A Bookish Pride Parade
Happy June, the month where I am booked and busy before fading into the obscurity of the other, non-queer months of the year! 🌈
I recently recovered from a real awful bout of covid (it was bound to happen sometime! our lack of mitigation at every level practically guarantees it!! please mask up) so my energy level is pretty low. Not that this year feels particularly inspiring in terms of celebration, but you know what? Fuck ‘em. However you plan on commemorating Pride Month, do it up.
You can catch me at various events in Philly, NYC, Brooklyn, NJ, and CT this month! I have a few more events to add to my calendar since the last update:
Panel: Let Me Be Perfectly Queer
with Prabal Gurung, Christina Li, Debbie Millman, and Jesse James Rose
Sunday, June 15 at 3PM
Barnes & Noble Union Square, NY NY
Uptown Queer Book Swap
Saturday, June 28 at 12-3pm
Dongan Lawn in Fort Tryon Park, NY NY
Bring a book, take a book. A chill hang, weather permitting.
Something a little different! Here’s a Q&A with Ella Dawson, author of But How Are You Really? This is the story of Charlotte, who returns to her college campus for a weekend as part of her (stalled and unfulfilling) job in media. While there, she runs into Reese, a hockey player she once ghosted after a rebound fling back in the day, and the two pick up where they left off. The book recently underwent a cover change, and I thought you might find the reasons for this interesting!
So you're re-releasing your debut novel But How Are You, Really with new cover art! Why the change?
I adore the original cover of my debut, but I got feedback that at a glance, it positioned the book as literary fiction as opposed to romance. I also suspect it gave folks the impression that But How Are You, Really is only about mental health — the combination of the title and the name tag on the woman's jacket evoke a support group. Mental health is a theme in the book, and the heroine's friends have formed the Dead Divorced and Otherwise Disappointing Parents Unofficial Support Group, but this is a second chance romance at a college reunion! It's a big messy party with lots of emotions and sexual tension. It broke my heart to see the book failing to reach the readers who are the most likely to connect with it, namely romance fans who had no idea the book is for them. Meanwhile, the romance of it all didn't land with lit fic readers who came in with very different expectations for the tone and story arc.
I'm hoping the new digital cover reintroduces the book to the romance community as a book for us. Folks who aren't romance readers have enjoyed the book, but reaching romance readers is deeply important to me! I wrote it as a romance, and I regret that it's not shelved in the romance section in bookstores.
There's also the quirk of the bisexual enamel pin on the original cover — I fought for the pin's place on the cover and was thrilled that it even made it on the spine! The book also came out during June and was pitched as a Pride month title. I stand by the book's positioning as a queer novel, and I will die on the hill of that bisexual pin. For invisible and shy bisexuals, enamel pins and other accessories are a way for us to communicate our identities.
Buuuut I got some shit from biphobic readers who were upset when they realized the central relationship is between a cis man and a cis woman. Charlotte's lived experience is deeply informed by her bisexual identity, and I wrote the book to explore the increased risk that bi women face of experiencing sexual and intimate partner violence compared to straight women and lesbians. Charlotte is bisexual, and this is a bisexual book! Biphobic weirdos can stuff it. That being said, I hope the new cover makes it clear who the book is about while preserving the bisexual visual language of the original cover.
Bisexuals are queer no matter who we're currently dating! I hope readers stop being weird about this someday!!
How involved were you in the decisions for your first cover? Your second one?
I was super involved in the first cover! It took us a long time to pick a direction, and once we found one we loved, we had to redesign it again based on feedback that it looked too much like YA as opposed to adult romance. At that point in time I was hyper-aware of how tired folks were getting of the cartoon romance cover trend and wanted to do something different. But I didn't understand that in leaning away from the current visual language of romance, you run the risk of not, well, looking like a romance novel!
The refreshed cover goes back to the romance roots of the book and the setting itself. It does a great job reflecting the story and plot, as well as the academic setting that is so important. I'm so grateful to my team at Dutton who worked tirelessly on each, and to the artist of both covers, Vi-An Nguyen. She is masterful at what she does, and she understands this book so well.
What advice do you have for debut authors or debut hopefuls when it comes to covers and just the tradpub process in general?
At the end of the day, cover art is a key part of marketing and packaging your book. As authors we fantasize about what our books will look like for years, and that can make it hard to be objective about what is ultimately an art in and of itself. So many factors go into what makes a cover successful, from genre signposting, to micro-trends in design, to what will make it stand out on the shelf. My original cover got overwhelming love on social media and from readers and booksellers. It is a memorable stunner! It leaps out at you on the shelf. I have prints of it all over my apartment. And it targeted a different audience of readers than those who wound up responding to the book's story. Hindsight is 20/20 and our logic and strategy were sound. You just never know what cover will help move copies.
If I've learned anything, it's that there is the version of the book you wrote for yourself, and then the book that belongs to the rest of the world. The version of this book I wrote for me is called The Reunion, and its cover is a red party cup that I doodled in a notebook and taped to the wall above my desk. The version of the book that belongs to the rest of the world is called But How Are You, Really, and it is a product we're still optimizing to help it reach its intended audience. That distinction helps me stay sane as an artist, and keeps me from getting precious.
I'm also a third-generation marketer (branding and advertising runs in the family), and those instincts help me stay curious instead of hurt about failures along the way. It's how I realized almost immediately after the book published in 2024 that its positioning had created reader expectations that it didn't meet (namely sophisticated sad gay millennial lit fic as opposed to a book where they fuck in a college dorm shower stall). This is also how I justify reading GoodReads reviews to my therapist. Do not read your GoodReads reviews, kids. Don't do it.
(I, TJ, second that advice. Vocally.)
What's next for you? Where can folks find you on the internet?
The experience of publishing my debut novel completely fried my creative brain, so I have no current plans for a book two. Instead I've pivoted to podcasting! In November I launched Rebel Ever After, a show where I interview a different romance author every episode about how they weave progressive values into their work and challenge our understanding of the happily-ever-after. Thank you for being a crowd-favorite guest, TJ ;)
I also write regularly about relationships, mental health, politics and pop culture over on Patreon. You can listen to premium episodes of Rebel Ever After there, too! You can sign up for free or subscribe as a patron at patreon.com/brosandprose
Otherwise you can find me @brosandprose on Instagram, BlueSky, and Threads!
Thanks Ella!
If you lovely readers are interested in hearing more about cover design and changes thereof, my next paid tier newsletter will be going into a little of the backstory behind why A Gentleman’s Gentleman and The Earl Meets His Match ended up looking so different.
Paid subscribers: you’ll also be getting a look at some slightly spicy fanart I commissioned for character art cards. You’re welcome.
This month’s links:
Random House is giving away zines for Pride & supporting some good queer orgs with it
please read this masterpiece of an article if you love birds and hate factual errors in films
genre creators for trans rights in the uk & sa auction runs until June 7
a newer, stupider way of doing business
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Thanks for reading!
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