Erin Van Der Meer is a former journalist-turned-fiction writer whose work has appeared in numerous outlets, including The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and Elle. She was a Spruceton Inn Artist Resident in 2024. Her debut novel, The Scoop, is a piercing satire about a journalist working the night shift at a tabloid and the explosive consequences of her “harmless” clickbait. It will be published by Grand Central Publishing on April 21, 2026, and it is now available for pre-order.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the striking cover, which was designed by YY Liak, along with a Q&A with Erin Van Der Meer on its creation.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
During the years I was writing The Scoop, I can’t say I gave much thought to what its cover would look like, in the event it should someday be published – this seemed a preposterous fantasy to entertain, like winning the lottery or going to the moon.
But I would notice the covers I was drawn to while wandering bookstores, and there were some common aesthetic threads: bold colors, lots of blank space, and a single, stark item or image that invites curiosity and conveys a sense of drama and intensity.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
It began with my editor at GCP, Nicole Luongo, asking me for any examples, concepts, and ideas, and I really appreciated being asked for my input. That was the first time I’d ever seriously tried to imagine what the cover of The Scoop might look like.
I went back to Nicole with two concepts. One reflected the aesthetic I mentioned – bold colors (I liked the idea of yellow or orange; I thought blues and greens would be too calm for this pretty intense story, and pink or red might be a touch too feminine), with a single object to focus attention on. The second was inspired by the setting of the story: New York City, mostly at night. I imagined something that would be a nod to the Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window (a great story, of course, about a journalist in NYC who gets caught up in something dark), like The Scoop‘s protagonist, Frankie, who takes a job as night editor at a tabloid website, visible through the newsroom window.
To my delight, the designer, YY Liak, and the team (a special shout-out to Nicole and also Albert Tang, the VP Creative Director at GCP) came up with an ingenious combination of both concepts. I love the orange, which pops because the cover isn’t too busy. There were a few rounds of tweaks until we got to the final cover, but from the first iteration, I knew the team had nailed it. At one point Nicole said something to me like, “it’s important to us that you love the cover,” and I couldn’t be more grateful for the care. And I do love it!
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
Emotional. Surreal. It felt like the book was crossing a threshold, from being my own little private world I’d built and been hanging out in, alone, for years, to something other people will know, too. It made the once abstract idea of being published feel concrete.
How does the cover work to convey what the contents of the story are?
The orange and black combo communicates that The Scoop is not a soft or light novel; some words early readers have used to describe it include “searing” and “urgent” (which is also how it feels to stub your toe, but I hope the experience of reading THE SCOOP is more enjoyable than that). Showing Frankie in the newsroom, alone, highlights her loneliness, and the strangeness of working in an office in the dead of night. Along with the direct title, it invites the reader to wonder: who is she, and what does she get herself into? I hope people feel pulled to pick up the book and find out.