Evolution of a Book Cover

I recently published my memoir From Brooklyn to Benares and Back.  When I was writing the book I was pondering about the title but after a while the title just wrote itself: I was born in Brooklyn, I went to Benares to become a monk, and after a lot of traveling I am back in the USA.

Getting the right cover was a bit harder.  For the first printing I was under some time pressure because the designer at Inner World Publications was very busy and was only available for a short time. So I went to a place that offered stock photos and searched for an “iconic Brooklyn” photo. I found some photos of bridges; the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge.  I chose one of the bridge photos and gave it to our designer, and we had the first version of the cover.  Which you can see here.

So this was going to be the cover.  At the last minute, just a few days before this cover was going to be printed, I thought that it was not the right one.  I thought that we needed something that showed the spiritual side of my story.  I then got the idea to search for a photo of Benares.

I went online and searched for Benares images and found a nice photo of two people meditating along the Ganges River in Benares while the sun set.  There was golden effulgence in the photo and it was definitely very spiritual.

I sent the new photo my editor and hastily made a new cover which was supposed to look like this.

And this is the cover that was printed. When I got the boxes of the printed books, I opened them up and saw that the printing was darker than what we imagined it would be and the contrast of the title and the background colors was not what we were expecting.

I was not satisfied and then finally decided to get some expert help.  I hired a designer who had done stunning jobs on book covers of my friends.  I gave him the bridge photo and the Benares photo and asked him to come up with a new design.

After a day and a half he sent me back the first look at the new design and I was blown away.  I was pleased beyond all expectations and his design will be used in the next printing (we are almost finished with the first printing).

The new cover looks like this. I hope you like it!