Day 5

Author Life Month: That'll cover it

The evolution of a book cover is a curious thing... We are always told not to judge a book by its cover but how can we not when it's the first thing we see?

When I first started designing the cover for my first book I had this idea of going completely against the grain of what was typical of the erotic romance genre. I briefed my vision to a fabulous illustrator and what she came back with was exactly as I asked for. At full size on my screen it looked amazing and I proudly uploaded it onto Amazon when I was ready to release my book. But when I brought up my listing on Amazon all I felt was disappointment. What had worked so well on my screen did not translate into a tiny thumbnail; all those tiny little details and nuances were simply lost and simply looked amateurish amongst the other covers.

The second version worked better as a small thumbnail. I'd learnt a lot from looking at other covers but I was still determined to make my cover stand out by going down the illustrated route. Yet when it came to promoting the book it became clear that the style and genre of the book did not fit with the cover. With a background in Marketing and my dissertation written about colour theory in product packaging I had to concede that I'd messed up. Instead of working with the genre, I had been working against what people expected, confusing them and damaging my sales.

So I did what I should have done in the beginning. I looked at what worked for those bestselling covers and went back to the drawing board. The result was something I finally felt could stand on its own amongst the other books in the genre. It fit in with what people expected when looking for a story in the erotic romance genre yet still felt unique to me.

But in the end design is subjective. What appeals to one person is not necessarily another's cup of tea so in the end you can only put your cover out there and hope the sales follow.