The Cover: What’s With the Compass?

Drafts finalized, edits done, title debate complete…..but what to do about the cover? No matter what the adage advises, people DO judge a book by its cover. Between my own ideas, the co-author’s vision, a graphic designer, and of course, the different opinion of everyone I asked, coming up with the cover for “Unlikely to Unstoppable: Stories from Everyday Entrepreneurs” was seeming to be more difficult than writing the book.

We tried developing a graphic of a tree, with branches representing the themes discovered while researching the book. It just didn’t work without a great deal of explanation. Twisting and turning roads was a possibility, but there were dozens of books already published with various depictions of roads or winding paths. How would our book stand out from those?

One passage in the book suggests that the typical way that is often advised for people to tackle the decisions related to a career is to complete high school, go straight to college, then find a job in the chosen area of study. Much like programming the GPS in the car to take one to their destination in the fastest, most efficient way. But, none of our storytellers had done that. Rather, their decisions were more like holding a compass in your hand every few steps to check if you are still going the right way. It might not be as efficient or obvious, but the path would eventually become clear.

So, after we rejected the tree, the roads, and even a crashed stop sign (we thought that might work for “unstoppable”, but a group of friends quickly nixed that silly idea – thank you!), the compass rose to the top. Even if someone didn’t know the story behind the compass, it does provide a hint at the book contents. Again, the search for the perfect graphic ensued.

There is no shortage of places to find graphics. But, we did find a shortage of images to fit our purpose. Many were cartoonish, or very sleek and modern looking, or even the kind of compass used in mathematics. Finally – a solution – let’s just have a photo taken of a compass we choose! Easy, right?

Not exactly – we loved the compass, thought the hands were exactly as we wanted (kind of rough looking, after all, these were tough roads our interviewees had chosen!), and there were shots with a road in the background, or a railroad track in the distance. The debates continued for weeks that felt like years. Use color or black and white? Focus on the compass, or the hands, or the road?

This was tough stuff. As authors, we felt an obligation to be true to the people who shared their stories. As the daughter of the character who inspired the book, my emotions entered into every decision. As the ones who would eventually be marketing this book (as much as I hate marketing, it falls totally on the shoulders of a self-published author), we knew it had to be visually pleasing. And, big reveal, as the mother of the “hand model” for the compass, let’s say I was more than a little attached to keeping the photo as the cover image – no matter what the editor and other consultants thought.

We got there eventually. Obviously, as the compass is the first thing anyone sees when they click on the book, or take it off the shelf. We got there – not in any efficient way, not with AI, not like programming the GPS. We got to our destination by embracing the stops and starts, and by keeping the compass front and center. Our inner compass led us to this cover – and we love it.