My first ever cover reveal!

Can you make the trees more threatening?

I've already blogged about briefing Kim McGillivray, my cover designer for No Stranger to Death. Well, this week I got to see the concepts he has come up with. And no, the illustration above isn't one of them. At Kim's suggestion, we met at the recently refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh, which currently has a glorious exhibition of men in tartan. Our First Minister may eschew the kilt, but in past times notable Scotsmen did not.

Under the gaze of several non-kilted, famous Scots (the Gallery's cafe is, admirably, an extension of its display space) Kim took me through his creative process. He has read the entire novel in order to pull out large elements he might explore visually, such as trees, winter and fire. He was also looking for small details, like the owl that Zoe, my main character, watches as it swoops down in front of her to catch a mouse.

I am endlessly fascinated by how other writers work, so I very much wanted to see an artist's approach to generating ideas. To my surprise, I suppose because I expected him to think in images, Kim's initial output was in words. Then, after narrowing down possibilities he started sketching his ideas out.

He presented me with three concepts: two representational and a third which concentrated on capturing the mood of my novel. We looked at paperback-sized printouts of each of these, then moved to his laptop to see them as they would initially appear online, as thumbnails. Immediately, the ‘mood’ cover jumped out at me. Even in its infancy it was great. Then Kim put it up on the screen alongside the thumbnails of published book covers I had sent him. It looked fantastic. To say I was stunned would be like saying Agatha Christie sold a few books. Suddenly No Stranger to Death was no longer just words in my head!

Having agreed on the concept to go with, Kim and I then discussed details of the design. The title of this post is just one of my requests he has now gone away to put into action. We also agreed to include a teaser, a small detail on the cover, the significance of which will only become clear at the end of the book. It would be unfair to Kim and not do justice to the work he has put in to show you this early version of my cover, but here’s the title and, gulp, my name. See, he has even managed to incorporate some turquoise!

Cover design

How random life can be. I have a Twitter friend called Jacqui, who turned out to live only a couple of miles away. Despite walking our dogs in the same places, we never met until we got chatting on Twitter. Since then, I’ve visited Jacqui at her lovely home and learned that her husband is a graphic designer. So when I decided to have a professionally designed cover for No Stranger to Death, I asked Jacqui if he did this type of work. Her reply was the classic ‘No, but I know a man who does’. She gave me a name, Kim McGillivray.

I looked at Kim’s website, www.kimfolio.com, which has many stunning illustrations, including the one above (which may not be reproduced without his permission). For those of you who don’t know already, I’m an Englishwoman married to a Scotsman and living in Scotland. And while I admire Alex Salmond’s political astuteness, I don’t support all his policies. The wit demonstrated by Kim’s depiction of Salmond in a kilt (which he never wears), standing Monroe-like over an air vent decided me. I would approach Kim about doing my book cover.

After an exchange of emails agreeing the business side of things, Kim asked for a copy of the novel. (Having people read it is something I’m going to have to get used to.) Before our first meeting I did some online research about briefing a cover designer. From the many websites by and for indie authors, I gleaned the following advice:

• Don’t be prescriptive. You choose a designer for his/her creativity, so let them get on with it.
• Never use the words ‘I like’. A book cover has an important job to do, and personal tastes shouldn’t come into it (so, no turquoise then).

Our first meeting was friendly but business-like. This reminded me a lot of when clients used to brief me to write their website copy, and it felt strange to be on the other side of the process. Kim and I talked about the prominent features of my novel and who I envisage it will most appeal to. We also looked at many examples of book covers, some but not all within the crime fiction genre: ones I feel do their job well and also a few I don’t rate at all. One of the biggest creative challenges facing Kim is to come up with a design which works in wildly differing sizes, from a thumbnail image on a Kindle or tablet to a physical paperback.

Kim has now gone away to do whatever it is he does. Writers all seem to work in different ways; I can’t imagine how an artist approaches his work (maybe I could persuade him to write a guest blog for me on this subject?). However, he followed up our meeting with a note which managed to distill our discussion into a few paragraphs that are spot-on in capturing my aspirations for my first ever book cover. So I know I’m in safe hands.

If you're interested in book-cover design, I recommend a visit to Joel Friedlander's Ebook Cover Design Awards. Below are some book covers which I think are particularly effective. Do you have any favourite book covers? And how much does a book's cover matter to you when you choose to buy it or borrow it from a library?