Happy Snow Day! Guest post from Eowyn Ivey

Happy Snow Day! 

Today is 30th August, the release date for The Snow Child in paperback, and a day that I have devoted to the wonderful book on my blog. Please see my previous post to see my review of the absolutely fantastic read.

I feel honoured that the wonderful author, Eowyn Ivey, has spent some time writing a guest post for my blog and I'm very happy to share it with you today. Here it is:

As a bookseller and writer, I had always heard horror stories about authors and their covers. I’ve read blog posts about agents and publishers duking it out over cover art, even with threats to end contracts. I’ve heard authors whisper loudly about the repulsive color schemes, irrelevant scenery and miscast genres they’ve had to put up with. So when my debut novel The Snow Child was acquired by publishers, I held my breath. What would they come up with?

I knew authors typically have little if any say over how their book ultimately appears on the shelves. I fretted that the publisher would dot the landscape with maple and oak trees, which we don’t have in Alaska, or they would turn Faina into a buxom snow princess with a skimpy fur-trimmed outfit -- just scroll down through the Google-images for “Snegurochka” and you will see the interesting possibilities.

So it came as a complete and delightful surprise as the covers for the various editions began to appear in the inbox of my email. They are all so different from each other, and yet each so perfect to my story, each so elegant and artistic and beautiful.

Before the novel had even been released in either country, the UK and US editions were earning praise for their art work. “Thank you,” I’d say. “But I really can’t take any credit.”

Now, with The Snow Child being translated into more than 20 languages and sold in around 30 countries, I continue to be amazed and thrilled with each foreign cover as it is revealed to me. I’m not sure why the book gods have smiled down on me so, but I keep thinking perhaps I earned some good karma as a bookseller.

To top it off, I now have the good fortune to travel along with The Snow Child to some of the very places that have blessed me with these covers. Aug. 31-Sept. 9, I am in Australia; Sept. 15-17 London, and Sept. 20-24 Paris. You can read about the specific events I’ll be attending here and if you’re in town, I do hope you stop by and say hello!

Eowyn Ivey is the author of the internationally bestselling novel The Snow Child. You can learn more at her website www.eowynivey.com and her blog lettersfromalaska.wordpress.com.