It's probably the most excruciatingly painful jobs the employees at Blue Swell Books perform and also the most satisfying. In some cases the covers have literally taken a month of hours and some have appeared magically in less than an hour. You may have noticed over the years the changes in Elizabeth's book covers. Take a look at where the book covers were and where they are now and some reasons behind the changes.
November, 2011. We loved this cover. It was designed by a local Nanaimo artist and she did a spectacular job. We made business cards to go with this. The problem was when we got to the Amazon site and put it with others of that genre we stood out like a sore thumb and not in a good way. It never was published to Amazon or iTunes.
We started this in December 2011. Merry Christmas. This was a difficult cover that we called Blue Moon. It was printed in small numbers and published to Amazon. The idea we were trying to get across was a woman, time travel, rare (blue moon), night time, clouds...
So on the computer it looked fairly good.
But in print, not so much. It looked black, blotchy, painful - so many concepts it was overwhelming and the cut and paste - obvious.
So on the computer it looked fairly good.
But in print, not so much. It looked black, blotchy, painful - so many concepts it was overwhelming and the cut and paste - obvious.
We started this in January and February, 2012, and it was massive hours of concepts. Finally we came to a simpler design. The first one (far left) we called 'Pumpkin" and we only tested a couple of print covers before realizing ugggh. The second one we published in print and Amazon; the blue cover and back was also tested (it's the inverse) but we decided it was too difficult to tell what the front object was. The idea behind it was of course time, simplified, gold and sparkly, pretty. The problem was it lacked a clear definition of what the book was about.
Back to the drawing board, January, 2013.
Culminating with a massize re-edit of the book we knew the cover could be much better along with the content.
Approximately one hour later Anna was born. It was ridiculously simple once the hours and hours of previous disasters were tossed aside.
This cover also had to match Books 2 and 3. We think we got there.
Culminating with a massize re-edit of the book we knew the cover could be much better along with the content.
Approximately one hour later Anna was born. It was ridiculously simple once the hours and hours of previous disasters were tossed aside.
This cover also had to match Books 2 and 3. We think we got there.
© 2013 Elizabeth Munro all rights reserved
Deadly Deceptions, February, 2012.
Culminating with the release of Elizabeth's spectacular 2nd book of the Chronicles of Anna we began designing book covers and covers and covers. This is just a few mock ups of the 50 or so we made.
We kept coming back to the woman in the field.
Culminating with the release of Elizabeth's spectacular 2nd book of the Chronicles of Anna we began designing book covers and covers and covers. This is just a few mock ups of the 50 or so we made.
We kept coming back to the woman in the field.
We wanted a very pretty cover for this book despite its dark content. We started playing the concept of a duo tone of the woman in the field - laced with beautiful purples. She was flipped and cropped and brushed. The names and titles were colour dropped from the rendered field.
Printed and loaded to Amazon, iTunes, Kobo and Sony and never changed.
Printed and loaded to Amazon, iTunes, Kobo and Sony and never changed.