The whole press met as a group and voted to decide what the cover of our book would be–and I could not be happier with the result! Because we are on an extremely tight schedule on this project, we only had about three weeks between the beginning of the term and the deadline for a cover to be chosen, and I was a little worried it wouldn’t be enough time for people to get acquainted with the manuscript, come up with ideas, create cover comps, and then finalize them. I shouldn’t have worried. The awesome, creative, diligent people in this press took the call for cover comps and ran with it, and we ended up with over forty submissions! From those, a handful of favorites were chosen, their designers were given a chance to edit and rework them, and then a final three were chosen to go to a press-wide vote. The quality of work was outstanding, and we had a ton of really good options. In the end, I’m completely happy with the cover we chose. Before the vote, the press had an open discussion and people were very forthcoming about bringing up their concerns and reservations as well as their positive comments and praise. The culture of Ooligan depends on this open forum, democratic decision-making, and I think that as a press we are all the stronger for it.

Deciding on this cover was a whirlwind process, and I am so relieved and excited that we pulled it off. I can’t wait to see it on the shelf at Powell’s someday!