That all-important cover

If you want to see an independent author go pale and start to shake, whisper the word ‘cover’.  First of all there’s the image.  Is it eye-catching?  Does it reflect the book’s content?  Will it show up all right in a thumbnail?  (for the un-initiated a thumbnail is that tiny little picture that pops up on your Amazon sales page.)  Not to mention the technicalities:  trim size, bleed, spine width and so on. It’s enough to make your head spin.

I thought I had got it right with the cover for ‘At Home in the Pays d’Oc.’ A dear friend painted a picture of our un-photographable house; the picture hangs on our living room wall to this day.  I thought it would make the perfect cover; alas, it didn’t.  Florence’s delicate, impressionistic view  came up as an orange blur on the great Zon, and sadly failed to attract buyers.  It’s still beautiful and I still love it but…

In the mean time I started on ‘Tales from the Pays d’Oc.’  I found a great photo of the our front steps: with a little photo-shopping and the talent of Verite Design (thank you Pete Goddard) I thought it would make a great cover.  I had publicity flyers made and thought I had it cracked. The hunt for a replacement cover for ‘At Home’ continued.

Then Himself got into the mix.  ‘That photo would really be better for ‘At Home’ he suggested brightly.  ‘You can always find another photo for ‘Tales.’  I resisted the temptation to insert his coffee cup where no coffee cup should go because, sadly, he was right.

So, scrap the flyers for ‘Tales’, move the front steps to the cover of ‘At Home’ and find an image for ‘Tales’.  Simples?  Not a bit of it.  We took hundreds of photos on our last trip to France.  I googled Languedoc images.  Finally we thought we’d cracked it:  a street scene with overhanging blossom – what could be more Languedoc?  More flyers ordered.  Then it became clear that the central image was actually a rather grotty stretch of house fronts with no visual interest whatsoever.  The design for the cover completely obscured the blossom, which, it turned out, was the only good thing about it.

Back to the drawing board.  On the 30th, increasingly despairing trawl through the holiday snaps, we found it.  A picture that shouted Languedoc, colourful and busy.

And so, with a hearty TA-DAAH, I can finally reveal the finalised front cover for ‘Tales from the Pays d’Oc’.  When will it be published?  Don’t bother me with details…