Later this month, all going well, Scarsdale will publish House of Thorns as part of their Inconvenient Marriage series. Last week, they sent me the cover. What do you think? I’ll give you preorder links as soon as I have them.
House of Thorns
Bear Gavenor has fled the marriage mart for the familiarity of his work; restoring abandoned country manors to sell to the newly rich. He doesn’t expect to find a potential wife stealing his roses.
Lying gossip has driven Rosa Neatham from respectable employment, and now she has been turned out of her home to make way for the new owner. But a fleeting return to collect some roses for her ailing father changes her fortunes.
In a marriage that offers more inconvenience than convenience, can this unlikely couple beat gossip, misunderstandings, and their own self doubts to find happiness?
Eh, I hate to say it, but if I didn’t already like your writing style and the beauty and the beast motif in the blurb, this cover would not help. I prefer a little more illustration in a cover, something that tells me more about the story than two handsome people in a clinch on a neutral/empty background. This looks like a zebra romance from the 90s, where I won a bet that just about every book has a sex scene on about page 76 (bored lunchtimes in a bookstore)
It’s not that they are not handsome people, or they are not really caught up in each other. More that they’re in an empty space, look awful posed, and this cover could be almost any period or setting. It also is clear the image didn’t include any symbols or detail to tie in with YOUR story. Some roses in the shot or even as a soft background in photoshop or gimp would be a easy minimum for the story, so it feels like stock footage for generic romance cover.
I hope it sells well though. Christmas Chair and Christmas Ruby are my favorite covers of yours. Extreme photorealism doesn’t get my imagination going, (that’s what sells pron not romance) but I do like seeing something that relates to the romance more than some flower or abstract swirls. My mother and I have some truly awful covers in our collections for authors we like…
Thank you, Marie. I do (or commission from an artist) all my own covers, except when I’m in a box set or in this case. This is my first time working with a publisher instead of just being one, and the Scarsdale covers almost always involve a clinch, and often seem pretty generic. I was pleased they managed to get across the size difference between my hero and heroine. They have a rather nice cover content questionnaire, which allowed me space to put in a physical description of each character — but I wasn’t sure what difference it would make. One of my friends had a Obijwa heroine, described as dark haired, and the publisher (a different publisher) chose a blonde for the cover.
I love the idea of adding roses, and will suggest it. Will let you know how I get on.
I used to go to genre conventions, and the authors would have a panel talking about horrible covers. One author brought photocopies where her scarred martial heroine looked like a bimbo from some soft pron, and one time someone assembled a slide show. This is a frequent and fun topic in SF/F. Jim C Himes did a nice collection of implausible covers, (at http://www.jimchines.com/2012/01/striking-a-pose/) but there are many articles.
I’ve done covers for fanfics and placeholders I’m proud of but some I could not publish, no matter how perfect because of rights….
LOL to Jim’s blog. That’s great. Covers are a frequent topic of conversation in any book circle, readers and writers. And fashions come and go. I’ve tended to do my own, because I didn’t want all my covers to be beefcake and a clinch, which is a large part of the fashion at the moment. Not that I mind them. It’s just, as you say, that they don’t mean much beyond ‘Ah. A historical romance.’