An artist at work

by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

After watching this beautiful and talented artist at work, you will not want to use a photostatted picture as the cover of your book ever again.

Why using a mediocre picture when you can use instead an original painting created exclusively for you by someone who has read your book and shares your vision?

But you don’t have to trust my words, see for yourselves.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: The beautiful, talented artist is my daughter.

She created this painting for the special edition of the Kairos Mechanism by Kate Midford.

The Case of the Misleading Trailer/Book Cover

 

by Carmen Ferreiro

 

 

I watched The Descendants last week-end and was surprised by the director’s serious, non apologetic approach to his story. Although I agree with the many positive reviews I have read about it, I was disappointed because it is not at all the humorous movie the trailer had led me to expect.

This discrepancy between the expectations and the reality of the movie, reminded me of Candi Cradle’s review of my book Two Moon Princess (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/182304921).

“I weirdly liked this (Two Moon Princess) a lot,” Candi writes, “but not for being any of the things it said it was. (…) the title says “princess” and there is some weird girl on the cover I never could place.”

(…) This book was about culture shock, growing up, and sacrifice; not time travel, romance, and princesses.”

In both cases, the trailer and the book cover/blurb were misleading. Although they are well done, they failed to establish the mood of the story.

According to Jess C. Scott at: http://komzreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/be-my-guest-how-to-design-book-cover.html a book cover has to:

“(1) have visual appeal, and

(2) attract the right audience.”

Both the trailer for The Descendants and the cover of Two Moon Princess are visually appealing, but, because they do  not convey the right mood of the story, may eventually fail in attracting the right audience.

A lesson well taken.

The Book Cover as Visual Blurb

 

by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban

 

 

 

Shelli who runs a wonderful blog, Market my Words, has been blogging for the last few months about her road to self-publish her YA novel Untraceable.

Today she revealed her book cover in her blog post (http://faeriality.blogspot.com/2011/11/untraceable-cover-reveal-finally.html), and as I read her explanations of how she came to choose this particular shot, I realized what she was trying to do with her cover was to give us a visual blurb of her story.

Yes, I know, it sounds obvious. But it wasn’t for me before, because I am not a visual person, and I find very difficult to summarize my story in a picture.

I didn’t have to do this with my first published book Two Moon Princess. Tanglewood Press did it for me. In fact I had no saying in the matter. This was good (I didn’t have to worry about it) and bad, because the cover didn’t fit my expectations. How could it really, when I didn’t know what I wanted in the first place?

But now that I am older and wiser, as I consider self-publishing my second book, The King in the Stone, I have given a lot of thought to its cover, and although I will hire an artist to do the real design, I do have a clear image in my mind of what I want.

And this is, I think, how it should be for who knows better than the author the particular mood she wants to elicit in the reader with her story?