After 6 self-published books, best-selling author signs with 47 North, an imprint of Amazon Publishing

Eliot Peper

best-selling author of Bandwidth, Cumulus, Neon Fever Dream, and True Blue

As of 2017, we've worked with Eliot on seven books, and his trajectory as an author has been very much married to our trajectory as designers. From the startup thrillers in the Uncommon Series to his most recent techno thrillers Cumulus, Neon Fever Dream, and the forthcoming Bandwidth (47 North, 2018), working with Eliot has been one of the most rewarding experiences in our self-publishing portfolio.   

Bandwidth

As Eliot's first book published by 47 North, an imprint of Amazon Publishing, we knew the cover design for Bandwidth would have to be something special. As a personal client, Eliot had always expected exceptional design work for his books, and now with his new publisher on-board, there were even higher stakes. We also understood that the book was the first in a three-book trilogy, with two sequels planned to release within the next year. Therefore, the design for Bandwidth had to be flexible enough to bridge stylistically to the sequels that had not even been written yet. We delivered an high number of concepts for the book, and changed conceptual directions many times before we hit on something that worked for everyone involved. 

Unfortunately, we aren't legally permitted to show you any of the initial concepts for these covers, due to image licensing restrictions. We can, however, show you where we ended up.

Bandwidth is available for pre-order now, for a May 1 publication date. 

Borderless

Available for pre-order, publishing October 2018.

Cumulus

As his first novel published after the Uncommon Series Trilogy, Cumulus is widely considered to be Eliot's best novel to-date. The book chronicles a diverse cast of characters juggling the ethics of virtual reality, net-neutrality, and surveillance. As is typical for Eliot's work, the book considers the impacts new technology has on both the daily lives of the public and on the lives of the masterminds behind the development of those technologies. 

The cover image is an architectural photograph by Unsplash photographer Carl Nenzen Loven, which features the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption in the Cathedral Hill neighborhood of San Francisco. 

Transforming this image into the perfect cover was simple enough in concept, but took many rounds of comps to get right. Ultimately, it required developing a fully-custom typeface, which we call Cumulus Mono. The many hours spent sketching and refining this customization were ultimately worth-while, as Cumulus Mono will be featured in the designs of all three of Eliot's forthcoming Analog Series novels.

Eliot's response to the final cover for Cumulus says it all:

I love it! Fucking awesome!

Your vision here is powerful and fits perfectly with the spirit of the story. I deeply appreciate how much thought and effort went into getting all the details to mesh. I also really like how you helped walk me through your process in the email itself. Reviewing these just gave me goosebumps. Full steam ahead on this concept.

You can find the full write-up on the process behind designing Cumulus here, and look out for the first novel in the Analog Series, Bandwidth, coming May 2018. 

Neon Fever Dream

When Eliot first briefed me on his most recent novel, he was only halfway through writing it. Like the prudent author he is, though, he wanted to nail down the cover design early. I had been wanting to investigate a type-only cover design for a while, and the richly informative "Neon Fever Dream" seemed the appropriate title to try this treatment out. 

It took a while, but eventually found the perfect image for this concept. In a collection by Polish photographer Paweł Michałowski, I discovered a series of long exposure neon light webs that matched my vision for the cover. Many hours of pixel-pushing later, I had settled on a particularly complex image, which, when situated correctly underneath the text, differentiated the author byline from the title just enough. 

I was sure that the cover was too experimental for Eliot's taste but I sent it off, and hoped for the best. 

In typical Eliot Peper fashion, he had some definitive thoughts about the design:

Fuck yeah! I love it. Let's go with this.

Those are seriously some of my favorite emails, ever. I'm lucky enough to have gotten it right the first time on several covers I designed for Eliot, but trust me, there have been emails in the past with expletives used to the opposite effect—some of the first covers I designed for True Blue come to mind. 

Luckily, after designing a slew of covers for Eliot's 2017 novella True Blue, we finally found a worthy cover in this blue-eyed beauty. 

Beyond his skills as a prolific writer, Eliot is a master of marketing and self-publishing. He is an excellent example of rare-found success in the self-publishing market, and it's not a case of luck or circumstance. Eliot is an extremely hard worker and he does his research. Much of our own knowledge about the self-publishing market comes from our experience working with him.