Book Cover Design

We're continually asked about cover designs by followers and we're responding by commenting on each book we produce to bring people into our world of all things books. So, we've been going back and forth with midlands author, Lyn Maloney, and our Niall has listened carefully to her brief re book cover design. Quite a lot of thinking goes into making a cover both impactful to readers and meaningful to an author. It should speak to the book's content...

For her debut book of short stories, set in rural Ireland, 'The Plainest Jane Of All', we played around with several concepts before we got the final approval from Lyn. Here's some ideas which worked to degrees but required refinement. First, Lyn wanted an orange background and very plain (get the pun?) cover...We then migrated to the idea of an elderly man in a pub with his faithful dog and came up with a few iterations on this theme finally landing on an obviously aged dog sitting beside his owner who is quietly enjoying his pint. Could we get any more Irish than that?

Niall's final front cover uses softened tones and clearer visibility with gentler tonal shift for a faded, dreamlike appearance. It has slight amber warmth added to lighting for hearth-like intimacy and full sepia styling to push the vintage, nostalgic mood. We love it! And, importantly, so does Lyn!

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