Why Pixel is a Four-Letter Word by Louise Marley

When I first decided to self-publish it didn’t actually occur to me I’d have to do everything myself. I soon found out that while I owned the rights to my traditionally published books, I didn’t own the original cover art. I would have to produce my own. I might have a GCSE in art, but there is a reason my entire house is painted in magnolia and that I only ever wear black. But, you know, whatever! How hard can it be to design a book cover?

I soon found out.

The part that took the longest was sourcing the illustrations. The girl on the cover had to look something like my heroine, but not be too cute and certainly not too slutty! She had to appear friendly, but also as though she’s up to no good.

This was my first attempt for Why Do Fools Fall in Love. The original illustration cost me £30. It was on a white background, which was fine, but Amazon stated that any white cover had to have a black border around it, and at that stage I hadn’t a clue how to fix that. I decided to change the background to pale blue which, with hindsight, looks terribly wishy-washy.

A year later and I wanted my covers to appear more similar, like a ‘brand’. I therefore redesigned Why Do Fools Fall in Love and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes to match A Girl’s Best Friend.
 

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes was simple. I took three illustrations - a man, a woman and some smoke (see what I did there?) and set them against a black background.

Why Do Fools Fall in Love proved more difficult. I bought a new background illustration because I liked the trees with the fairy lights, but when I added the hero and heroine it looked too ‘busy’. It also had the Eiffel tower in it and my book is set in Bath! So I stripped everything away until I was left with the trees - and then I put back the fence because it looked too bare. And the fence did have little hearts on it, which went with the title. Coloured jeans were in fashion, so I changed my heroine’s to yellow, which I also hoped would make the cover look less Christmassy. One of the tricks I’d picked up since my first effort was to use as few colours as possible, so my hero got a makeover too and ended up in urban black and grey.

 

I experimented with different background colours and decided on a rather classy dark blue to resemble the evening sky. Unfortunately, once the cover had gone through two software programs the dark-blue turned purple! My computer then crashed three times over the course of a weekend, losing all my work. It was coming up to Christmas and I had a mass of deadlines, so in the end I just muttered something that didn’t sound remotely like ‘whatever’ and hit ‘publish’.

I’ve now designed the covers for most of my books. I could admit it’s because I’m a complete control freak, but do you know what? Despite all the cursing and complaining I actually enjoy doing it!

 

 





 

 

 

Book Jacket Photos: Louise Marley

Illustrations: iStockphoto

 

The Story Behind the Book: 'Why Do Fools Fall In Love' by Louise Marley

I was originally given two days to come up with the idea for Why Do Fools Fall in Love. My agent wanted to sell it as part of a two-book deal with Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. In the end, the deal with the proposed publisher fell through and I signed with someone else. But this is how I came up with the story.
 

Whenever I write a book I always start with a subject that interests me. In this case it was the film industry. I knew I didn’t want to write about Hollywood, because I didn’t want the story to be too glitzy, so it had to be the British film industry.

 

I liked the idea of two attractive men, who were complete opposites in personality, competing for the same woman. But who was this woman?

I remembered that old movie, the Bodyguard, and briefly thought about having a female actress and a hunky male bodyguard. I dismissed that idea for being too obvious, but then had the idea to switch the sexes. What if I had a too-handsome-for-his-own-good actor being forced to put up with a minder, because wherever he goes he inadvertently gets into trouble? What if the female bodyguard was equally reluctant to take on the job, feeling she’s being forced to ‘babysit’ an actor who’s too stupid to duck when women throw themselves at him?

Researching the book was remarkably easy. At the time I was living in a tiny village just outside Bath (a magnet for any production company wanting to make a costume drama), and I spent a day watching the BBC film A Respectable Trade.

Although I came up with the synopsis over a couple of days, the book itself took a year to write and was eventually sold to Poolbeg Press. When the rights reverted back to me, I republished it as an ebook with Amazon KDP. It has now sold over 40,000 copies.

Not bad for a book thought up over a weekend!

 

 

 

 

Hello from Louise Marley

Hello, I’m Louise Marley. I write novels (chick-lit mixed with crime) and short stories. I’m inspired by old houses and loud music, so it’s lucky I live in a very rural area with lots of history and no one to complain about the music apart from a few sheep.

 

When I’m working on a new book I like to take lots of photographs of possible settings and then create a virtual mood board to inspire me. My book Why Do Fools Fall In Love is set during the making of a costume drama in Bath. As part of my research I watched a lot of filming and the photo below was taken during the making of A Respectable Trade.

 

 

Although some people might call this procrastination ...