So to begin with, Mr McGinnis said yes. He was, at the time, almost 90, and we were unable to believe our luck. We had talked about getting someone to work in the style of book covers of bygone days, but Bob McGinnis was there, and he had painted those covers. And he was -- and is -- still painting.
The brief from me was as simple as I could get it:
Mostly, for all except American Gods, which could be haunted spooky American landscape, I'd love people, and the feeling that we are looking at the kinds of book covers nobody does any longer.
Mr Nancy in the foreground for Anansi Boys? - something that says Funny, Thorne Smith, slightly sexy, strange.
Stardust, a beautiful study of the Star ? Very fairy tale.
Neverwhere, very Adventures, and perhaps Richard and Door, or a scene or moment from the book?
Jennifer Brehl, my editor at William Morrow, came back with:
I think there should be figures/people on all four covers. Looking at McGinnis's art (and the other covers you sent me) it seems that the characters are extremely important. I was also seeing TWO characters per cover. Rough images:
AMERICAN GODS: Shadow and Mr. Wednesday, standing in a rugged landscape beneath a lightning-streaked sky
ANANSI BOYS: Mr. Nancy in his yellow hat (didn't he have a yellow hat, or am I misremembering?) holding mike singing to young woman
STARDUST: Tristran leaning over a sleeping (fallen) Yvaine (Star)
NEVERWHERE: Richard carrying/supporting a wounded Door through a door -- leaving the World Above and stepping through to Below.
That seemed like enough to get going with.
We did American Gods first. Landscape and lightning, Shadow and Wednesday. We lifted the "Underground novel" blurb from a 60s paperback of Stranger in a Strange Land.
When we did Anansi Boys it followed the same pattern (although I knew what I wanted as a blurb):
Mr McGinnis sent in some cover sketches. He honed in on the opening scene, with Mr Nancy singing Karaoke to tourists in a Florida seaside bar. We had told him we wanted it to feel like it was a book cover from 60 years ago, and that all these covers would have slightly different sensibilities. We knew that he was the one painting the most memorable book covers in the 50s and 60s, so our brief was to paint what he would have done if he'd read the book back then.
He sent in 5 sketches and I picked a few of the ones I liked best and sent them to Todd, to start talking about visual book styles. (Here are a couple.)
Everyone's favourite was the first.
Todd mentioned that it reminded him of this kind of style, and sent me book covers to show what he meant. He suggested that we have the title over on the left (like the ALL THE WAY cover here).
The finished cover painting came in...
and Todd did a few versions, always picking up the green from Mr Nancy's hat and tie:
(There were lots more versions than these, but I'm limited to 10 images on Tumblr.) I suggested that we lost the Awards stuff, which made it feel cluttered. And I picked the typefaces and versions I liked best, which gave us:
The publisher wanted the #1 Bestseller information back...
I suggested that if we were going to do that we should add an adjective of some kind, like "rollicking" or "magical" just to make it less dry. So Todd did a few of those...
(We actually went with "Magical" on the finished book.) And we had a book cover.
One that felt way out of time, like it had been designed and painted 60 years ago.
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