Cover Girl

The last four weeks my job title should been Cover Girl, or girl trying to create a cover for her debut novel. Who knew how difficult it would be?

If you’ve been following me, you’ll know my debut novel is called The French Bed and it’s based on a bed I actually own. During the seven years it took me to write the story, in the back of my mind I knew a picture of the bed would be on the front cover but that’s as far as my thinking went. Now if there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the last month its start early and give yourself plenty of time. I don’t know what I was thinking, there was no reason to wait until the book was edited, I could have got on with it ages ago and wish I had.

This being the first book cover I’ve ever been involved in I needed some advice which I got from one of the Green Room sessions with Mark Stay. I learnt lots of stuff, but it mainly boiled down to being sure the cover carries the vibe of the story, makes the genre obvious and will appeal to the type of reader I am trying to attract.

Then I needed to find the right person for the job. If you google ‘Book Covers’ you get lots of possibilities. Click on websites and it all sounds so easy but what soon becomes clear is you have to be the one who starts the creative thinking, after all this is your story, so shouldn’t you know what you want?

Answer; no, not really…

I wanted someone who would help me with the design, not just execute it and I feel I  struck lucky when I came across the lovely Ken Dawson of Creative Covers. He is not only incredibly patient but good at interpreting my ideas and building on them. I was worried about getting it right and how many attempts he would allow me before telling me to go to hell and never set foot on his door step ever again..! But we got there in less than twenty attempts and always with humour and politeness.

To begin with I thought I knew what I wanted but when Ken produced exactly that I didn’t like it at all. The bed sat centre stage surrounded by dreamy vineyards but I felt it led you to believe the story was going to be a simple romance under the Mediterranean sun surrounded by vines. Yes, there is some of that in the story but there is so much more.

The French Bed Front Cover

In the end we chose to let the bed do the work all on its own and the graphics on the back cover continue to set the scene. Let me know what you think?

The next step is to get it published and I will be telling you the date in my next post so stay tuned.