let's talk about ENDPAPERS!!!!

(To the tune of 'let's talk about sex' by Salt-N-Pepa)

I need y’all to know how much I love endpapers. They’re one of my favorite book design elements EVER. When flipping through books at my part-time bookstore job, coming across a good really endpaper will always make me gasp.

Speaking of book design—Right now, sprayed edges are really having a moment. Now don’t get me wrong, a sprayed edge on a special edition of a book works, but it’s gotta be special. I’m talking the limited run of all black edges on Gideon the Ninth (god I love that book) or on a really nice art or cookbook (this cookbook in particular might be my favorite use of a decorated edge I’ve come across). But right now, sprayed edges are EVERYWHERE, especially in SFF. And I’m kinda sick of them! My partner, Chloe, asked me to tell y’all that they’re a buyer at a local indie bookstore, and they’re also so over them. It’s giving over saturation, it’s giving an increase in poor design and a drop in quality. It’s giving… where are the ENDPAPERS?

But seriously, where are all the endpapers? Well, in picture books. Which I love. But I wish they were everywhere! While I try to mostly buy paperback books, because of cost and ease of lugging them around town, every time I end up with a hardcover edition of something and open that bad boy up to see just plain white, it’s just, AH, so disappointing!

I have some exciting news for other endpaper lovers out there— I finally got to design my own, for my upcoming horror collection The Skin You’re In. If you stick around till the end of this newsletter, I’ll share a sneak peek.

But first, let’s take a look at some favorite endpapers of mine. I need y’all to know that this is about 1/3 of the photos I took in preparation for this post.

Some favorite endpapers

Favorites part one! Books: The Shadow Elephant (Robert, Vidali), The Last Stardog (Mosley), When You Look Up (Decur), Flower Finding: Delight in the Splendor of Wild Blooms,The Only Way to Make Bread (Quintero, Gonzales), The Book of Why's (Rodari, Yoon), Sylvester's Letter (Burges, Cochran), Poko and the Drum (Forsythe), Van Dog (Herba, Pa)

Gorgeous, right? Woweeeee! Okay let’s look at a few more.

Favorites part 2: Last Stop on Market Street (De La Pena, Robinson), There's A Ghost In This House (Jeffers), Up Down Inside Out (Yoon), Little Witch Hazel (Wahl), Boy Island (Fox), The Smallest Elephant In The World (Tresselt, Glaser), Big Kids (Deforge), One Week In January (Ellis)

As you can see, one of my favorite styles of endpaper is a bold pattern with a limited color palate, which is what I decided to use in my own endpaper design.

Designing endpapers: my process

I started with research, pulling books off my shelves and building a robust Pinterest board. I noticed a common pattern style— the diamond. I liked the structure of it, and the way invokes an old book, and victorian wallpaper— especially in combination with botanical elements.

Some examples of the diamond motif that I found in books or online

Creating the pattern:

I’ve made a few repeating patterns before, including one for a hardback edition of The Hills of Estrella Roja that ended up not happening due to rising production costs (don’t even get me started!)

It’s important to give credit where credit is due. After trying about 5 different tutorials that went over my head, this video is the one that made sense and taught me how to make repeat patterns. Super easy to follow along with and her repeat pattern tester is indispensable to my process!

Once I decided on the structure, I started sketching the elements, first in pencil then moved them onto procreate. I wanted the pattern to be really visually cohesive with the cover, so I included a lot of the same elements. Originally, I wanted a more stretched out diamond shape, like you can see in the top two, but after days of trying to make the pattern repeat properly, I started over with the square grid you see in the final design. It was just easier to work with.

Process done all in procreate

For the final design, I ended up going with a red background, to break up all the black from the cover, and did some fading to tone down the white and give it a sense of being old. Here’s how it came out:

I’m really happy with how it came out. I’m so proud of the design of this book— the folks at Silver Sprocket really trusted my vision and ran with my ideas (the phrase “cursed object” was thrown around multiple times in our initial book meeting), and I’m so grateful! It looks even lovelier in real life.

Thanks for going on this endpaper adventure with me. If any fellow endpaper-fanatics are reading this, please feel free to share some of your favs!

Till next time!

ARF