If you’re a lover of romance novels you’ve probably heard of cover artist Leni Kauffman. Or, at the very least, you’ll recognize her work. Since being commissioned to do her first romance cover for Mimi Grace’s Along for the Ride, Leni has done many covers for indie authors and traditionally published authors alike, including Hannah Grace, Becky Albertalli, Danielle Jackson, Lily Chu, and Ashley Herring Blake, to name a few.
I was so excited when Leni agreed to sit down with me and discuss her journey into become one of the most well known cover illustrators in the romance genre, and what she’s working on next. Enjoy our full interview below!
Zakiya: Hi Leni! I’ll just dive right in. Obviously, a very easy simple straight forward question. How did you become a book cover artist?
Leni: I’ve been a freelance illustrator since 2012 or so. I was doing lots of different odd jobs so things like background illustration for animations, or the odd book cover, or a couple of editorials, but it was lots of very little different jobs. Nothing that I sort of stuck to. Then, back in 2019 or 2018, an author called Mimi Grace contacted me and she said, “I saw your work.” She was a romance author. Still is! She was my first romance cover that I did. From there, I did that cover and it was released into the world. After I did that particular cover I got more and more requests for romance novels, and sometimes [young adult] novels, and things kind of snowballed from there. So I kind of fell into it, a little bit. I didn’t set out to be just a cover illustrator, but that’s how things turned out.
ZJ: That was literally one of my questions. What was the first cover you did?
LK: Yeah it was that one. Actually that’s not the first book cover I ever did, but it was the first romance cover I ever did.
ZJ: What was the first book cover you ever did?
LK: That’s a really good question. It was about Venice. Someone’s life in Venice. It was called The Politics of Washing Real Life in Venice so I think it was autobiographical. Not fiction.
ZJ: Was that just something that someone came to you for? Was it commissioned?
LK: Yeah somebody approached me. So, in that case a small publisher in the UK approached me. It was just a one off. And after that I didn’t really see any more book projects come in.
ZJ: Did you always have an interest in doing book covers?
LK: I guess as an illustrator, especially as a freelance illustrator, I’m still open to all sorts of projects. And I think book covers was one of the areas that I did want to see my work on, but I’m still open to doing all sorts of projects. Whether that’s packaging design or children’s books or editorial. But I think a lot of illustrators want to try a few different things. But I’m very happy book covers are checked off my list now.
ZJ: So, what’s your process for creating these covers?
LK: With an independent author, it’s maybe slightly different to working with a publisher. But in both cases the publisher or the author will reach out to me and they’ll say, “Can you work on this?” And then we’ll have a chat about what the project’s about. So they’ll initially send me a brief. That brief is sometimes very specific. Sometimes they’ll give me photo references for things like, “I want the characters to look like this. I want them to be interacting like this. I want the background to look like this with minimal color or lots of color. And I want this type of color palette.” And then other times the brief can be very open and they’ll let me do my thing. They’ll say, “As long as the characters look vaguely like this I don’t mind what you do with the rest of the cover.”
After that I’ll look at the references and send over a sketch based on what I think they want and then it’s a process of going back and forth with the client about what changes they want, what kind of requests they might have, what kind of tweaks. And then once the sketch stage is done they’ll approve me to move on to color and that’s when I render the illustration to full cover and I’ll add things like shadows and highlights and make it fully rendered. From that stage they’ll usually just give me feedback on specific colors. If I’m working on the design I’ll then move on to the design part of the book. So, picking a typeface for the title or I’ll draw out a typeface by myself. Or draw out the lettering by myself. Then, do the rest of the design of the cover. The back cover, the spine, all that stuff.
If it’s a publisher usually they just ask for the illustration. So, they have a whole design team that does that side of things. I really only do the design if I’m working with an independent author. So, yeah that’s the sort of general process for both.
ZJ: Oh wow I didn’t realize you design the whole thing for indie authors. That’s awesome! Okay, this is probably a hard question but what has been your favorite cover to create so far?
LK: Oh that is a hard question! (laughs) I think I have a few favorites based on different reasons. The first romance cover I did with Mimi Grace still means a lot to me because it opened up this whole world of book covers. I think the cover I did for The Stand In by Lily Chu. That really meant a lot to me because that was the first cover I was asked to draw an Asian character and I’m half-Japanese so that meant a lot to me because I was drawing someone from my background. And then I would say the cover I did for Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade. That’s still one of my favorites. And that was one of the first big publishers I worked with. That was a milestone for me. And I really like working on Olivia Dade covers. She’s a lovely person.
ZJ: Kind of related to that, your covers include a variety of people who are different races, ethnicities, body sizes, etc. How do you ensure you capture these characters the right way with your art?
LK: So, I mentioned photo references from authors. That’s really important, especially for capturing accurate body sizes or hairstyles or skin colors. I think working from not just one photo reference but a variety of references is really helpful. Especially if I’m drawing someone from a culture I’m not very familiar with. I think it’s super important to do my research into all sorts of things. What would be the appropriate clothing for this person? What would be the appropriate hairstyle? And then depending on the process I’ll run that by the author or the author will send it to me in the first place. If I’m working by myself and I don’t have many references I try to ensure that I do my research first and then I’ll work really closely with the author on the sketch phase just to make sure things are accurate and represented properly.
