Cover Design

This month I want to talk all things cover design, simply because I've learnt so much about it in the last few years. When I published my first book, 'Unforgettable', I looked at my favourite books in the Up-Lit genre to get an idea of the kinds of covers they had and realised that many of the ones which featured a love story had some kind of floral design on the cover.

I had no idea where to go to get a cover created, so ended up googling, to see what options were within my budget. This also gave me an idea of what should be on the cover beyond the title and author. Eventually, I found a designer on Fiverr and sent him some examples of the covers I liked, then left it up to him to create something along similar lines.

When it came back, I loved it; partly this was the thrill of having a professional look for my book, but also it is genuinely pretty. However, over the years I have toyed with the idea of giving it a new cover; one idea was to have an image of Blackpool Tower on the front, to make it clear that it was set in that town. The other thing I considered was whether to re-brand it as a romance book. The problem was, whenever I spoke to anyone about it, they always protested that the current cover was too nice to discard. Nevertheless, it was something I kept coming back to because I definitely wasn't completely happy, even if I couldn't pinpoint why. It's only recently that I've figured out what the issue is and what I need to do to fix it. In fact, it's very simple. In the last few years, as I've become more experienced, my covers have become very particular in their style. 'Unforgettable' doesn't match this style - it's more akin to those of my short story/poetry collections, rather than my novels. The solution is equally simple: get my cover designer to create a new cover in her distinctive style and have it reflect the book's contents.

My short story/poetry collections all have covers I've created myself, albeit with some help from Jane, my publishing partner. For these, I tend to use photographs, or digital images and usually have a reasonably clear idea of the kind of image I want to use. Although they are all very different, the style is much the same and makes it clear that they are similar types of book.

On the other hand, the covers of my other novels are all hand-drawn and I have the original watercolours framed on my study wall. It is obvious that they are all part of the same series and I have had so many compliments about them when I've been at book fairs.

Nevertheless, beautiful as they are, I find the stories behind their creation even more interesting. I never lose sight of how lucky I am that Olivia agreed to take on the challenge of creating my covers. Not only is she a brilliant artist, but I know (and have spoken many times in the past about it) the miracles she works in taking the scrappy images I give her and the vague descriptions I make when trying to articulate the vision in my mind, to then create such beautiful final designs. There is usually an additional challenge where I give her completely unrealistic ideas about how much to cram onto a cover, or the occasions where I know the "vibe" I want, and have airy-fairy notions of the images that need to be included, but have no idea whatsoever about their composition.

Generally speaking now, I tend to make notes about the cover as I write the first draft, and in a bid to help explain my awful drawings, I use AI to create an example cover; although it's never very good and looks nothing like what I have in mind, it is at least better than my own drawings! Olivia and I then meet for coffee and over a drink we chat about the book and I explain my ideas. As I am understandably far better with words than images, I can usually explain what I'm picturing. Once we've done that, Olivia starts work on the cover.

She generally sends me a picture of the background to check I'm happy with the general colour scheme before she starts to add all the detail. Once the painting is complete, I then have the option to make any minor changes that need to be done and then it's time to start the process of turning the artwork into a book cover. For this, I use BookBrush as it gives me the correct size of template to work from and is incredibly straightforward to use. This involves adding a title and author name to the front and the blurb and possibly an image on the back. On the spine, the title and author name are repeated, with the addition of the Castle Priory Press logo. Every margin has to be checked to make sure that nothing appears on the wrong part of the cover and then it's off to the printer for a proof copy to make sure that the printed versions match how it looks on my computer screen.

Everybody knows the saying about not judging a book by its cover, but every author knows that's what everyone, including us, does. We can't help it - our eyes are naturally drawn to an interesting or pretty cover and this helps us decide whether or not we want to pick up the book and read the blurb. Covers also give us an indication of the genre of the book we're looking at and obviously that also influenes our decision to pick it up or not. Consequently, we, as authors, know how important it is to get them absolutely right. I know how lucky I am to have such a fantastic artist to work with to create mine and I love it when they are complimented by customers. It was even better when the cover of 'The Mermaid' was a Book Cover Finalist in the 2024 Page Turner Awards.