The Anatomy of a Cover
/While promoting my book one of the services replied that my cover was “not workable.” It forced me to take a good hard look at my cover and compare it to other thrillers. I swallowed my pride and I hired Peter and Caroline O’Connor of Bespoke Book Covers. In a few weeks I’ll be reposing my novel with a brand new cover.
That said, some thought did go into the design of my original cover.
If you peer closely at the cover you’ll notice a series of eight digit binary codes. This was a very simple form of encrypted message. If you follow the below link to the website and enter the binary text from the cover it will translate each eight bit grouping into a letter.
For example:
01010111 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000
W E -space- T H
I’ll save you the suspense (and typing) but the translation (if you haven’t figured it out already) is the opening the the American constitution. The decision to put this text in coded format on the cover seemed to fit the plot line about the government violating the constitution and as well as the role that hackers play in the story.
With respect to the flag, I researched a lot of potential images. The one that I liked the best was painted by Jasper Johns (see it here), but for obvious reasons I couldn’t purchase the rights to it. I decided, in the end, to paint one myself. While an artist I am not, it felt like a respectful thing to do, despite my obvious lack of talent.
In short order I’ll see what Peter and Caroline come up with, but now you know some of the ideas that went into the original cover design.