ZJ: I feel like there’s a lot of conversations about lack of diversity in publishing so I was wondering if that’s something you feel exists in the art world as well. Are most cover artists white and do you feel we need more diverse artists?
LK: I would agree. There’s not much diversity in the book cover world. Within the book covers that I get commissioned to do it’s overwhelming white and very heterosexual. Even before I started to work on book covers, it was really important to me to draw people from different backgrounds with different skin colors. That was a personal mission of mine. And that was just because within illustration all I was seeing represented was a very specific body type: very skinny, only one skin color, usually white. And I wanted to help break that. It’s not just one way we all have to look. As with any other industry I’m sure the book cover world could do with a lot more diversity and a lot more different types of artists working within it.
ZJ: There’s been a lot of conversations about AI covers lately. Unfortunately, I think it’s becoming more prevalent. Is there anything you’d like to say on that especially to authors and publishers who are using AI? Why do you think it’s a bad idea or bad for artists?
LK: For people who don’t know, AI generated images are created by all sorts of AI generator machines, such as Midjourney or DALL·E or all of these different companies. Essentially how they create these images is they feed thousands or even millions and millions of images into these machines and the machine essentially copies all of these images and supposedly creates its own version, but it’s really not. It’s been proven to be a hodgepodge of existing art that has been stolen from artists. The reason it’s ethically bad is because it’s mostly been taken from artists and illustrators without their permission. It’s an issue of consent. And if you are making money off it, (which these companies are making money because a lot of them have subscription services,) then you are making money off of the backs of stolen artwork without the artists’ consent. This goes for photographers, and all sorts of people who’ve made images.
So, to authors who use AI generated images. They might sort of think they’re using some silly program that creates a profile picture in the style of Pixar, I’m seeing a lot of that these days. And they think it’s harmless fun, but even those things are created off the back of artists and stolen work. And to those authors I would say how would you feel if someone fed all of your books into ChatGPT and created a book in the style of your writing. Would that make you feel okay with it? Would you be okay with your work being stolen?
For publishers, they’ll have their reasons for using AI. I think maybe some of them might have trouble spotting it. But I think there has been enough of a backlash when we see a cover that’s AI generated that it’s pretty clear a lot of people are not happy with publishers using AI for their cover. I think it’s a huge area and I could talk on and on for ages about this. But I am firmly against any AI generated images. I think it’s ethically terrible.
ZJ: Okay, back to fun stuff! You mentioned you know other book cover artists. Are there any that you love and want to shout out?
LK: I’m going to start with Monika Roza. She’s @monikarozaa on Instagram. She has a mixture of illustrations for more children’s books style illustrations but she’s also done a couple romance covers that are really beautiful. I think she should definitely be much more booked. There’s another cover artist called Jacqueline Li (@jacqlnli). She already works in [young adult] and romance covers. Her work’s stunning. There’s another artist called Charlot Kristensen. (@zolwia). She also does beautiful illustrations and she also wrote her own graphic novel. Also, on Instagram is Charis Jackson Barrios (@charisjb.studio). She’s a really talented illustrator, and I think she wants to take on more cover art as well. I recommend taking a look at her work. It’s really colorful. Her characters are incredible. There are so many artists I could recommend. There are so many artists I’m inspired by but that’s just a small handful.
ZJ: Is there an author you haven’t created a cover for yet that you’d love to work with?
LK: This is a pivot but I’d love to take on a horror cover. I read a lot of horror fiction so I’d like to do something completely different and unexpected and do a horror cover at some stage. I’m open to working with a few authors, but that would be a dream of mine.
ZJ: I am so curious to see what a horror cover would look like from you! Per you reading horror, you do romance covers so do you have a favorite romance novel you’ve read?
LK: With a lot of the covers I do, I often draw them at the same time the book is being written so I don’t get a chance to read the book before I draw anything for it. So, I’m very late to the party on this one, but I recently read Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert and that was wonderful. It really moved me. It reminded me of difficult relationships between myself and one of my parents. It really meant a lot to me and it was a brilliant read. And I feel really bad that it took me years to read it but I have now!
ZJ: I work on a lot of books and don’t get to read them all so that’s very relatable! My last question for you is what are you working on next? If you’re allowed to say…
LK: I’m not sure if I’m allowed to share if I’m working on something. It’s maybe something I should ask. (laughs) I’m going to go with an indie author because I think that won’t get me into trouble. I’m working on a new cover for Nicole C. Moon and I’ve worked with her before on one cover. The reason I’m excited for this one is it’s my first romance fantasy cover. It’s a little bit of a different vibe to my usual covers, so I’m excited for that to be revealed. With publisher covers, I’m not quite sure if I’m allowed to talk about them, but there are exciting covers coming out in the future.
Zakiya N. Jamal 
nice