Not for a minute do I believe our process for selecting covers is unique. Here at Canon, it’s a collaboration of ideas. We have two talented graphic artists on staff, David Dalbey and Rachel Hoffmann. They each come to Canon with a suitcase filled with different skills and abilities. Laura Blakey won’t admit it, but the woman has mad graphic design skills. Most importantly, the concepts they each form in their brains are completely different. Add to that the unbelievable talent of Mark LaMoreaux with his camera…and the sky is the limit.

Whether an old book is getting a new cover, or a new book is getting its first cover, the process is the same. The first thing we determine is what the author is trying to communicate. If the book is titled Flying Pigs, but the content is about “things that ain’t gonna happen,” we make every effort to avoid putting a graphic of a flying pig on the cover. That’s too easy. (more…)

…you might not have known. Not a week goes by where I don’t ship some books to good ol’ Amazon.com. On a weekly basis we replenish the stock at both their warehouses. The one thing most folks don’t know however is that many of our books have to have ISBN stickers applied to them to be in compliance with current publishing rules (or something like that) before we ship them off. So every week, the ritual begins first by taking all the ordered books off the shelf, and second by carefully making sure that the non-compliant ones get a nice little sticker on the inside and another on the outside. And that’s something you might not have known.

Good news from the production front…I received another illustration permission for The Book Tree this week! Penguin’s given me their contractual blessing to use this pic of Winnie and Tigger from The House at Pooh Corner. You’ll see it on the dedication page - quite cute, no?

Well, only one more permission to go. I have to admit, being a public domain junkie, waiting around for these permissions is a good lil exercise for me.