They say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover,” but, of course, we all do.
I’ve been known to buy books solely because of their covers. Like this one.
Isn’t it beautiful? Even if I never cracked it open, I would want this onm y shelf.
On the other hand, the only things that would make me buy this…
…would be if a) the author were someone I loved, b) the book was recommended by someone I trust, c) the word of mouth was so incredible that I trusted buying it would be worthwhile, or d) the sample pages were amazing enough to make up for this debacle ofa cover.
*Note: this is not a real cover, but it’s inspired by a real cover. I didn’t choose a real one because I’m not in the business of dissing other authors. This job is hard enough without having to deal with negativity from our colleagues.
So it was important to me to have beautiful covers. I looked at a lot of cat book covers, and many of the ones (Rita Mae Brown’s come to mind) were simple but also quite elegant.
I designed one of my own in Canva, with the understanding that a real artist might have to level up the fonts and tweak the placement and sizing of the elements. Here’s what I came up with for Book 1. It was originally dubbed with this ridiculously bland title: A Deadly Christmas Carol.
Now, I love this cover. I really do.
I wasn’t crazy about the cover I made for Book 2–set at a Renaissance Faire and, again, with an uninspired title: Murder Most Faire. (This was the book I originally wrote for Carolyn Haines’s Trouble series. It was called Trouble Most Faire then, as all the books needed “Trouble” in the title.)
I loved the Book 3 cover, despite being unhappy with the title: Death, Taxes, and Bigfoot. (I actually don’t dislike this title in and of itself. It got in two of the three critical element–death and Bigfoot–but it was missing the most important one–the cat.)
I even loved my Book 5 cover for The Cat and the Cauldron.
But I couldn’t come up with an eye-popping cover for the short story readers get for subscribing to The Cat’s Meow newsletter. Book 4, Pouncing for Pirates, was even worse. I knew what I wanted, but I could neither find the exact elements I wanted nor find an effective placement for the ones I did find.
I mentioned my cover woes to my friend Jenna Bennett (a terrific author--check out her books!), and she gave me the contact information for her cover artist, Dar Albert of Wicked Smart Designs. I love Jenna’s cover art, so, after brainstorming a bunch of punchier, cat-related titles for the series, I jumped at the opportunity.
And…Wow.
The difference a professional artist makes.
Here’s “Meowing for Mobsters.”
And here’s the before and after of Marley’s origin story, the one originally called A Deadly Christmas Carol and now renamed the feline-themed A Christmas Feral.
I still love the first one, but…there’s really no contest. Dar’s design is stunning. Look at that Jacob Marley door knocker.
Book 3, Murder Most Faire, became A Caterbury Tail. And I am in LOVE with Dar’s cover.
The cat silhouettes available were very limited.
Death, Taxes, and Bigfoot became Whiskers in the Dark. Here’s mine. I think it’s beautiful (for what it is) but I can’t wait to see what Dar does with it.
I’m sure her covers for Pouncing for Pirates and The Cat and the Cauldron will be gorgeous too.
Do I still love the covers I made?
Yes. I had fun making them, and I think they could be used for blog posts or social media posts or maybe somewhere in my newsletter. But they’re clearly the work of an amateur. They can’t hold a candle to Dar’s work.
And this is why every indie author should invest in two things: one is a good cover artist.
The other… well, I’ll talk about that in the next post.