. So I think that's going to stick around for a while.
Mary Kole (38:30):
You read my mind with the actual, what'd you say, embossed cover under the dust jacket or …
Casey Moses (38:37):
Yeah, like a foil stamp design under it.
Mary Kole (38:41):
I was going to say, what's your favorite for people who are paying attention? Because some people never take their dust jackets off, they don't know what's under there.
Casey Moses (38:50):
You gotta take it off.
Mary Kole (38:51):
What's your favorite kind of little, just little extra touch for people who are paying attention to design into a books package?
Casey Moses (39:01):
I mean that is my favorite thing, like a case design because I'm a jacket-off reader and sometimes I'll even display books with the jackets off. Yeah, I would say that's my favorite. I also love, I love a map. I think maps are so fun, especially when if it's a fantasy book and I'm like, wait, where are they? And you can open, it's like the end papers in the front or it's like a spread in the front of the book. I'm like, wait, where are they again? I'm like, I love having that visual of geographically, especially if it's some epic adventure and they're bopping around to different places. Those are my favorite details. And I'm also, because like I said earlier, I read the books, I am an Easter egg person where after you've read the book you can go find the secret thing on the jacket that only I know is there.
Or me, the author, and the editor know is there and other people do or don't working on. Actually it comes out, I think it comes out in September, Erin A. Craig has a new book. It's right behind me, The Thirteenth Child, and there's all these skulls on the cover and we worked with an incredible artist, his name is David Seman, but I was like, hey, it'd be really cool if you could fit 13 skulls into this and they're kind of hidden, but if you look at it, you can count and find all 13 skulls that he hid in the cover are. And that's, those details also delight me too.
Mary Kole (40:33):
That's amazing. So I did want to ask about fantasy because fantasy has some of the same commonalities as all of these illustrated romcom covers. We're seeing a lot of it's a skull with a dagger through it and a serpent is crawling out of one of the eye holes. There's
Casey Moses (40:49):
There’s a sword, roses.
Mary Kole (40:50):
Just like lush florals that are floral, little rotten. Yeah. So I mean a lot of fantasies, they have world building that you can obviously work into the cover, but a lot of them are this kind of this fantasy world and there's danger and how do you keep that fresh story after story?
Casey Moses (41:15):
So fantasy I would say is the thing that I think cycles through art styles the most often where you'll see the same artists just doing everything and then a couple years will pass and then we're on to the next thing. I think right now we're getting more into, and this has just been happening in YA, especially over the last couple of years with the rise of BookTok and a lot of people in their twenties rediscovering reading and liking the pacing of YA books. We have a lot of what we call adult crossover appeal where I think a lot of fantasy books are leaning more into that kind of decorative graphic. It's not a detailed rendering of a character. Symmetrical foil works on it really well for special effects and it has kind of a more sophisticated feel that an adult would pick this up in one on their shelves and it's not just two teenager-looking characters on the cover. So yeah, I would say fantasy definitely has I think the biggest range. And also because the content itself is fantastical, that's where I feel like we can take more risks and it doesn't have to look like all these other things. And because the world building and the characters or the premise of it is usually so unique and not of this world. I think that opens up the doors for more different covers in the genre.
Mary Kole (42:40):
And what is the maybe hardest to design? I would imagine contemporary realistic where it's just like a girl having some issues.
Casey Moses (42:54):
Yeah, I will say, I think personally the easiest thing to design right now is romance, because we've talked about this right now, there's a formula. If it's not broken, don't fix it thing happening. Whereas I think contemporary coming of age stories that aren't focused on romance, usually there's a lot more you can do with those. The hardest right now that I think has just become the most challenging because obviously the market's oversaturated with every genre. We have so many books, what a problem. But thrillers are becoming more and more difficult because we've just really gotten into this photographic object driven cover. We don't often put people on thrillers where a lot of them aren't really working if we do an illustrated route, we've tried and then we end up repackaging it.
So that's the one I would say is kind of the challenge where it's like, do we want to put the same hand lettering on another YA thriller book? So I think the way we get out of that is if we can do a photo shoot, if the book has the budget for it, where we can do something super custom. But otherwise it's a lot of, and that too is where we see a book do really well and then sales and everybody's like, well just keep making books look like One of Us is Lying or A Good Girl's Guide to Murder or Natasha Preston.
Mary Kole (44:26):
What’s the problem? Just put a house, put some woods around it, put a lake in front of it and really big letters—
Casey Moses (44:34):
A blurry kind of type and a dark filter and we're good. Yeah, that's what I would say is the most challenging. And because we're using that stock photos, sometimes I'm like, oh, this is the perfect image that I found on this stock site. And then it's like, oh, it's already been reserved by probably another designer and a different publisher. Cool. Because all kind of working on a lot of the same stuff, that's been the one that I think is a challenge to reinvent the wheel on. But I love it. I do adore, I either want to work on murder books or the most adorable romance book, which is kind of nice because no day is ever the same and I'm always just hopping from one thing that's super happy and adorable to something dark and scary, which keeps it interesting I think.
Mary Kole (45:25):
And you mostly do YA, you're not as much into the highly illustrated chapter book or picture book design?
