Book are born from the inside out. First the content, then the design, finally the front matter and index, and finally the cover.

Bret Weber and I are pretty excited to see that the cover for our book The Bakken: An Archaeology of an Industrial Landscape is ready. It features a stunning Andy Cullen photograph that wrap around the book and really clever design ensuring that text on the back of the book is neither cramped nor overlaps with the crucial elements in the photo. 

The distressed, sans serif font, in all caps , reading The Bakken, hints at the gritty content of the book, while also demonstrating that the topic is modern. It complements the sans serif subtitle nicely and the lines that follow the subtitle provide some balance to the cover without being too “design-y.”

I’m not as jazzed about the author photos on the back of the book, in large part because I’m not sure that the appearance of the authors adds much visual interest or any sort of authority too the book. In fact, we both look a bit too much like university professors and this likely to undermine the impact of the book among certain audiences. 

Finally, I’m super excited to see the price of $19.95! There’s hardly any reason not to buy it!

Thank you to the fine folks at NDSU Press who have made this happen. As I’ve learned from my brief time as a publisher. So much work takes place “behind the scenes” in publishing and our current system of production tends to obscure or partition this from the view of the author and reader.