An Exercise in Cover Design by Alison Henderson

You've all been such a valuable and cherished source of support for me over the years, it seems only fitting that I should be asking for your help once again in my final regular post for the Roses of Prose. I may have mentioned I've started re-working a story I began a few years ago after finishing Unwritten Rules. It's going well, so I decided to start working on concepts for the cover design. I'm aiming for a June 2019 publication date, but having a cover I love always inspires me to keep going when the writing bogs down, as it inevitably does. Also, I like to live with the design for a few months and keep tinkering with it until I've got it just right.

To that end, I've come up with five preliminary cover concepts, and I'd love your gut reactions to them. The story is a romantic suspense (not sure how those elements will balance out yet) set in Big Sur and Carmel. There's a murder, money-laundering Russians, and a couple of humorous, meth-dealing bikers. It may turn out to be darker than my last series but not bite-your-nails-and-hide-in-the-closet dark. In addition, my heroine is a kinetic sculptor who has come home to escape an abusive relationship and find her true self through her art, so there will be personal growth, transformation and hope. Not much of a tall order, is it? lol

At this point, I want the cover to convey a strong sense of place and the impression that something interesting is going to happen here. I want something that will make readers click on the cover to learn more.

Three of the mock-ups include images of the Bixby Bridge, and two are of the Big Sur coastline. The bridge images convey more of a sense of mystery or suspense, and the crashing waves tie in more with the title and the heroine's wind sculpture. I'll decide which way to go once I have more of the book written and have a better feel for the final tone. For that reason, it would be really helpful if you treated this like a Chinese restaurant menu and chose one from column A and one from column B. But please, if you hate them all, please say so! 

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

Thanks so much for your help!

Alison

https://www.alisonhenderson.com

The Elements of a Striking Book Cover by Jannine Gallant

HIDDEN SECRETS releases at the end of this month. I need to promote it. I don't intend to self-publish book one of my COUNTERSTRIKE series, (recently re-titled) FATAL ENCOUNTER, until May of 2019. For these reasons, I was NOT going to post my new cover. But I can't seem to control myself...

When I made the decision to self-publish this new series, I immediately stopped writing and started obsessing over covers. I was trying to put together a concept that fit with my outdoor scenery yet suspenseful vibe brand. I didn't want these to be exactly like my other covers, but I wanted them to be similar. I finally decided on scenes from the books where the heroine is running away from danger. Book One is in the woods. Book Two is on a rocky beach. Book Three is a pond near the heroine's cabin in the forest. Do you think I could find backgrounds I like with running silhouettes? Of course not. So, I emailed fellow Rose and cover designer extraordinaire, Alison Henderson, to see what she thought about adding a dark running woman silhouette to a background and to ask if she wanted to design my covers. She said "no problem." What a relief. But she also said she thought it would look better with a real person rather than the dark shadow I'd imagined.

And so the back and forth of creating the perfect cover began. So much thought goes into a cover. The concept. Images that convey the concept but also will actually work as a cover. It has to show up well in a thumbprint size plus attract the eye of a reader and make them click on it to read the blurb. I had a heck of a time finding background images that had a spot for the running figure, had a suspenseful vibe, but weren't too dark to show individual features, AND were cool and attractive enough to make a reader notice them. A tall order. We finally agreed on background images we both liked. Then, we had to find running women with the right coloring and the right clothes that could be dropped onto the backgrounds. Hello, 90% of the photos show women running toward the camera. Most all of them are wearing sports bras! Not what I had in mind for my heroines escaping crazed killers AT NIGHT in the dark and cold. We finally found images that work.

Putting them together is where Alison did her magic! She cropped the background, then overlaid mist on my running woman (very cool) to make her blend and placed her in the perfect spot after experimenting with sizing. She looked like she was floating. Yikes! I decided she'd have to move her forward to firmer ground, even though I liked the deeper placement better. Instead, Alison added a little more greenery at her feet to fix the "floating" problem and ground her. I was THRILLED with the results!

The final ingredient of any book cover is the lettering font, color, sizing, and placement for the title and author name. I did a little research into what the top romantic suspense authors use. Most were straightforward fonts, no cutesy or rounded letters. It has to reflect the suspenseful genre, after all. White was a no-brainer on this background. Size and placement were the next aspect to consider. Big name authors mostly use very simple backgrounds with their name at the top in LARGE lettering. The title is generally at the bottom. Authors without name recognition have larger titles at the top and their names in smaller type at the bottom. I decided to use a combo of this. Title at the top, but my name in equally large type at the bottom. Why tell readers, hey this author does NOT have name recognition? Maybe if my name is large, they'll think they SHOULD know who I am. At least that was the thought process I used. Alison found the perfect font and put my request for sizing into action, and we got it done on the second try. Amazing!