Casey Moses (45:34):
No. So at Random House Children's Books, which I think we might be one of the only groups organized this way, our teams are by age group. So I'm on the YA cover team, there's five of us, love my team, really great people. So we only work on the covers for all the YA novels. And then there's a middle grade team, a picture book team. We have a graphic novel team. We actually have a team that just does novel interiors too. So I don't do the interior design. We have a team that only does interiors. I like it because I don't think I would thrive if I was somewhere else that I was working on picture books, middle grade and YA all at the same time, just because it's already so hard to stay up on all the trends of one category that you're working on. Then I'm like, I don't know what animals the four-year-olds are into right now.
Mary Kole (46:35):
Narwhals?
Casey Moses (46: 38):
Yeah, there you go. I had no idea. And same thing with artists who work on middle grade are a lot different than the artists that I work with at YA. So it's been expanding that network of artist knowledge and knowing where to go. So I think that being more focused in this way just helps us be successful at this one thing that we do.
Mary Kole (47:00):
I love that. I mean it makes stupid sense. Why wouldn't more people sort of be set up as experts? Tell me, so are you familiar with the colorful blob covers, The Vanishing Half, Sally Rooney, what was that about?
Casey Moses (47:19):
So I don't think the color blob ever made it into a YA version that I'm aware of. So I did not have to suffer through that.
Mary Kole (47:30):
Thank goodness.
Casey Moses (47:32):
But here's the thing about adult book covers, it's like there's no rules. I feel like in adult too, you can get away with a lot more abstract conceptual stuff that you can't get away with in YA because sometimes we do need to be more on the nose with what the content of the book is.
So I don't know if it just became a trend because of not wanting to put characters and just doing something interesting, colorful, abstract became, that's the thing too where it's one of those books sold really well and then they're like cool, make the rest look like that. And we've seen it kind of evolve. There's different levels of colorful blob covers, but you can tell it still has that signal of, If you like contemporary fiction geared towards women, you will pick up this book. That's an interesting trend that I feel there's also the most articles and stuff about, that's the one I feel like the general book reading population has been able to identify as what's going on here?
Mary Kole (48:44):
Thank you. Thank you. That's very validating. So speaking of watching these things like move and transform and kind of talk to each other, tell me about the foreign editions. Sometimes they go off in their own direction, but sometimes there's the sense of brand continuity. How do you handle that?
Casey Moses (49:09):
Sometimes if a book is, right now I'm working on something that is a global publication, so it's PRH US and then I think UK and Australia all trying to publish at the same time. And sometimes that will be like they're all talking to each other and want a united front on the cover with the same art. So sometimes that's planned upfront and then one group leads the cover design on that. A lot of times when we're getting covers, maybe we try to get world rights to the art, so then if it does sell into other countries, they have the option.
And a lot of times publishing in other countries is not the same. It's not as big. It's not as big of budgets where it's a lot harder for them to create something from scratch if it's not a huge book for them. If the country doesn't have a huge population like the US, they're not going to sell as many copies. They just might have a smaller budget where the best they can do is license the art from the US publisher or if the artist retain those rights, just license it from the artist and use the same art.
The other thing is just, this is I think very obvious too with the UK market, there's just different trends for different readerships where certain styles work really well in the UK that don't work in the US and vice versa. And then there's also the printing capabilities and costs. The UK can put any effect on any book and that's why they have so much more foil. A lot of times they're also doing paperback originals and not hardcovers so that they can do that cost-wise on their end. So there's that difference too. Sometimes we know up front, sometimes the rights get sold down the line and it's like this book is going into this country in this language. And I do sometimes get reached out to if I did lettering, they're like, can you letter the title in French for us? So those things happen too. But yeah, it's kind of a case by case, I would say. Lots of things happening.
Mary Kole (51:12):
That's really interesting. And because we've blown through an hour already, and I have to wrap this up, but I am just rapt in attention because what you do is so fascinating and honestly it sounds really fun too. I will ask you, I'm going to try and make this question as fair as possible. What is your favorite book cover that you or your team have not worked on? Because I don't want you agonizing about playing favorites.
Casey Moses (51:45):
Ooh, this is hard. You know what, it came out a couple years ago, but Firekeeper's Daughter. Do you know that cover? It is so beautiful. And I remember seeing it and being, that was one of those moments where I was like, oh my gosh, this is so refreshing. And that book was everywhere and it works. I immediately purchased it. But I think that cover—
Mary Kole (52:10):
Great book too.
Casey Moses (52:13):
Amazing book. That's one of those ones too, I recommend to everybody when they're like, oh, YA book would you recommend? Because there's a lot of different elements in that book that I think work for different readers, but that package is just so beautiful. So I'll say that one.
Mary Kole (52:29):
Great choice. Yeah, it was a stunning cover and very symmetrical and just, yeah, it just flowed really well.
Casey Moses (52:40):
Yeah.
Mary Kole (52:41):
Well, gosh, Casey Moses, thank you so much. Art Director on the YA expert team at Penguin Random House. Thank you so much for coming and shining a light on a publishing area that not a lot of writers might be very well aware of.
Casey Moses (53:01):
Yeah, absolutely. It was so much fun to talk to you about all of this stuff, so thank you for having me. This was great.
Mary Kole (53:08):
I think everybody should send their YA novels to Penguin Random House. I am also published by Penguin Random House, so.
Casey Moses (53:17):
Oh, unbiased.
Mary Kole (53:18):
Yeah, so that you could work on their covers and work your magic now. Thank you. Thank you so much for just an amazing conversation. My name is Mary Kole. This has been Casey Moses and this is the Good Story Podcast. Here is to a good and beautiful looking story.
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