December marks the start of the holiday season and the return of one of our favorite year-end traditions: the annual best book cover tournament. Now in its fourth year, this contest is our way of recognizing and celebrating the talented designers behind the books. After all, the cover is the very first thing you see when you walk into a bookstore. These designs are more than just attractive; they help tell the story before the first page is even turned.
The contest unfolded through multiple rounds of voting on Instagram and X, with some unexpected twists along the way. Staff favorites like Crunch, Inconsolable Objects, and Mystery Lights were eliminated early on, while another staff favorite, Mouth, almost made it to the finals. The final two covers stood out for their originality and distinctiveness. One perfectly embodied the book’s title with innovative neon lettering, while the other intrigued with a pink mist enveloping the characters in a shroud of mystery, desire, and tragedy, every glance capturing a different mood and emotion.
From 32 cover designs, here are the semi-finalists:
Above Us The Sea by Ania Card (design by Emma Ewbank) versus Mouth by Puloma Ghosh (design by Adriana Tonello, photograph by Suzanne Saroff).
The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu (design by Julianna Lee) versus Ghostroots by Pemi Aguda (design by Sarahmay Wilkinson, art by Day Brierre).
From the Final Four, now we’re down to two crowd favorites:
The winner of Electric Lit’s 2024 Book Cover Tournament: The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu, design by Julianna Lee.
We spoke to Julianna Lee, the designer of The Manicurist’s Daughter, about creating the book cover.
Electric Lit: Tell us about your design process for this book cover and what you wanted to convey through the artwork
Julianna Lee: My parents immigrated from Korea in the ’70s and owned a wholesale store in the Garment District of New York City, so this book deeply resonated with me. It also helped that I have manicurists in the family. I wanted to capture the entrepreneurial spirit of immigrants, who were denied access to white collar jobs in America, so built their own way of income. I also wanted to transform everyday, “ugly” iconography into something beautiful—since the beauty myth is a prevalent theme throughout the book.
EL: Did you have any interesting false starts or rejected drafts you can share with us or tell us about?
I wanted to transform everyday, ‘ugly’ iconography into something beautiful.
JL: The neon sign was the first idea that came into my head. I experimented with other concepts, like strip mall buildings, makeup drips, and mirrors featuring marble busts, but none of them captured the same magic as the neon sign. However this comp didn’t even make it past the first round. Instead, I was asked to revise another comp featuring raining nail polish drips, however I didn’t think it communicated the subject matter well enough. Since I came to this project as a freelancer, I was not privy to the jacket meeting conversations. I was only informed that my ideas were all killed. Six months later, I was pleasantly surprised when the creative director reached out to me to let me know that Susan Lieu, the author, saw my nail salon sign comp and thought it was perfect. It was always my favorite too.
EL: What’s your favorite book cover of 2024, besides your own?
JL: There were so many brilliant covers in this competition, so I’m truly honored that I made it this far. Rather than picking one cover for 2024, I want to use this opportunity to give a shout out to all those talented book cover designers that don’t get enough attention for their work that they deserve. Sometimes the assignments are too commercial or genre to be appreciated, but I know all dedication and thoughtfulness that goes into each one. I see you!
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