We’ve got it covered

Candice: Phil and I have had many conversations about book covers along the way.  Nine times out of ten he goes off and does something amazing with a computer, some models and his camera and comes up with more ideas.  However, we are now in discussions with our interesting book project (more to be revealed soon) and they have asked us about a cover.

We’ve been touting around one or two options for the last year and discussed how other’s book cover styles influence how readers perceive their books. But now we have the challenge ourselves.

I’m not going to go into detail on what we have been doing at the moment, but the process has made me think about how covers can date your book.  I’ve just finished reading ‘Ten steps to happiness’ by Daisy Waugh.  It’s totally different from the other books of hers I have read – Last Dance with Valentino still goes down as my favourite.  But its more in mine and Phil’s style, a romping good bit of rom com fun.  The premise is a PR guru, Jo, who has left her London contacts and set up with her husband in his crumbling pile in the country.  To save the house and farm they create a refuge from the media for disgraced celebs .  It romps though issues with the council and an underhand MP who is trying to get his hands on the house and one of the celebs to hide his true tendencies, to a satisfying conclusion.

However, the one thing I note with the front cover is the picture of a mobile phone.  It’s a Nokia from the days when everything was mono and you only had 140 characters in a text.  The book was printed in 2003.  Alongside this I went to a brand presentation last week from an ad agency, and the one thing the guy said when talking about using images in a campaign is ‘DONT USE MOBILE PHONES, THEY DATE.’  Looking back it’s so obvious, but back in the early 2000’s we probably though that was as good as mobile was going to get, not knowing about 4G and iPhones on the horizon.

So, note to Phil and I while we still explore ideas – don’t put something on the cover that will date the book.