It’s a phrase as well-worn as my copy of The Lady in the Lake, “Never judge a book by it’s cover”. It’s sound advice. Sound advice that absolutely nobody follows. (And when we’re not judging books by their covers we’re judging them by their titles. Or blurb. But anyway, back to covers.) It’s time to stop thinking of your cover as a chore, as something to get out of the way.
When I made the first cover for my first book, You Can’t Make Old Friends, it looked terrible. I present it below for your delectation.
This is a cover that went on sale, I should point out. It was the cover for the book for about eight months. My approach to making this cover was simple: I wanted my book to look like every other detective thriller out there. Specifically I wanted it to be in line with Peter James’s Roy Grace novels (also set in Brighton) and Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels. So, I asked a friend if I could use one of their atmospheric black and white photos of the novel’s location (a common rule set by James and Rankin) and found a suitably neon-ish colour for the main title. I had already Googled “common fonts for thriller books” and found a generic one to use. After that I made my name nice and big (so it would look like I was important) and voilà, a cover.
It was fine, or maybe it was terrible. (Somewhere in between?) The reason for this was my methodology: I wanted my book to look like every other detective thriller out there.
Then, a few months later I happened across a wonderful Viva Brighton cover. This cover captured so much of what I wanted, and when I looked up the designer and illustrator, Thomas Walker, I discovered that he did book covers!
We met to discuss what kind of thing I was looking for, what tone, what style; and this is when I realised something that I can since sum up in a simple piece of methodology: think of your cover as the first page of your book.
And what do you think of when you’re writing the first page of your book? Setting the right tone. Being distinctive. Getting the reader hooked. Giving the reader a sense of the characters as early as possible. Packing a punch.
So… we approached it this way. Tone: hard-boiled detective story, taking inspiration from the dime-novels of the twenties and thirties. Being distinctive: ignore what the big publishing houses are doing, throw in some colour and have nothing photographic. Getting the reader hooked: making the image unusual, worth studying, worth a closer look. Giving the reader a sense of the characters as early as possible: we used the dime novel-style banner for that. And what Thomas produced is one of the best damn covers I’ve ever seen (although of course I’m biased).
Suddenly it was being retweeted by other designers, and now my book had a distinctive voice. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from writing three books it’s never chase the market. If you do, people can tell, it feels cheap. And why should they bother reading a cheap version of something they can get a hundred of. Give them something unique, something personal, and immediately you’ve got their attention. Something you’re happy for them to judge your book by.
An earlier version of this article appeared on Literary Flits
