Reaching out to reade rs
Book cover artists often receive little recognition for their work, but one particular best-seller introduced Dan’s art to a whole new audience…
“Probably the most important cover to me, career wise, would be for Patricia Briggs’ book Moon Called [above],” says Dan dos Santos. “This is the first painting I did for a series that would go on to become a New York Times best-seller, and still my best-known series to date.”
As an illustrator, Dan says, it’s not often that he receives recognition from someone outside of the industry. He gives the example of Harry Potter: “Very few people can actually tell you who the cover artist even is.” The success of the Moon Called helped put Dan “on the radar of a lot of fans and clients alike”. When he attends conventions, where he sells prints and signs autographs, it’s the painting for that particular cover that people recognise most. “I continuously hear people tell me, ‘This is the first painting of yours I saw, and it made me buy the book’. “Hearing that makes me really happy. Not because it means they know my name or might buy more prints, but because it’s confirmation that I did my job really well, and they noticed.”