Publishing Process Part 3 – Proofs & Cover Artwork

This is the third in my series of posts about the publishing process (you can read the first and second here) with a traditional publisher. As I take you through my journey, I hope to demystify the process and give you an idea of the work which goes into getting a book ready to hit the shelves.

Proofs

Checking the proofs is the final stage in getting the text of a book ready for the printer's. The manuscript was sent to me and a proofreader simultaneously, and by now it was all laid out like a book rather than the word document we’d previously been working from.

Hodder sent me a physical copy as well as digital, which was really handy because I find it’s much easier to spot mistakes on a printed page. I picked up some little errors: missing speech marks or commas, the occasional word which had accidentally been left in after the copy-edit stage. Previously, these are the kinds of things that would have irritated me as a reader, but now I’ve seen how extensively a book is amended and tweaked, I understand how easily they can slip through. Hopefully, having been through the rigorous process of being checked and double-checked by different professionals, the text will be perfect.

The proofs were about checking the fine detail of the text, but meanwhile another team of people were working on a more creative element: the book’s cover...

Cover Art

This is the initial black and white sketch which my editor sent me, along with colour samples showing the wintery blue colours and warm glowing lights the team were proposing for a colour scheme. This layout was the work of the designer, Natalie Chen, and I was delighted to approve it.

An illustrator, Giordano Poloni, was then commissioned to produce the scene on the front and back of jacket. It focuses on the fictional English Cotswold village of Willowbrook, where my story begins, with the main characters depicted as silhouettes at the front. Again, I was thrilled with the design. My only request, when this came through, was would it be possible to incorporate sewing elements, since the main character, Evie, owns a patchwork and quilting shop? Sewing plays an important part in the story, and Evie’s quilts and handmade creations are woven into the plot, so I was keen for this to be included in the artwork somehow. The designer came back with this:

Isn’t it beautiful? My book is described as ‘cosy women’s fiction’, and I think this cover encapsulates that perfectly. And the buttons and sewing needle were a stroke of genius!

Here’s the back cover:

What do you think? Can you see how already a whole group of people have worked closely on preparing my book for publication? Their expert contributions have all helped to refine it and package it in the most compelling way possible, and I feel privileged to be part of the Hodder team. I can't wait to hear what readers think of it when it's released in September.

Sophie.x

The Christmas Holiday will be published 19th September 2019 and is available for preorder here

Related posts:

The Publishing Process: Part 2: Copy-Edits by Sophie Claire

The Publishing Process Part 1: Edits by Sophie Claire

Good Things Come by Sophie Claire

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