The Anatomy of a Cover

Creating a successful cover for a book is vital. You need to catch people's eye, convey what the book is about, tell them your name, and make them want to find out more - all in 6 by 9 inches. The appearance must be professional. Home made covers stick out like a sore thumb. Don't get fussy and try to tell half the story, use decent art and make the image stick, something that the reader will recognize immediately when they see it again. Did I mention use quality art? Fantasy books with what I call "avatar art" really turn me off.

My quality art is by Julie Fain, a fairy and fantasy artist from Oklahoma. Here's a link to her website: http://juliefainart.com/ Julie specializes in silhouette art, which fits perfectly when you want to preserve a little mystery. She did the cover for An Ordinary Fairy, and recently completed the art for An American Fairy, the next book in the story of fairy woman Willow Brown and her human companion, Noah Phelps. That gorgeous cover was a happy coincidence. I was searching various websites looking for a good cover image when I happened across Julie's website. There I found an image she called Fairy at Sunset, which fits exactly with the story. The first time Noah sees Willow fly, she's at a pond at sunset. The image was such a perfect match that Julie didn't even need to make any adjustments, other than a slight resizing. We added the title and my name and it was done.

For the cover of AAF, I originally asked Julie to create something new: an image of a fairy flying in front of a US flag:

I sort of liked this, but my wife rejected it immediately, as being too "Tinker Bellish" as she put it. I returned to Julie's stock photos and found an image that was much better:

This image fits a scene in the book, where Willow's friend Rowan is walking alone in the woods after an argument with Willow and Noah finds her. The dress on the fairy wasn't right though. In the story, Rowan was wearing her racing gear, which is a very small bikini that wouldn't be visible in a silhouette view at night. So I asked Julie to undress her. This was a challenge, since the original image was drawn with the dress, rather than adding it to the fairy. Julie went to work and drew Rowan a "nice digital butt" as she said, and also cropped out the wider scene to concentrate on the central image:

Add the title and my name and you're done:

There may some minor adjustments made before the book is released, but we're very close. Oh, and by the way, all the images above are Copyright 2011 by Julie Fain and are used by her permission.