You, The Editors

In addition to 8,000 votes and counting, we have gotten some great feedback in the comments section of our book cover poll. A sample of the various input - the kind of editing most mainstream publishing companies don't provide any more (they're too busy generating buzz):

I'm a book designer. New Orleans, hands down. Good color, quirky, will help sell the book. Liked Wisconsin too, but Ft. Lauderdale is the best candidate for the back cover! It's a great, if seedy, image. Pebble Beach: too pretty.

Silver Spring. Ain't that America?

I'm actually against New Orleans, the current frontrunner with 6,000 votes, because so much of the picture is the window itself. Isn't the basic idea here supposed to be about the view? And I know it's cliche, but I'd pick one of the more panoramic ones (Rome or Ho Chi Minh) for visual effect if you're interested in grabbing everyday book buyers, contra the book designer's advice above.

Agreed about New Orleans. ... This View From My Window series has been so great because of the hints you get of both interior and exterior (not to mention the cool sense of community it engenders once a day). This one favors inside (all about me) over outside (all about the world) a little too much, so for my money it neglects half the poem.

I like Rosso, Mauritania, @ 6.30 am. It reminds me of my grandma's screen door in her poor neighborhood in north Minneapolis.

Can't believe anyone finds the Ft. Lauderdale one ugly -- to me it may be the most beautiful in the sense of evocative.

Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, is the one. A little sad, like a one room, 2nd floor student rental in somebody's house. But that means the photographer's whole life is ahead of them, right?

New Orleans is too cliche, a pre Katrina cliche, a pre-GWB coffee table cover cliche. I like Wauwatosa cause I've never heard of it.

Wauwatosa for me. I tried not to be partial, because I grew up two blocks from that Milwaukee suburb, but so many of the other pictures had no focal point: the eye wanders around trying to settle on something that it never finds. The Tosa picture, on the other hand, has a semi-formal arrangement of planes, rectangles and triangles. And it has a theme: my house to yours. We're neighbors. It may look forlorn, but that's just the post-winter, not-yet-spring season. The east side of Tosa, where that was taken, is full of charming bungalow homes and tree-lined streets.

Hate to be a contrarian, Andrew, but none of these are right. Part of the charm of this project was the simple reminder that we're from many places in the world, with several sharp differences between us, and yet, here we all are ... drawn together, sharing your words within our own room, but also looking outward. That's powerful internet magic! And now you want us to rate one another's views? No. All the cover really needs is the view from YOUR window.

I am saving mine for the forward. A beagle is involved (hey, I get to break my own rules).