Cover Sensibilities

It is Monday, and I’m armed with Russian Country tea and a list of BDH questions.

The process of creating the Maggie cover through traditional publishing. How did everyone decide on the theme, covers, etc? Were there other drafts or ideas? Why is the UK cover slightly different in color?

We have now worked with several traditional publishers, so we are a little jaded about this process. Usually it goes like this:

Us: Here is the manuscript for a hypothetical book titled The Rose Dagger.

Editor: Sales hates the title. Can we change the title to Daggers and Roses?

Us: Yes.

Editor: What do you want on the cover?

Us: A green dagger with a white rose.

Editor: Here is a blue sword with a green snake around it.

Us: …

Editor: I will see what I can do.

One month later.

Editor: They made the sword two inches shorter, and turned the snake white. Marketing loves it, and we’re going to print.

Here is how it went with Tor:

Editor: Do you have anything you’d like me to keep in mind? Wish list items, recent covers you’ve loved, recent covers you haven’t loved, any aesthetic boards/Pinterest boards/etc? Anything you want us to know?

Us: We don’t want an item cover. We like this and we don’t like that.

Long and detailed conversation regarding the cover and the title, including who we are appealing to, what kind of cover style would be best, which colors are our favorite.

Editor: Behold a list of artists. Which artist do you like?

Us: We like Andrew Davis. (Although honestly everyone on that list was amazing.)

Editor: Andrew Davis it is.

A few weeks later.

Editor: Here is a sketch!

Us: Love!

A few weeks later.

Editor: Here is the color version.

Us: Love even more!

So it was a shockingly awesome experience. I have summarized it but there were many emails going back and forth. Hopefully, Tor is cool with us drawing the curtain back a little bit to show you how the design of the cover was chosen, because a lot of thought was put into this image and I want to give them credit.

The Cover Process

The primary function of the cover is twofold: it must be eye-catching and it must indicate the genre of the book.

The challenge here was to communicate several things. This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is an epic fantasy, so we wanted fantasy elements. This Kingdom is also a portal fantasy, so we wanted something to point to that.

Type of cover.

We didn’t want an object cover. This would be an object cover, for example.

They are very beautiful, but there is an awful lot of them. If you search romantasy and object cover, you will find a plethora of books. Many of them have similar elements: sword, crown, flowers, etc. It’s a little harder to stand out.

Here is an excellent example of an object cover from Elisabeth Wheatley. By the way, the second book, Oath of the Wolf, is out.

We didn’t want a cover with people on it. The issue here is twofold again: if we put a couple on the cover, that would be a spoiler and it would also not match the book, because a couple communicates romance like Silver and Blood.

We didn’t want to put Maggie on the cover either.

This beautiful Dominion cover reads romantic fantasy and has slight YA/NA overtones, which is exactly what this book is – it is a romantasy with a young protagonist.

The Curse of Beasts and Magic cover communicates the portal nature and has a person, but also has paranormal romance/urban fantasy overtones, which are perfect for this story, since part of it takes place in our world. It is also clearly romance-centered.

None of this would work, because Maggie is never shown in our world and while This Kingdom has a strong romantic arc, it is more like Kate Daniels in a sense that the love story is there but not central.

So: epic fantasy, portal transition, no objects or people on the cover to appeal to a wide audience that likes fantasy.

Art Style.

The next question was art style.

We didn’t want realism.

This is an actual person with the art backdrop. Didn’t want that. This Kingdom is about a person falling into their favorite book. We wanted to get the “magic book” overtone across.

We didn’t want graphic style either.

This is very clean and geometric, but we wanted intricate and fantastical.

Colors.

This was very straightforward. Tor asked us what colors we liked and we said blue. We also expressed a preference for a lighter color palette. Again, this is to make sure the cover stands out. A lot of the romantasy right now follows a similar color scheme: dark background, saturated red or blue, and some kind metallic. It’s almost gothic-looking.

Cover elements.

The beast: one of the most prominent elements on this cover is a magical beast. While it doesn’t look exactly like that in the novel – the artist interpreted the description – the colors and the general shape are correct. This is a creature that is massive. It looks prehistoric, a mammal with a beak, and it can travel over great distances. It symbolizes travel, transition, and change. And it nods to the dragon in The Neverending Story.

The three circles: these symbolize the moons of Rellas.

The ocean spread before our boat, endless and calm. The clouds melted away, and an enormous sky reigned above, studded with glittering stars. Three moons spilled their light on the water: Prata, a giant silver crescent with gold tiger stripes; Drao, a much smaller ruby-red waning gibbous; and Broe, the smallest of the three, a grass-green, last-quarter moon. The view took my breath away. I smelled the briny salt water, I felt the wind and the steady movement of the boat under my feet, so it had to be real and actually happening. But it was so . . . magical.

The city: this is Kair Torren, the capital of the Kingdom of Rellas, where Maggie lands. This city is a huge part of the book. I’ve read a very kind review once that said that we tend to present cities as characters, and that is probably true. If Kair Torren was a person, it would be an old, experienced assassin who masquerades as a courtier by day and then ruthlessly murders his targets by night.

Kair Torren means castle towers. The city began as a castle looming on a hill and guarding a port. It could be seen from far away, and when people gave directions, they often said, “Go until you see kair torren.”

A little bit of nerding out: the word itself happened to be generated when we created the Rellasian language, and we loved it. There are many similar sounding words in several languages and they all somehow apply. We have Welsh “caer” meaning fortress, and the Norse “Kair” meaning rock or cliff; Hawaii “kai” meaning sea. Kair Torren is a heavily fortified city, situated in the hills overlooking the sea. This word pops up frequently in different fantasy books and games, usually meaning castle, and that also works because in our world, this city was in a book.

Okay, I will stop boring you with research now.

The Mage Tower: this is the first thing Maggie sees when she comes to, and it is a huge shock to the system. Not only does she recognize it, but it is also very clearly magic. There is nothing like that in our world. I have beautiful art of this tower from Candice Slater, which I will show you a little closer to the release.

You can see why we love the cover. It is packed with all of the things we wanted.

Foreign Editions

To date, This Kingdom has been sold to publishers in France, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, Ukraine, and UK. Sometimes the foreign publisher retains the cover with slight alterations, and sometimes they commission an entirely new cover. This is driven by market considerations. They know what their audience likes and they try to appeal to them.

The UK edition uses the existing US cover with slight alterations.

The publisher felt that the UK market appreciates a more gritty sensibility so they darkened the edges and applied some texture.

I will post more foreign covers as they come along. What are some of your favorite covers?