Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Tales of Cover Art

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep." ~Scott Adams

So last week, my editor sent me a first draft of the cover for One Night in Napa, with the caveat in her email, "I'm not particularly happy with it..."

I agreed. Without going into detail, the cover really didn't take any of my suggestions/points about the story into consideration. Plus the color was...well, odd. My editor and I tossed around some suggestions, and the next day I got a new cover. This one I loved -- it seemed a much better fit and really suggested "sensual love story set in a sensual place."

It isn't approved by the publisher yet, so I can't post it here, but I do hope the second version is the one they go with!

One thing about small presses/e-publishers: from what I've heard and experienced, those authors have much more input with cover art than those with New York publishers. Now, don't get me wrong: I certainly wouldn't turn down a NY publisher! But be prepared: you probably will have minimal say on the cover.

And if you haven't heard this funny story about a cover-gone-wrong, here's the classic Three-Armed Heroine that appeared on a major romance novel a few years back.

Hope to share my cover with you soon!

4 comments:

Diane Craver said...

Glad you got a cover you like! We do have a lot of input about our book covers - one of the advantages to being published by a small press.

I can't wait to see it.

Marianne Arkins said...

Ooh... I'm DYING to see it. Both of them, actually. I thought you kind of had a theme going, so am surprised to hear this one had problems.

Liz said...

Can't wait!!! During the session with the editor from St. Martins, he said sometimes they spend more time going back and forth to get the best jacket for the book than they do on editing! He said the jacket of the book is the most important selling took - that and the title.

And while the author may not have the last say that they would never use a cover the author absolutely hated.

Mary Ricksen said...

Hey if it would help they could put two heads on someone in my cover art.(grin)
Great that you got to see the cover and tell them it didn't work. I a curious to see the new cover too!