how I'm thinking about cover reveals right now

Did you know that Patricia Lockwood has a new novel coming in September? Did you see the cover reveal? Was it all over your social? Can you picture the cover in your mind? Or is this the first time you’re hearing about it?

Patricia Lockwood is one of my “auto buy” authors, as the kids say. I found out about her forthcoming release because every single day for about a week, Publishers Lunch ran the news about the novel at the bottom of their emails:

The link takes you to a cover reveal and interview with Lockwood on ELLE.com. I imagine that the publicity team at Riverhead had a conversation about which outlet they were going to give the exclusive reveal to—after first thinking about who the audience is for this new novel, and what publications that audience reads.

In the before times, Lockwood was the queen of Twitter, but she is no longer active on social media. She has no website or newsletter (that I could find). So it’s critical that her publicity and marketing team gets the word out about her book through traditional media channels. Like the blitz for Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo last fall, I expect a similar influencer marketing campaign for Will There Ever Be Another You.

Because I only saw the news at the bottom of a newsletter for people who work in the publishing industry, and not on social (or in DMs from friends who know I am a huge fan), I couldn’t help but wonder about the impact of a cover reveal in a legacy media outlet if it doesn’t spark further conversation.

Here’s a more buzzy case study: on October 16, People got the exclusive reveal for the new Emily Henry novel. Two days later, Emily announced the cover on her own Instagram; the announcement has 153,000 likes.

On X, Lockwood has 96,000 followers, but she didn’t post her own cover. She re-posted a Waterstones tweet about signed editions. It has 40 likes.

Your cover reveal is an important milestone in your book launch timeline. It’s an opportunity to reach two different audiences:

1. Readers who already love your work. To your fans, this is welcome news about your next release. You can use the cover reveal to announce pre-orders at the same time.

2. Your dream readers who have not yet bought one of your books. It’s going to take time to convert these dream readers into buyers, by building trust and showing them the inside of your brain, which is why I think writers should be creating content… the debut novelist Sanibel is doing a great job of balancing promotional content with cultural criticism.

For my own cover reveal, I wanted to reach Self Care fans and new readers. One of the challenges I’ve faced in talking about my new novel is that every time I say “it’s a gothic novel set in a TikTok hype house,” I have to explain what a hype house is. The same day that my copyeditor at Ballantine asked me to define hype house in my back cover copy for the book, Ochuko Akpovbovbo reported on a new TikTok hype house that gained 500,000 followers in its first 24 hours.

So I pretended to be a senior publicist at Riverhead and thought about where I could reach readers who don’t need a hype house explainer. My dream readers. My future fans.

They follow Tell the Bees.

Josh and I became friends thanks to TikTok—I was a fan of his cultural commentary before I knew that he’d read Self Care. A couple weeks ago, I asked Josh if he would do my exclusive cover reveal on his Substack, where he has 22,000 subscribers, and do a Q&A with me.

The basic move is to reveal your cover in your own newsletter or on your own social, but again, I’m trying to reach an audience beyond my fans. I’m also trying to reach readers and the people who follow me on Substack (that’s you) are writers. I want readers to see my cover… and then see it again… and then again… until they think, weird, I keep seeing this book everywhere! It must be meant for me!

Cover design: Lucy Kim

I’m lucky to have Josh as a friend, and I genuinely love talking to him about millennials vs. Gen Z, but I chose him for more than just vibes. I can show you nerds data that supports my choice of his Substack as the best media outlet for my reveal.

Our audience overlaps

Looking at this list, I see three publications that are for writers (Story Club, Before and After the Book Deal, and Publishing Confidential) and three that are for readers who appreciate culture writing (Telling the Bees, Culture Study, and Loosey). If I want readers to know about my new novel, I should pick from the latter group—and Josh/Telling the Bees is the Substacker I’m personally closest to.

To find the “Audience overlap” for your own publication, go into your Substack dashboard and click "Stats" in the top menu, then click "Subscribers." Look in the bottom right hand corner for overlap.

Telling the Bees has also generated more subscriptions for Attention Economy, using Substack’s recommendation feature, than any other publication.

A couple days after Josh ran our interview, I revealed the cover on my own Instagram account, using a carousel. I wrote earlier this year about carousel posts and how you can think of them as scrapbooks.

In this case, I used a carousel to tell the story of my title, which comes from TarotTok, by showing behind-the-scenes screenshots talking to my assistant Callie.

To go with the carousel, I chose a song to trigger nostalgia for elder millennials: “Haunted” by Poe, the sister of Mark Z. Danielewski. Her album Haunted came out as a companion piece to his book House of Leaves (2000), which scared me as a teenager and influenced me as I wrote my own contemporary gothic.

And a couple days after my Instagram reveal, I’m writing this behind-the-scenes post on my own Substack—a third piece of content around the cover of my new novel.

The takeaway for writers (and the agents who love them): think about what influential person or outlet you could partner with for an exclusive reveal before you reveal your cover to your true fans.

The second takeaway is that you can apply this strategy to the launch of anything (a podcast, a new Substack, a new consulting business, etc.)

A note on preorders: A few of you have already told me you’ve preordered my novel—thank you so much! I’m working on a preorder campaign but I’m not ready to announce it yet (no one wants to hear me talk about preorders for five months straight). Stay tuned for more details on what I’m hiding up my sleeve.

📣 This is a public post, so feel free to leave me a comment about cover reveals, or share with a friend who needs this!

Creator Spotlight

This week Francis Zierer interviewed me for his Creator Spotlight series on beehiiv about how I differentiate between writing and content, how I earn income from creating content, why good writers feel entitled to an audience, and what advice I have for a beginner content creator. Listen here.

Upcoming Events

Meet me in person this Thursday at an event (NYC) with Julius Taranto and Nick Gillespie to discuss writing satire at a time when reality is already surreal. Use the code selfcare to save $5 off your ticket.

My next Chat Room will be with Kayla Lightner, an agent at Ayesha Pande Literary, who recently sold Substacker Mikala Jamison’s book. My Chat Room conversations are available to my premium subscribers.