The linked video above is from the #RomanceClass #RCReadathon2020 panel on romance cover design that I hosted, featuring artists Tania Arpa, Miles Tan, and Carla de Guzman. This is the script of my introduction.
Hello, and welcome to our panel this evening. We are calling this Maybe Judge A Book By Its Cover, and our panelists this evening are cover designers who have worked on books by the #romanceclass community. #romanceclass is a community of Filipino authors of romance in English and the readers of the books and the artists who helped us make our books. My name is Mina V. Esguerra, I’m an author and publisher, and founder of #RomanceClass, and I will be hosting the panel today.
We talk about cover design a lot, like on a weekly basis, just within the community. We have had a workshop on this led by Miles Tan who is part of the panel today. Miles has designed not just the romanceclass community website but a lot of the covers that you've seen on that site. Tania Arpa has designed most of my covers and also those of several other authors in #RomanceClass, most recently the latest books in Jay E. Tria's Playlist series. Carla de Guzman is an author and has designed covers for her books, as well as Dawn Lanuza's book of poetry You Are Here, published by Andrews McMeel.
Tania, Miles, and Carla do design and art in different ways which is great because while romance covers come with expectations, we have learned as a community that there are different ways to convey our message and still be on message. #RomanceClass as some of you know is a community mostly based in the Philippines. The reality is: Even though we are part of the US trad pub ecosystem as consumers, who we are, what we like, and what we write are NOT what they think about when they make decisions. So when it comes to us, the cover design discussion, along with so many parts of publishing, has had to come down to what we feel represents us, not what someone else says is hot or current or the way it has to be. Because at some point we knew we couldn’t wait for the people who don’t know we exist to make those decisions; we’re now making those for ourselves.
So that’s what the first part of this panel will be about. Tania, then Miles, then Carla, will be talking about what they design, how they design, what they like as Filipino artists and Filipino romance readers. Those who’ve joined us, welcome! We’ll answer your questions in the second part of the panel, just type them into the chat.
Let’s start with Tania Arpa.
YOU ARE READING
Author Talks: RomanceClass authors talking about their books
Non-FictionSeries of Filipino authors from the #RomanceClass community talking about their books. Read these, or watch the videos, as you study from home this year, or if you just want to know more about our books and authors.
