A Picture Tells a Thousand Words

Devil Baby, Melbourne Festival 2011

The cover art for a book is very important. It catches the eye of the potential buyer. It offers clues about what’s inside. It invites the reader in – or – it keeps the reader out.

My truly lovely cover art for Mariah’s Marriage is by CK Volnek. We had a few exchanges back and forth and agreed on this. I like it because it encapsulates, in the girl’s expression, so much of her character as it unfolds through the text. It was only after I became a published novelist that I realised something I’d known subliminally for a long time. The cover art is an important part of the writer’s relationship with the book.

As a wannabee writer, I’d sat through countless talks where writers, particularly children’s writers, complained bitterly about the covers of their books. Children’s writers go into schools and are asked by children readers things like:
“Why does Timmy have red hair in the book and black hair on the cover? It spoiled it for me.”
As well it might.

My publishers, MuseItUp, have a very good cover art form and a principle question is what colour is the protagonist’s hair.

My first published story was called Stereotypes and it was illustrated. Magazines don’t, in my experience, consult about the illustration. This is unlikely to matter. They have their house style for illustration just as for the content, but in the case of Stereotypes, the artist used the stereotype and to my mind sent the wrong signals. The story was about a role reversal where the Prof turned out to be female and the cleaner male. Sadly, the story was illustrated by a man in a suit! It niggled at the time, although being my first sale, I was too starry eyed to make any kind of fuss.

Once the magazine is published of course, it doesn’t come again. With books, the writer may have an opportunity to change if rights revert. You might want to change in order to modernise if time has passed. Illustration, like anything else, alters over time. What is new and exciting today may be old and tired by the next time.

The photograph at the head of this post was taken in Melbourne of an exhibit in the Angels and Demons street sculpture exhibition. The figure is challenging, stark, mischievous. The angels, with wings not tails, were no less so and certainly not reassuring. What kind of story would they best illustrate? I’d go for a story about that teenage into young adult stage when one’s relatives encapsulate both the dark and the light almost in the same breath, the same sentence, the same heartbeat. What do you think?

My cover for Bella’s Betrothal, again by CK Volnek.

The girl has just that head of red corkscrew curls one sees in Scotland from time to time, the man is an outline – someone yet to be known, and the skyline sets it in Edinburgh with the forbidding lines of the castle behind. I love it. It truly enhances my relationship with the book.

http://goo.gl/pASdjp Mariah’s Marriage US
http://goo.gl/NxYxj5 Mariah’s Marriage UK
http://goo.gl/PKptQg Bella’s Betrothal US
http://goo.gl/5RBzIm Bella’s Betrothal UK