Let's Talk Book Covers by Laura Bradford

JENN McKINLAY: Yay!!! One of my very favorite author pals is popping in today, and I love her post so much. It's the twisty turny tale of cover art and what it does to authors. Except Laura's story is crazier than most! Here she is to tell it as only Laura can...

LAURA BRADFORD: I can’t speak for all of my fellow writers, but I suspect I speak for many when I describe that moment right before you see your latest cover for the first time as nerve-racking. Because, as we all know, people do, in fact, judge a book by its cover. Granted, different covers speak to different people for different reasons, but they do speak and they speak loudly. 

They can also incite nightmares and trauma, but we’ll get to that…

Next week, my 34^thbook (A Killer Carol) will release, and I have to say that the artist assigned to this particular series hit it out of the ballpark (See: Exhibit A). In fact, when I saw just the black and white sketch at the beginning, my jaw literally went slack for the second time in my career. 

Yep, A Killer Carol’s cover is, in a word, stunning. 

Exhibit A

S-t-u-n-n-i-n-g.

Now, before we move on, I need to say that I have been pretty fortunate in the cover department. The artist that designed A Killer Carol has worked on just about all of my mystery series with Berkley. She listens to my cover suggestions, actually reads the books from what I can tell, and delivers something I’m excited to see out in the wild. 

But that excited-to-see-out-in-the-wild part? That hasn’t always been the case…

Back in late 2004, I was literally on the edge of my seat waiting to see the cover for my very first book, Jury of One. The book had taken me close to five years to write on account of having two little ones at home. But it found a home with a small, (now defunct) independent publisher and was set to come out in spring 2005. Because I’d spent so much time with this book, I had a very specific idea for the cover.

In my mind, I saw a nighttime setting. In the foreground was a beach. On the beach, I envisioned a body—face down—with a shadow looming above. In the background, the lights of a boardwalk beach town (ferris wheel, etc.).

As I would soon learn, that’s not the cover I got. 

To make this more fun, let me set the stage for the day I saw this cover for the very first time. I’d been alerted by my editor that the cover was in the mail and so I was pretty much hanging out by the mailbox waiting. On the day it was supposed to arrive, there was no mail in the mailbox at all.

Zip. Nada.

The next day? Same thing. No mail. Nothing.

About an hour after the mail carrier usually came, we got a knock at the door.

It was the mail carrier.  His mail truck had caught fire the previous day (nope, not joking) and much of the mail was either burned or damaged by the water used to put the fire out. Anything that was salvageable would be delivered on Monday.

Monday came. So, too, did a pile of mail, rubberbanded together, with one of those notes that say something along the lines of due to circumstances beyond our control (yada, yada). But in that moment, all I cared about was the singed envelope, bearing my publisher’s name in the upper left hand corner.

I pulled it out of the pile, carried it into the kitchen, ripped that sucker open, and found this (see Exhibit B)…

Exhibit B 

Felt your jaw go slack, too, didn’t you?

No nighttime scene…

No lifeless body in the foreground…

No shadow…

No boardwalk lights…

I have to admit, that the sound that came out of my mouth at that first sighting was part sob/part laugh. I mean, after the whole fire-on-the-mail-truck thing, it was hard not to look around waiting for Peter Funt of Candid Camera to walk out of my pantry.

But, alas, there was no Peter Funt.

There was just me and my pink cover… A pink cover with a green sun…

 JENN: I have no words and, just so we're clear, that never happens! If "cover stroke" was a thing, I'd have had it.

***

A footnote, for those who are curious: 

1)   I still have the singed envelope.  

2)  Jury of One was picked up by Worldwide Mystery later that year. The new cover, while better, was still nothing I’d pictured.

So, how about it, Reds and Readers, what's your take on book covers? Any horror stories? Any covers that got you to buy a bad book? What do you like to see in a cover?

Laura Bradford is the national bestselling author of An Amish Mystery series, as well as the Emergency Dessert Squad Mysteries, and the Southern Sewing Circle Mysteries (the latter written as Elizabeth Lynn Casey). In addition to her work in mysteries, Laura also pens women’s fiction novels. Her latest, A Daughter’s Truth, released in May and is a Fall 2019 Book Club Pick for Mary Janes Farm Magazine. 

To learn more about Laura and her books, visit her website: www.laurabradford.com.  

On Facebook? So is Laura: https://www.facebook.com/laurabradfordauthor/.