Making a Book Cover

Announcing my NEW book filled with friendships, fishing, soup and... MURDER?!

HELLO!

It is finally time for me to officially reveal the cover for my NEXT author/illustrator PICTURE BOOK!!!

It is called…

Don’t Eat Eustace is a tale about a bear and a fish, named Eustace, that Bear is trying very hard to make their lunch. However, with a dash of diversion, a pinch of luck, and the surprising power of friendship Eustace might just survive…

Before we get into the process for the cover, I thought I should introduce you to our characters:

Bear lives alone in a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean.

Eustace lives in the ocean, has a girlfriend (supposedly), and is trying really hard to not get eaten by Bear.

Got it? Cool.

Let’s get to making the cover shall we?

Step One: Thumbnails

As always, I started working on thumbnails in my sketchbook. For some reason, it’s always easier for me to come up with ideas analog rather than digitally on my iPad:

The new season of Bridgerton had just come out when I was working on this cover

This book really only has two characters (and two additional side characters) so I mainly wanted the cover to the show the tension between the two of them. A sort of ~will they~ won’t they~ situation. Also I LOVE the title of this book and I am sad to reveal that I did not come up with it, my friend Beanie did! Everybody thank Beanie! The other titles that were considered were:

• Eustace & Bear

• A Fish Called Eustace

• Catch of the Day

• Bear’s Dinner

• Fish for Dinner

• Please Don’t Eat Me

Step Two: Narrowing down thumbs & digital sketches

From there, I thumbnailed my top ideas in Procreate:

And just as a goofy one, I was texting Jess who said I should do one that’s like the American Gothic painting.

So of course, I did a thumbnail for fun lol:

Anyways, from those, I narrowed it down and took these ones to a cleaner sketch phase:

I liked these but they didn’t make me feel SUPER excited so I decided to hit the books (mainly Pinterest lol) and see if I could squeeze any more ideas out of my brain…

Step Three: Insist on giving myself MORE work

Here’s a peek into my Pinterest board:

I saw that I had collected a lot of images of different stamps and nautical designs which had inspired the interior of this book. So deciding to take one last shot, I whipped up these sketches:

And OH MY GOD! I’m in LOVE. This is my favorite of all the covers and I was hoping and praying that my editor would pick this cover! A shark and heron are side characters in this book and it was fun to get them to be featured on the cover as well.

Step Four: Coloring

Ugh… this part was a headache! I liked the drawings but having to translate them into color was a nightmare especially considering I had to think about how I would paint these with watercolor. The interior art itself is also not as punchy in colors compared to my other books so I also had to make sure I stayed true to the colors inside.

After a lot of back and forth, here are the color studies I came up with:

And of course the color for my favorite one which took forever to figure out but ended up coming out sooo good:

Step Five: Wait with baited (hah!) breath for them to decide on a cover…

Step Six: THEY PICK IT!

They picked my favorite cover!! Wahoo!

Step Seven: Time to sketch the whole jacket

Luckily, once the cover is decided, it’s a lot easier to come up with the back cover and flaps of the book jacket. It’s just a matter of carrying over the same elements and theme.

The part I struggled with designing the most was the damn spine!

At first I thought I was being sooo smart by putting a lighthouse on the spine. In a moment of doubt, I decided to check what Sophie Blackall did on Hello Lighthouse and….

SHE DID A LIGHTHOUSE TOO!!! DAMN. Back to the drawing board it was.

In the end, I ended up with a fishing lure shaped like Eustace and I think it turned out awesome and unique and totally totally better than a lighthouse (right?!). Here is the final jacket sketch:

And colored:

Step Eight: TIME TO PAINT!

Then it was time to paint! I’ll be posting more about the very long journey it took to figuring out how to paint the art for this book but for now, here is the timelapse of some of the painting for this cover:

You guys get a sneak peek of the whole process before I eventually farm this for content on the terrible Instagram Zuckerberg content machine :)

Step Nine: Being Extra

Although the jacket was technically done at this point, I decided that I wanted to give myself more work. For my first book, Oh, Olive! I had decided to be extra and take a themed headshot for my bio at the back of the book:

Cover of Oh, Olive! and my bio flap with themed photo

When it came time for Pig Town Party (my second book), I was so burnt out I just used the same photo from Olive. But for Don’t Eat Eustace, I decided it was time to bring back being extra!!!

So on a day with good light, I set up a makeshift photo booth in my studio, got dressed up and took some photos. The theme was cozy fisherman and I nearly ordered a lighthouse keepers hat but ended up just using the beanie I had on hand. Here are some unedited shots:

From there, I edited the photos and narrowed it down to these two to use on the jacket flap.

In the end, I decided on the not smiling one as I thought that would be funnier given the content of the book.

From there, I was torn on whether I should have the photo be slightly sepia toned or black and white. I really wanted it to feel kind of like an old timey photo:

Sepia vs B/W

As always, I left the decision up to my besties Monica and Jess. They told me color looks better and they were right (obviously):

Step Ten: REVEAL THE FINAL COVER!

Here she is in all her glory!

Don’t Eat Eustace hits shelves October 14th 2025!

I really liked how the backcover came out too! Here it is with some very nice words Corey R. Tabor and Dan Santat had to say about the book:

This book also received its first STARRED REVIEW from Publishers Weekly last week!

My favorite line is:

“Via award winning characterizations that pair well with offbeat, understates humor, Cho will have readers falling hook, line, and sinker for this interspecies buddy comedy.”

Here was Jess’ favorite line:

Anyways, all this is to say that Don’t Eat Eustace is available for preorder NOW! As always, I’ll be partnering with BuyOlympia and providing a FREE limited edition print with every preorder of the book:

If you would like to preorder with a free print you can do so below:

You can also preorder the book from any of the links below or from any place that sells books:

And lastly, in the usual tradition of this Substack, I’ll be offering 1 year of free access to paid posts if you preorder the book and forward your preorder receipt to liantomato@gmail.com!

Thanks for all the support fellas <3