As Georgia Moorhouse – shortlisted for Discoveries in 2024 – reveals the cover of her debut novel, Imaginary Forces (21 January 2027), she shares with us the process of finding the perfect fit for the story. Read on for a behind-the-scenes look at the cover design process.
It would be hypocritical of me to tell anyone not to judge a book by its cover, as this is a crime I regularly commit. I love browsing in a bookshop and many of my favourite books are ones I picked up on a whim because the cover was beautiful, or it intrigued me, or it stood out in some way. All this to say, getting the cover design for my debut novel was one of the things I was most excited, and most nervous about.
A few months ago, I had a Zoom call with my editor, Zoe Yang, where we talked about ideas for the cover and what we wanted it to portray. We were aligned that it should be figurative. The novel coalesces around the central figure of Henry Finch, the sometime friend, sometime lover, perpetual focus of my narrator Robin, and it was him I wanted to see depicted, but equally, as a reader, I always prefer to conjure the faces of characters myself, rather than be given them upfront. I was also hoping for a cover that was able to create a sense of Henry’s gradual, inexorable drift from reality as his fascination with the theory of multiple universes descends into a cultish fixation.
That Zoom call was intended as a brainstorming session, following which Zoe would connect with the wonderful design team at Bonnier who could turn our disparate ideas into something more concrete, so I allowed myself to be a little unreasonable in my list of desires: a faceless man, the feeling of something being just slightly off kilter, an edge of the otherworldly. There was one image that captured this perfectly, which I sent to Zoe as a visual reference. ‘La reproduction interdite’ (‘Not to be reproduced’) by the Belgian surrealist painter, René Magritte, painted in 1937 as a commission for the poet Edward James. In the painting, a man looks at himself in the mirror, but whilst the book on the mantle is reflected correctly, his face is not shown, instead the back of his head is duplicated in the glass, an eerie inversion. It’s beautiful but it’s jarring.
If we could get somewhere close to what that image evoked, I knew I would be happy.
We didn’t get close; we got it exactly. The design team at Bonnier licensed the painting for my book cover. When Zoe sent me the mock-up I just stared at it. There have been many surreal moments on this route to publication, moments where the reality of it suddenly feels huge and daunting and spectacular, and this was one of them. Staring at the image on my phone screen, realising how perfectly it captured the essence of my story, imagining myself holding it, was momentous.
Before any of this, when Imaginary Forces existed only on my laptop and in my head, when no one had even known about it, let alone read it, I had absolutely no concept of how collaborative the act of publishing a book was. I saw writing as a solitary pursuit, and it is, but publishing is a team effort and I am so lucky to have the team I do. Seeing my cover for the first time made it so clear to me that they had understood exactly what story I am trying to tell; that we’re on the same page.
In less than a year Imaginary Forces will be on bookshelves, I’ll have released it into the wild with no control over who reads it and how they respond, but I’m so grateful to have worked on it with people who are as invested as I am in making it the best version it can be.
The Women’s Prize Discoveries sticker is the icing on the cake. Discoveries set all of this in motion; it’s a genuine honour to be associated with the Women’s Prize Trust and the incredible work they do, and I’m so proud to have their stamp of approval on my book. Imaginary Forces joins a growing number of published Discoveries novels, and I’m humbled to be part of the cohort of women who wrote them.
One day, very soon, I’ll get to hold a proof of my book, and then it won’t be long until I see hardback copies on bookshelves. I’m so excited for readers to discover Imaginary Forces next year, and maybe someone, somewhere, will pick it up on a whim simply because it has such a beautiful cover.
