BOOK COVER REVEAL!!!!

Plus all the cover ideas rejected along the way

Note: I learned after publishing this post that Substack was blocking messages to my darbysaxbe@substack.com email address from non-subscribers. So if you pre-ordered the book and emailed me from a different email address, or if you weren’t already subscribed, I never got your message. I’ve since fixed this setting so please try again & I’ll comp you right away!

When I started this Substack about seven months ago, I dreamed of writing this post. I had just submitted the first draft of my Dad Brain manuscript to my editor, after living deep inside a book-writing cave for the previous six months. Waiting to hear back, I was in anxious limbo. Would she hate every word? Would the publisher cancel my book contract? (Thankfully, neither fear came to pass, but I did practically rewrite half of the book in the six months that followed). After spending most of my waking hours thinking about the book, it was bizarre to have that book-sized chunk of my brain suddenly excised and sent off to someone else, totally outside my control.

My first coping strategy for book anxiety was to go all-in on the medieval world-building desktop game, Forge of Empires. The goal is to build a city and then level it up through different eras, from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age to the Progressive Era, the Post-Modern Era, and beyond, all the way to the Atomic Future. You can train an army to fight in battles and even create auxiliary settlements for more points.

I started playing during the pandemic, worked my way up to the Progressive Era, and then tapped out for about five years. I started again in January 2025, which, in case you are taking notes, coincided with some weird times in politics. My 16-year-old daughter, who is more perspicacious than me despite claiming to have no interest in psychology, commented, “It seems like you are building a fake world because the real world is stressing you out.”

It’s not the best world-building game out there; the graphics are lame and the dialogue is wooden. But I built up an extremely stacked city after months of diligent play. I had a Fjordstorm Dockyard, a Lagoon Hold, and a Celestial Airship. I level-maxxed all my buildings and set myself up to collect 500 forge points a day. My army got uber-jacked. After a while, I started auto-battling because my army was too good. Soon after that, I burned out on Forge, and needed a new hyperfixation. Enter Substack, and did it ever deliver. As soon as I saw the author stats pages, with the subscriber growth charts, I knew I was a goner. I love a growth chart.

So here we are now, full circle because my book launch is approaching and I have actual subscribers, and a book cover to share! In fact, the book cover design process became yet another deep hyperfixation for me while it unfolded. I find book design fascinating, because it’s your best shot to distill your book’s identity into a single visual image, and when an author has been inside a book for a while, figuring out its identity is kind of like finding your daemon –the animal that embodies your soul.

When I first met my editor, before I’d even handed in the manuscript, she asked, “Do you have any strong feelings about book covers? Particular colors or fonts that you like?” At the time, I was so excited to have a book deal that it did not occur to me to have strong feelings about book covers. I might have mentioned that I like the color blue, but that’s about as far as we got. (Fun fact: 40% of people consider blue to be their favorite color).

However, once the book design process started in earnest, I realized that in fact I have very strong feelings about book covers. In fact, the book cover process sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole and made me briefly want to change careers in order to become a book cover designer.

Although you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, your cover is really your best chance to define a book’s brand. Figuring out my book’s brand identity was tricky, though. The book is called Dad Brain but it’s not just a neuroscience book; it’s about culture and policy too. So my editor felt that we should not put a brain or a head on the cover. We wanted to counter-signal to readers that this book is about more than brains. At the same time, the book is more of a “big idea” book than a “how-to” book or an instruction manual for dads. We wanted it to look smart and not too cartoony.

.We also had a gender signaling challenge. Most parenting books are aimed towards women, and in fact most books are aimed towards women. This was a recurring conversation when I met with editors at the book acquisition stage. “Men don’t buy books, so who will buy this book?” I found this to be a bit insulting towards men, but then again, it’s driven by actual book-buying data. Our argument during these meetings was that not only will men hopefully want to buy this book, but also that women might want to buy it for their partners or themselves. In order to appeal to both men and women, we had to avoid the fluffy pink imagery that you often see connected with parenting. No pink, no purple, nothing too cute or babyish. I wanted this to be a book that men could read at the airport without being embarrassed.

In publishing, people talk a lot about “comps”: what other books are like yours or might appeal to a similar audience. There were a few covers that my editor and I agreed that we both liked — they were visually appealing and gender-neutral. We especially liked how the Hunt, Gather, Parent cover was clever and a little surprising, juxtaposing a suburban-mom tote bag with the hunter-gatherer symbols inside it.

There are not a lot of “dad science” books out there, but these two just came out within the last few years (annoyingly, after I had already started writing my own book), so we needed to steer clear of their cover concepts — too bad, because “progression of man” and “manly arm holding baby” are both great fatherhood images.

The Dad Brain book design process started in earnest with a couple of mockups that came from my publisher, and they sent me into a tizzy.

Before I say more, I am going to do something new (for me), which is paywall this post. My publisher does not want a bunch of discarded book cover ideas floating around the internet, and I want to show you some goofy brainstorms that are unfit for public scrutiny. But! I have a deal for you. If you pre-order my book, I will gift you a six-month paid subscription to this newsletter.

You can also just buy a regular subscription, of course, but here’s my pitch for why you might want my book. First of all, it’s much better than my Substack! I spent 1000x more time on it, and it’s professionally edited, so waaaay fewer typos. If you like this Substack even a tiny bit, you’ll love Dad Brain The Book. My publisher calls it a “fatherhood world tour.” It’s partially inspired by my life with my own single dad after my parents’ divorce, and it surveys the anthropology, biology, neuroscience, and cultural politics of fatherhood.

This book is about dads, but it’s not only for dads. It’s for men who want to know how their minds, bodies, brains and lives are changed by parenthood, but it’s also for moms, men who might like to become dads, women who like dads, men who like dads, anyone who has a dad, anyone who knows a dad, or anyone who thinks dads matter. Plus, I tried really hard to make it not boring.

To get this deal, order the book and forward a copy of your receipt to darbysaxbe@substack.com so I can comp your subscription. (You might notice when you click the order page, you already see the book cover, thus giving away this post’s big reveal. I was going to wait until after the paywall to point that out, but it’s very obvious. Still, going past the paywall lets you see all the also-ran ideas for covers and vote on your favorites, and I really want to know your votes, so I hope you make it through). If you are already a paid subscriber (aka if you’re my mom, dad, stepbrother, ex-boyfriend, or one of a handful of especially wonderful folks), I’ll comp you whenever your subscription runs out! (Note to my dad: Substack is telling me this post is “too long for email,” so to read the whole post, you’ll have to click on the title and possibly enter your email address, but they will not charge you any more money, I promise). (Additional post-publication note: I discovered that Substack was blocking some emails to my substack.com address….if you send over a receipt and don’t get a response or a subscription upgrade right away, please DM me!).

I’ll be doing some more paywalled posts in the coming months, tales that are too personal, too spicy, or too embarrassing for the public. But if you’re not into that, please don’t unsubscribe! I promise not to talk about my book in every newsletter. OK, paywall coming…now.