When I choose a book to read I tend to look for an author
I’ve heard of, then read the blurb and maybe the first few pages. If I’m still
intrigued, I’ll go ahead and buy the book. However, I am put off by photographic
representations of characters. I like to make my own mind up about how they look.
Artists’ impressions are a little more palatable as they only make a suggestion
and this is just about the same as the one made by the text itself. Oddly, I’m
less precious about setting.
Also, the cover shouldn’t give away too much of the story.
It should be a little like the blurb and just hint at something.
I’ve included a few here from my own collection of books –
ones I’ve written, ones I’ve published and ones I’ve read.
Clara’s Story
This is the second in my Schellberg
Cycle and picks up the style of The
House on Schellberg Street. The wild flowers in a jug and the pearls are
really very much part of Clara. They do feature in the story.
The House on Schellberg Street
The publisher asked me to pick a selection of stock
pictures. I chose some lovely doorways but these looked too much like what
they’d used on another book. However, we then decided to use a sepia tinted
background – after all this is an historical novel – and present the doorway as
a line drawing. That the door is open intrigues us. This fits well with the story. It
sets the tone for the other books in the cycle.
Salford Stories
We used a photo of Salford here. We desperately wanted a
photo of The Old Pint Pot as one of the stories is set there. However, we just couldn’t
get one that would work. We needed a picture where we had room to fit the blurb
and the title. We had to go for a more generic picture of Salford.
Baubles
This is one of my favourites. People may have thought of
Christmas tree baubles as the book came out just before Christmas. We thought
more in terms of bits and pieces that are collected as people go through life.
Chris Bowles’ story in the collection gives a particular take on that idea.
Something Hidden
This is the title of the first story in the collection and
this was in fact the winner of a short story competition we’d held. I found a stock
photo that goes very well with this story by just searching the site using the
story title as search words. This often
does have amazing results.
Beggarman’s Cottage
Here is an example of an artist’s impression. It’s very watery and
ghost-like and just given an impression. It’s still left to us to decide how exactly
the old cottage might look.
Words and figures as pictures
Her are a couple of examples how we’ve used a series of
words and numbers for the cover. One displays all of the authors. Another creates a bit
of a puzzle. What happened on which day?
The third works on a pun and gives you
numbers to play with.
Click on them and find out more about the book.
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