Please judge my book by its (paperback) cover! Giveaway!

Today Helen Landalf has but one request:

Please judge my book by its (paperback) cover!

Long before my novel Flyaway was published, and even before I had an agent, I used to dream about what its cover would look like. Since the core of the book is 15-year-old Stevie’s yearning for her mother, I often pictured something in dark blue or purple with an illustration of a girl staring out a window, waiting for her mom. Something that fit the melancholy mood of my novel. 

Imagine my surprise when my editor at Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt first sent me the cover image for the hardback.

Pink? Obviously, the design and marketing team viewed the book differently than I did. Even the jacket copy my editor wrote emphasized Stevie’s snarky attitude and the story’s romance elements over the darker themes of drug abuse and abandonment.

But in the end, the cover grew on me. I really like the blocky look of the title and the fact that the girl looks exactly the way I pictured Stevie in my head. And many readers have told me that they first picked up the book because of its cover.

Not long after the hardback released, I got an email from the editor of the paperback edition. When I opened the attachment, I couldn’t believe what I saw.

I’ve been so grateful to have a hardcover on the shelves, but now I feel that my book truly has a second chance. Maybe the new cover will bring in a new set of readers - readers who are looking for what I originally intended my novel to be: a bittersweet story of a teen who is struggling to find her own wings in spite of her mother’s addiction. 

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