So, here it is! The final cover of FATAL ENCOUNTER. I love it! I'm forever grateful to Alison for being so accommodating and working with me to make my vision better than I originally imagined. We're a terrific team! What do you think? Did we do a great job? Does this look like romantic suspense? Would you click on it to read the blurb?

To check out my other book covers, visit my WEBSITE. And don't forget to pre-order HIDDEN SECRETS! Happy reading!

Judging a Book...by Betsy Ashton

It is not true that readers don't judge a book by its cover. We do. Sometimes we buy a book because the cover is intriguing, exciting, mysterious. I have often bought a book because I liked the front cover and the back blurb. And as a writer, I know how hard it is to write the blurb to attract readers and not mislead them.

So, we are about to go to school on my psychological suspense novel, Eyes Without a Face.  I worked with a boutique publisher who has a cast of professionals on speed dial. I'm one of his editors, so I work with some of his authors to polish manuscripts.

I selected one of his cover designers to help give Eyes a spooky look and feel. We came up with this. I think we achieved spooky. The dark brown color wash added a hint of danger without being overt. We chose the hoodie because the killer often wears one when she kills. We went with yellow on brown in keeping with that color palette. So far, so good.

We needed a face in the hoodie. After adding a host of different images using PhotoShop, we came up with nothing that worked. Last summer, my DIL, who is a photographer, suggested we take a pic of her husband, black out the face, and drop in a set of creepy female eyes we'd found in open source photo galleries.

We thought we had a winner. The book came out to solid reviews. All but one. That one focused on the cover. The reader would have given me 5 stars had the cover been different. About the same time, I did a series of book signings and talks. I sent out 100 postcards with the eyes themselves on the front. Sales were good but not great.

Three events in a row taught me that the cover was wildly misleading. Not only did the cover not reinforce the salient fact that the main character, who is also the first person narrator, is a bloody female. Pun intended. She's a serial killer. She tells the story her way. She's unreliable. She lies. And the cover lies as well.

People asked what the book was about. I did a bit of research to see what readers thought. They gave me three different ideas about the connotation of the image.

OMG! No, the book is not about the Unabomber. No, the book is not about Jihadi John, the Brit who became the public executioner for ISIS. And no, the book is not about Trayvon Martin. I don't feel qualified to write about any of these three, particularly not Trayvon, whose tragic death touched me deeply.

Oh, what to do? Hire a different cover designer, of course. And, true to wanting a build up for the reveal, you'll have to wait until my next post. Yup, teaser that I am, you'll have to curb your inquiring mind for another few days. Giggle. I hope you like it.

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Betsy Ashton is the author of the Mad Max mystery series, Unintended Consequences, Uncharted Territory, and Unsafe Haven. She also wrote a dark psychological suspense novel, Eyes Without A Face, about a female serial killer, who unpacks her life and career in first person.

I Did it Again by Alison Henderson

As you may remember, a couple of months ago I redesigned the cover for Boiling Point, the second book in my female bodyguard series. I was never completely comfortable with the original cover and didn't feel it was consistent with the series brand. I was so pleased with the new cover for Boiling Point that it got me thinking about the cover I'd designed for the third book in the series and my current WIP, Child's Play.

I'd struggled to find the right images for that cover, too. In this story, the heroine goes to work undercover as a nanny for an Archaeology professor whose young niece is being threatened. I had settled for a background of a child's bedroom, but once again, I'd struggled to find a figure I liked. Encouraged by my success with Boiling Point, I decided to try again. 

Now that the first two books featured outdoor background shots of the settings, I thought I'd take another look for a snowy college campus scene and found several I liked. I also found a new image of a woman with a gun wearing boots (season appropriate!) that is quite similar in pose to the figure on the cover of Unwritten Rules. Then I put a couple of my favorite settings--one with a red brick collegiate building and one with gray stone--together with the figure and showed them to OG.

Imagine my surprise when he pointed to the photo with the stone building and said, "That's Blair Arch at Princeton! I lived in that dorm one year, and that's the window of my room."
Well, that sealed my choice. Now, I not only have a cover that continues the image of the series brand perfectly, but it features OG's dorm room! (It's the second floor window to the left of her left calf.) According to him, this represents every college boy's fantasy--a giant woman in high-heeled boots and a micro skirt, carrying a gun and appearing right outside his window. LOL

Here are the three covers for the series. I finally think I've got a solid, unified look that reflects the tone. Whew! If at first...

And on another positive note, the book is actually progressing rather well.

Onward and upward!
Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com

Old Book, New Look by Alison Henderson

Boiling Point isn't an old book--it's been out less than eight months. In book terms it's still a baby, but I decided it needed a face lift. 

Why? Even though I designed the cover myself, I'd never been fully satisfied with it, and sales haven't been what I'd hoped. Its sales are consistently about 60% of the figures for the first book in the Phoenix, Ltd. female bodyguard series, Unwritten Rules. There could be a number of reasons for this: readers want to start a series at the beginning, readers tried the first book and didn't like it enough to read the second, or whatever. But I had to ask myself, what if part of the problem is the cover?

