I work in the Art Department at HarperCollins, where I have a front-row seat to the conversations that shape how books appear in the world. What kind of cover art reads as “literary” versus “commercial,” what signals a “book club book,” what feels “serious” versus “friendly,” and increasingly, how to make a cover socially legible online. Covers today are expected not only to attract readers in bookstores, but to circulate fluidly through Instagram posts, TikToks, Substack photos, and carefully curated apartment interiors. Books are now asked to function simultaneously as texts and as lifestyle objects, and designers are now tasked with imagining multiple scales of reach simultaneously, from the bookstore table to the phone screen.
The Conan cover was so popular that the publishing company started commissioning him to do other covers. Naturally, all his covers featured heroic men and women in heroic poses.
Some smart aleck gave him the job of coming up with a cover for a pseudo-science book about the Fall of Atlantis. Mr. Smarty figured there was no way to shoehorn a heroic figure into that cover.
