Judging a book by it’s cover
Recently, my group was involved in two rather complicated discussions involving covers.
The first was for a book called Blogging Heroes. Joe Wikert blogged about our cover process for that book on his site, and presented the final cover in an entry yesterday.
The second was for a book called The IT Girls Guide to Blogging with Moxie. It’s the first in a series of technology guides for women with a chick lit attitude. I’ve been working on this project for over a year now, and am so excited to see the first book come out and our vision getting tested in the marketplace. As you can see, this series did in a way inspire the title of the blog.
This idea came from a group meeting where we looked at new ideas in tech. A group met and decided to move forward with this direction. When it came to packaging, we wanted to get the entire Wiley design group involved in a contest to choose the cover. We got over 100 submissions, and the group went through them and picked several favorites. Once we weeded them down, we worked with sales to vette the cover with accounts, and came up with a design that we liked.
However, when we took it to BlogHer 07, it became clear to Katie (the editor of the book) and me that the cover wasn’t going to work. Feedback from attendees led us to have a heart to heart after the meeting where we decided to do an 11th hour change. I don’t like to do this for many reasons. Yes, it taxes the organization to run around making these changes but that’s not all of it. It’s the case of listening to that little voice in the back of your head, that voice of doubt or doom, and deciding it’s right. In this case, I think we made the right decision. We involved the authors to make sure it reflected their design sensibilities as well, and after some back and forth, we had a new cover. You can see the before and after covers below – one of our authors blogged about this as well, and she seems happy, which makes me happy. But what do YOU think?
AFter: 
ConfessionsOfAnITGirl.com 
I *love* the after so much more! IMHO, the first cover/image suggests that a woman’s moxie is in some way related to her wardrobe. In the second, the woman seems cool, chic, collected — like she’s taking on the world and she knows it.
The new cover design is way, way, way stronger. Nice work on that.
I, too, like the new cover better. Good choice.
Lovely! Congrats!
-Cecil
You know how I feel about it – yeah!
That new cover simply rocks. This is the third iteration of the cover I’ve seen and, as they say, third times a charm. I think you guys hit the nail directly on the head with this one!
Perfect!