I've received lots of positive feedback on the cover for Unwritten Rules since its release. Everyone seems to love the legs and the flirty tone. It's a good reflection of the style and tone of the story and has even attracted male readers!

So what was wrong with the original cover for Boiling Point? It wasn't close enough stylistically to Unwritten Rules. I looked at every image of a stone mansion I could find, hoping to find one that would make a good background and reminded me of the setting. Nothing worked. I settled for the condensation image because it suggested steam, which tied in to the title. I also looked at every single image of every variation of "woman with a gun" I could think of. I ended up with the recumbent figure because it was one of the few in which the gun was far enough away from the face to crop the head. In a series, it is important to have design continuity: same fonts, same color scheme, same figure style. I would have preferred a standing figure but couldn't find another that worked.

My cover re-do was actually inspired by our own Jannine Gallant. She found the perfect image for the mansion background. It looks exactly like the one in the story, and I swear it wasn't available a year ago when I started looking. Sadly, the seated figure looked just plain silly with it--like the woman was sitting on the driveway. It did encourage me, however, to take another look at "women with guns." 

Lo and behold, the stock image sites had added tons of new images, and I found the perfect one! The new figure of a woman in a short skirt and high heels with a gun behind her back is an excellent companion to the one on Unwritten Rules, and her cheeky pose mirrors the humorous tone of the book. 

One of the best things about being an indie author is the ability to make changes whenever I want to try something new. I'm thrilled with the new cover, and I hope readers have the same response. If I don't see any improvement in sales, I can always tinker with the blurb next!

Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com 

Recovering from January by Alison Henderson

I was all ready to buckle down and get back to work in January. Really I was. 

Since I don't have contractual deadlines to meet, I like to take time after a new book releases to concentrate on promo and catch up on life. Since I usually time my releases for early fall, the holidays tend to sneak in gobble up big chunks of my time, too. Before I know it, it's January--time to dive head-first into a new project.

Until this year.

I started off fairly well. I came up with a basic plot outline for my new female bodyguard book Child's Play and completed my character profiles. I even managed to write the first chapter. Yay! That took me through the first two-thirds of the month. Then, for fairly obvious reasons, I hit a creative brick wall. Every day the news got worse, sucking up all my energy and natural optimism. By the 31st, I'd had it. Something had to change. I refused to let malevolent outside forces steal my life any longer if I could help it.

Along with everything happening in the nation and the world, my mood was not improved by the fact that I hadn't been able to exercise since the first week of December because of a nasty case of bursitis in my left hip. I'm not a fanatic--I don't run marathons or anything--but I am used to walking briskly on the treadmill five or six days a week. It boosts my energy and supports the illusion that I'm still young and lively. Since the main treatment for bursitis is rest, I had to abandon my routine when I needed it most.

On February 1st, I decided I'd given my body enough time to heal, and I got back on the treadmill. I'm starting slowly and alternating days with strength bands in an attempt to avoid another flare-up, but it feels good to move again. I'm also getting back into my book.

While I couldn't think about words, I worked with pictures. I like to have an image of the cover in mind while I'm working on a book for inspiration, so I played around and came up with this. What do you think? For continuity and branding, I used the same basic color scheme, fonts, and design elements (legs and gun) as the other two books in the series.

The heroine in this book is a PhD student in Child Psychology who goes undercover as a nanny/bodyguard to the four-year-old niece of a Professor of Egyptian Archaeology after he receives a veiled threat directed toward the child. The story includes stolen artifacts, a bad-tempered monkey named Balthazar, and an enigmatic villain named Fermin LeBlanc. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Now all I have to do is get busy and write it!

Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com 

Meet Aline, My Heroine in Cézanne’s Ghost, a Suspense Novel by Rolynn Anderson

Yippee!  Cezanne’s Ghost goes to my editor this weekend, giving me time to tweak the cover with my cover artist.  You have to understand I’m still uneasy at directing an artist about how to design a GREAT cover.  Matter of fact, you might want to read the following article about how fabulous cover-art is ‘developed’ in this article by E.Ayers… 

https://authorsofmainstreet.wordpress.com/2016/06/17/what-makes-for-a-good-cover/ 

Whoa!  Give me a Z; give me an I!  All these ideas are new to me…I’m still learning about how to judge a good cover, beyond “It’s balanced, the colors are fine…I like it!”

