Saturday, 16 November 2013

Book covers: working with an illustrator

Book covers are hugely important in the success of a book, and I really enjoy working on my indie pubbed titles with a brilliant designer.  Like many authors, we use images from image libraries such as i-stockphoto.com.  Of course, there are drawbacks to this.

1.       If can be very time consuming scouring images to find exactly what you want
2.       It isn’t always possible to find exactly what you want
3.       When you do, it might be too expensive for your budget
4.       When you do, you might find that image has been used before – and unless you do a Google image search, you won’t know where.  For instance, the first image I used for a book cover, I discovered, the day after publication, that another author has used the same image.  Although we had modified ours, it was still instantly recognisable.

So I decided to stretch my budget and commission an illustrator to produce an image that is exactly what I want, completely distinctive and unique. Via Facebook, I accidentally came across a wonderful artist called Sarah who specialises in drawing and painting animals.  Having seen some stunning horse portraits, I got in touch last year and recently we met, talked and she has agreed to produce the image for one of my forthcoming titles, The Perfect Horse.  It was important that the horse in question be breathtakingly beautiful – perfect, in fact, - since although the story is a thrilling pony book aimed at children and teenagers, there is a twist, and it involves genetic engineering…….

Sarah charts her progress on her Facebook page so that readers can see how the illustration work is evolving, which is a great idea. I can’t wait to see the finished result. Watch this space!

Photo: Not very good with loose work! But ideas of colour running though the piece!

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