You can tell a book by its' cover

​I don’t know who came up with that adage but as an author it is something we accept as true.  As I noted in my blog last week I’ve selected book covers to reflect the theme of the book.

Working with a graphic designer is an interesting and sometimes frustrating.  Graphic designers are visual artists so color, form, positioning are elements of a book cover that are important to them.  Theme – theme they don’t care about at all.  This makes the effort to collaborate between the graphic designer and the author stressful and the language we use to express our respective art forms is very different.

Last week I reviewed three images for the new book cover for Out of Darkness.  One image contained bright colors across the page that made my eyes hurt and I rejected it quicker than you can say “Ireland”.  Two other book cover concept images both contained an aerial view of Belfast Northern Ireland.  It was the type of image a tourism agency would use to convince potential visitors that Belfast is a lovely city to visit and not a city at war with itself.  The only difference in the two concepts was the placement of the title and my name at either top or bottom of the cover.  In the center of the cover was a bold Celtic knot either in gold or white.  I rejected both of those images, too.

From those covers it was clear that the graphic designer knows nothing about me or my work.  I’m old fashioned; I believe the graphic designer should be required to read at least the first three chapters of any book when developing a book cover.  In my ideal world the graphic designer would read the entire book but that isn’t realistic.

My direction was that if we use any aerial view of Belfast in the book cover, it must clearly show the peace walls.  Period.
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My guess is that the next “concept” I see won’t have a city view at all.