Creating a Book Cover

My covers were all paintings and I have to admit I never had a single cover that delighted me. Still, the fact that I had book covers at all was in itself a delight.

But I stumbled across this article today on how concept and artwork is developed and thought you might find it interesting.

Beware: Leather and a Crossbow ahead!

All writers fantasize about their dream book covers. I certainly did. I’m not all that visual so wouldn’t dream of thinking I could come up with something better than the pros, even if I wasn’t crazy about my own. And still, it’s hard to resist.

Stephenie Meyer of Twilight fame created various covers for her first book and printed them and had them on the manuscripts she gave to friends and family to read before she started marketing. At one time she had them posted on her site but I don’t see them any more.

Yay! They’re still there! I mean, here!

I do have a dream cover for the novel I’m writing now. If I were at all arty or photoshoppy I might even do a mockup for my own inspiration, but alas, I am neither.

That’s okay. It’s in my head.

What about you? As a screenwriter you probably imagine certain actors in your movie, but do you imagine the poster?

Novelists, am I wrong? Do you not picture what that book is going to look like?

Recycling Cover Art

So, libraryjobpostings had an interesting display of cover art that has been reused (and sometimes reused and reused and reused).  In some cases, when the original source is a piece of artwork that is in public domain, it’s not so surprising that more than one art department has seen fit to use it:

In others, I guess they didn’t want to spend any money and the art department thought nobody would ever notice:

The odd thing here is that Viking and New American Library are part of the Penguin publishing group so may share the same art department, but Del Rey is part of the Random House group and if there’s any connection between Penguin and Random House, I don’t know it.

And this may be from some public domain source, but if so, the libraryjobposting people didn’t indicate it:

Finally, I’m just not a fan of the generic romance cover to begin with, and this does nothing to change my opinion:

At least Zebra Lovespell waited five years to reuse it, and changed her haircolor and dress color.

Follow the link at the top of this post for more recycled covers. ‘Tis interesting!