Designing a book cover is an art form that is sadly not given its deserved appreciation: a cover can make or break a book if it doesn’t catch the reader’s eye when entering a shop (be it a virtual or a physical store) it will be drowned out by all the other publications vying for the customer’s attention and more often than not go unnoticed. We are highly conscious of this fact, and audiobooks (arguably even virtual stores in general) encounter the additional problem of having to be recognisable in various sizes. Of course, sometimes The One in Charge can’t resist playing with his graphic design software, leading to awkward moments where he has to explain to the staff that the “Shakespeare one was me, can you tell? Using an old image of Shakespeare which I nabbed off of Wikipedia.” (Don’t tell him we made that public, or he might smite us with his bat’leth.)
The cover of Supermarket Matters, created by Ian Moss (l.) and the cover of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, created by Mark Chatterley (r.)
Spaceships and Googly Eyes
As much as we want to support up and coming writers and voice actors, we are also very keen on getting onboard great designers who love giving us their view of an audiobook in a visual format. As David Samuel Levinson, author of Antonia Lively Breaks the Silence, recognised recently in his article for Publisher’s Weekly, the best thing that can happen to an author is to have designers “who see something in your book that even you didn’t know was there”.
This doesn’t mean that the author’s input isn’t valuable (even if, as Levinson notes, too much input can be harmful), and in fact when it came to Aaron Crocco’s wonderful Chrono Virus we loved the cover so much that we re-used the gorgeous design by Eric Hubbel instead of creating our own version. From a marketing point-of-view, this also means that the audio version is instantly identifiable to fans of Crocco who already know the written version – a major plus for the author, his fans and us. Although for a moment there some of our staff were almost tempted by the retro design Crocco created with the Pulp-O-Meter…
The cover of Chrono Virus, created by Eric Hubble (l.), and of They Who Cry Out Seek to be Heard, by Narjas Carrington-Windo (r.)
When it came to designing the cover of Troy Blackford’s short story collection They Who Cry Out Seek to Be Heard, we hired Narjas Carrington-Windo, who even included googly eyes in her design based on Magdalene Palmer’s (mis)adventures in the included story ‘For Those With Eyes to See’ (rumour has it our very own voice actor Siân Prescott is quite a fan of these, too).
She has written a great blogpost about her experiences working for us, which not only sums up some of our core values but also gives a great insight into what creating a book cover is like from the designer’s point-of-view.
From Start to Finish
Very much like crafting a story, creating an audiobook cover is a process that starts with a mockup that is re-drafted until the final product is signed off on. Most of the time, nobody apart from the designer and the publisher sees this initial mockup or the process, but today we’re very happy to show you a comparison between the first mockup and finished product that Michelle Harvey did for our upcoming horror anthology Exquisite Death.
The mockup for Exquisite Death (l.) and the finished cover (r.), both designed by Michelle Harvey
You can see the mockup on the left which, in her own words, is merely a “coloured doodle” – suffice it to say we were slightly speechless when that image landed in our inbox. There is something about the quality of a loose line drawing that grabbed our attention and we told her to go right ahead with that design – we definitely don’t regret that decision. She was wonderful to work with and we are as excited about the cover as we are about the authors and their stories in it.
“Got an image enhancer that can bitmap?” – Mark Chatterley, The One in Charge *
A good cover tells a story all on its own, and is based on some plot element or character in the (audio)book that particularly inspired the designer – to find out what element was the inspiration behind this cover, you’ll have to wait only a little bit longer: Exquisite Death will be released this coming Tuesday for our usual audiobook price of £3.50 (and if you’ve signed up for our newsletter, you’ll even get an exclusive discount).
Inspired? Get in touch!
If you are a designer who would love to work for us on a future release, send us your portfolio and we’ll have one of our editors reply to you as soon as possible.
Would you like to see your science-fiction story released with a beautifully designed cover by one of our designers? We are currently still looking for previously (self-)published science-fiction authors who would like to contribute to the upcoming volume one of our science-fiction anthology. We’ll happily record stories already published elsewhere, as long as you hold the audio rights. Email us your story now (we accept .doc(x), .rtf, .otd, .pdf, .mobi or .epub) and a list of your previously published works (it can just be your own blog).
Are you a horror writer? Don’t worry, we are always on the lookout for up and coming talent to work with in that genre, too, so don’t hesitate to contact us!
* This may not be an actual quote by Mark Chatterley.
