I’m perhaps halfway through the first draft of A Baron for Becky, which is proving to be a short novel rather than a novella. Once the first draft is done, I’ll firm up the publication date and put up a preorder. Meanwhile, I’ve been playing with the cover.
I’ve experimented with colour and text weight, and moved the tagline away from the image’s neck, but otherwise they’re all the same. I’d welcome your thoughts.
How’s this? Still waiting to hear about the bath chair – I’ve tossed Film Medical a curve ball, apparently. But this background works, I think.
In less than a month, I’ll have a cover out there in reader land. And I’ve been reading a lot about what works and what doesn’t.
If you google using the search term ‘creating professional book covers,’ you’ll find heaps of superb advice. I particularly liked Sherry Thomas’s article about the process Courtney Milan took her and other authors through when they were creating Midnight Scandals.
It’s fascinating to read, and raised issues I’ve never thought of. How would my covers look in greyscale? How about in tiny, tiny format on a Goodreads ‘What I’ve been reading’ post?
If you’re creating a cover, read the post. And here’s an article from Courtney Milan about typography on book covers. And here are 300 fonts that work for book covers, divided by genre.
Meanwhile, I have five book covers on my books page. I’ve asked for permission to use the photo on three of them, and I intend to do a photo shoot to get the right photo for the two Redepenning books, but I think the typography is moving in the right direction. What do you think?