By Rachel Toor

As a young editorial assistant, I once had an author call me up a few weeks before his book was slated to be published.

"Rachel," he said, "last night I dreamed about my book."

Oh, boy, I thought, this is gonna be a good one.

"Last night I saw my book," he said. "I saw it, I tell you. I saw my book."

Ah, yes, I thought, of course you did.

"Rachel," he said, "my book cover is supposed to be orange."

Words failed me, but he soon filled in the silence: "Is there any way it could be orange?"

How to respond? I couldn't say, "Are you freaking kidding me? The book is going to be out very soon and no, my friend, it is not going to be orange." Instead I assured him that the design would be good and appropriate for the serious academic volume he had written, and while the cover wasn't orange, I was pretty sure he would be pleased with the design.

"You really don't think there's any chance it could be orange?"

I really didn't. Not that there's anything wrong with orange.

Most academics are not known for their stunning fashion sense, their eye for elegant design, their flair, élan, or je ne sais quoi when it comes to packaging. These are people, let's remember, who tend toward untidy facial hair, sandals with socks, and, God help us, corduroy jackets. They tend to be suspicious of anything that looks too slickly wrapped. Academics buy for value, not for labels; for content, not for form.

Why, then, are so many academic authors unhappy with the way their book covers are designed by publishers? And how did I get to be one such author?

For my first book, I ended up with a title I still don't like and a cover that continues to make me cringe. The packaging of my second book still gives me nightmares. How did I end up with those icky versions? Easy. I took the money.

We are all prostitutes. This is something I like to say. I also like to say that I write for the money. While writing may not be as hard as digging postholes or as important as fixing toilets, it's still a job. My time and effort are valuable, and I want to reach as a large an audience as possible, and I think I should be remunerated for my efforts. (That is why I don't trust poets. Their books are hardly read, and they are rarely paid.) If there are places willing to pay me for my work, I say hooray.

But when you take the money, you give up some things. Like choice, degrees of freedom, and, oh, I don't know, integrity. Just ask thepoets. While I have never regretted going with commercial presses for my first two books, when it came time to look for a publisher for my third—and I had the luxury of a regular paycheck from an academic job—I decided to give up my tarty ways.

I approached only one university press, the University of Nebraska's, and got to write the book I wanted to write. There was no more dumbing down my prose to reach the widest possible readership. I also got a physical product that makes me happy every time I look at it.

And yet it almost didn't happen that way. So I offer my experience as a cautionary tale, a view from someone who should have known better, but like most mortals, didn't.

I wrote a book about running. More specifically, I tried to write a book that would make fellow travelers nod in agreement and, more important, show nonrunners why I love to do something that many people find nutty. I knew how I wanted to structure the book: in 26.2 chapters, following an arc that would be familiar to anyone who has ever run that distance in miles—the first part ticks off quick and easy, the middle section is surprising in its emotional lows and difficulty, and then, at the end, things pick up and you finally get home.

My editor gave me no editorial advice, nor did I expect any. I had my own readers and, for the cost of a cup of coffee or a walk or run in the woods, they helped me hone and shape the manuscript.

While I didn't know what I wanted for the cover, I knew what I didn't want. There are clichés in running as in all aspects of life. The worst possible cover, in my opinion, would be a pair of disembodied legs. I had seen that too often on the covers of books about running.

Then I received the initial design for my cover. My agent, less familiar with the genre than I, commented that the disembodied legs were far less muscular than mine: "She doesn't even look like a marathoner." That was the least of my problems with it.

So I went back to the press and gave my list of reasons why the disembodied legs would not work. It came back to me with the best response an author could hope for: Fine, tell us what you want.

I didn't know. While I knew it was my job to write the best manuscript I could, approach people for blurbs, and be responsible for the bulk of the marketing, I didn't think it was my job to act as a book-jacket designer. But I was wrong. And I should have known better.

Here's the thing, future authors. You are the best person to find an image that will capture what you are trying to do in the book. It's up to you to help guide the publisher. Saying that you want the cover to be orange is fine, if you can come up with compelling reasons. If you have a strong sense of what the design should be like, let the designers know. If there are field-specific clichés you would like to avoid, mention them. If you are allergic to sans-serif type, the designers may be able to work around that. Your cover will be more important to you than to anyone else—this is especially true of academic books—so if you are reasonable and courteous, it's likely that your editors will listen to you. They want you to be happy.

I always used to tell authors that once the final manuscript was turned in, the real work began. Why I didn't think that applied to me, as an author, is a mystery. I expected the designers at Nebraska to read my book, read my mind, and come up with something perfect. That was about as reasonable as expecting to win the lottery.

So I went back to the book. The last chapter is called "The Curtain Rod." It's about how I've hung all of my marathon finisher's medals on a curtain rod in my living room; it works as a visual pun, like one of those drapey things called a valance. It's a way of marking where I've been and what I've done. I enlisted a photographer friend to capture my homemade valance digitally and sent it to the press. Everyone was happy.

When Nebraska agreed to bring out a new paperback edition of my second book, I was thrilled and described exactly what kind of image I wanted on the cover. I told the editors what I didn't like about the hardcover and previous paperback versions, and more important, I told them what I thought would work and why. The designer came up with a proposed cover; I made some specific suggestions. He said he'd never worked with an author who was so involved before, who knew exactly what she wanted. It was, he said, a great experience. Ditto, I said.

It's a luxury to have a job that pays us to write whatever we want, to pursue any research that captures our attention. It frees us from having to write for money. And when you stop working for the coin, you have the freedom to think about the art and craft of your work.

Publishers tend to be good at what they do. They notice trends, they pay attention to the way bookstores stock, they try to be hip and groovy. Even as the book-publishing world changes and adjusts to digital demands, authors are still going to want their books packaged in ways that pay visual tribute to what they have attempted to accomplish in the text.

As authors, just as we have had to become savvier about marketing and promotion, we also have to be advocates for our packaging.

I'm afraid that goes beyond calling your editor and telling her you dreamed that your book cover was orange. If you want an orange cover, make the case for it. And send in a photo. Maybe you'll get lucky.

Rachel Toor is an assistant professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University, in Spokane. Her Web site is http://www.racheltoor.com. She welcomes comments and questions directed to careers@chronicle.com.