Last month I told you about my marvelous experience with another creator, a sketch artist (which happens to be the skill of my hero in Cézanne’s Ghost). Here’s what I said:  

“Jeff Haines, is the artist I contacted because I wanted to put one of his sketches on the cover of Cézanne’s Ghost.  When we first talked on e-mail, he said he hadn’t worked with a novelist who wanted cover art before.  Basically, he does custom drawings.  The price he gave me was impossible for me to pay, so I passed on the picture.  But I liked the picture so much, I decided to contact him and negotiate.  I explained to him how I would use the picture and the most money I’d ever make on the book.  He said he liked the artist-to-artist relationship and gave me I price I could pay.”

I promised I’d show you the sketch before I put it on my cover.  Here it is.  Her name is Aline, which was the name of Cézanne’s granddaughter.  I hope to show you the full cover very soon.  Since the manuscript goes to my editor this weekend, I get one day of celebration before I’ll start working on another novel I hope to release this year. 

So here’s Aline:

What's your favorite cover of all the books you've published?  Can you pick one?  Is it composed in an "I" or "Z" way?  

Six Suspense Novels Spiked with Romance

http://www.rolynnanderson.com

http://www.amazon.com/author/rolynnanderson

You May Not Be Able To Judge... by Betsy Ashton

... a book by its cover, but you can identify a series if the covers are done right. I love series, often reading several books in a row. Covers with a common look help me zero in on the next one.

Take a look at my friend Terry Maggert's The Fearless fantasy series. Each bookmark and cover have beautiful women and muted backgrounds. Not hard to see that he writes paranormal fantasy. Not hard to identify his books on Amazon or on a bookshelf in a bookstore as belonging to the same writer and series.

Think about the great Sue Grafton. Her Kinsey Millhone mysteries are branded with a large single letter befitting a series that began with A Is For Alibi. Small changes in variations of shading on the letters, but overall the typescript is similar. Ditto are the backgrounds similar. Bold colors with no images hidden behind under the letters. No one can pass a Sue Grafton book and wonder who wrote it or if it is part of her series.

My good buddy, Michael Murphy, writes Jake and Laura mysteries set in Hollywood's heyday. His book covers scream Hollywood noir,  whether it's Yankee Club, the first in the series, or All That Glitters. The reader knows at a glance what to expect. A hint of Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett oozes from the cover and flows into the pages. (Enough of the purple prose, Ashton. Get on with the message.)

And now look at the covers my publisher pulled together for my two Mad Max mysteries. The bookmark accurately depicts two different looks. The top one, Mad Max Unintended Consequences, carries the essence of a rich woman with the little black dress and pearls. The gun warns that this has mystery elements. And the pearls and drops of blood hint at violence and, well, death. That's not a spoiler, because my publisher put, "And when her daughter is murdered" on the back cover. Bad boy!

The lower one for Uncharted Territory doesn't look like it's part of a series, other than it picks up the red lips from the first book in the red lipstick shotgun shell. Again, the shotgun warns of danger.

My publisher is excellent when it comes to working with his authors on cover designs. We tried to keep the black band in the middle with the shotgun and shell in the loser third for Uncharted Territory, but we couldn't find an evocative image for the top third. Since the book takes place in post-Katrina Mississippi, we tried images of desolation, actual photos from after the tidal surge, an Air Stream trailer, a fancy RV. All are part of the story, but the images didn't work.

With book three in progress, I wonder what we'll do for the cover. Book three takes place in a hospital. I'm thinking of a hypodermic filled with blood...

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Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max, Unintended Consequences, and Uncharted Territory, A Mad Max Mystery, now available at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Fun With Fonts by Alison Henderson

Did anyone else think of Sheldon Cooper's "Fun With Flags" when they read this title? I hope so. I'd hate to think I'm the only Big Bang Theory-loving, romance-writing geek out there.

Today, I want to talk about fonts. When you look at a book cover, yours or another author's, do you think about the font the artist chose? The cover for my first book, Harvest of Dreams, used the most amazing font. I had never seen anything like it, and many readers commented how much they liked it. That cover remains one of my favorites, and the font is a big part of the reason.

Unless you design your own covers, you may not pay much attention to font choice, but the font can tell the reader as much about the story as the images. It provides additional clues to the genre, tone, and subject matter of the book. For example, when I designed the cover of Jannine Gallant's seventeenth century historical, An Uncertain Destiny, I found a wonderful font to suggest the period and setting.

 

Take a look at the cover fonts on some of your favorite books. What do they tell you about the story? Do they add to the visual impact in a positive way? Do they make you want to pick up the book? After all, that's the whole point of the cover.

I'm currently working on the cover for Small Town Christmas Tales. You helped me choose a background image; now I'd like some input on the fonts. In these examples, I've tried several different fonts for the title, sub-title, and author's name. Please look at each element individually, as well as the whole composition. What feelings do they spark? Do you like the author's name in all caps, or not?

Here's the first iteration:

Now #2.

Here's #3.

And #4.

The stories are all warm-hearted, and some are a bit whimsical. I want to give readers the right first impression. I'll probably mix the elements from a couple of the options above. I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com
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