{"id":7218,"date":"2016-05-29T07:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-05-29T06:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janetgover.com\/?p=7218"},"modified":"2016-05-29T07:00:35","modified_gmt":"2016-05-29T06:00:35","slug":"a-cover-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/reading\/a-cover-story\/","title":{"rendered":"A cover story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Two
Two fabulous covers – both award winners<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This week has been all about covers for me\u2026<\/p>\n

First of all there was the staggering news that not one but two of my books had received an Award of Excellence for their covers from the Colorado Romance Writers \u2013 a chapter of the Romance Writers of America.<\/p>\n

Of course, I hasten to point out that none of the credit for that goes to me. Both covers were designed by Berni Stevens \u2013 who has now done covers for four of my novels \u2013 and I have loved every one.<\/p>\n

At the same time as this was happening, I have been in discussion with my publisher ChocLit about the cover Berni is going to do for the next book.<\/p>\n

No matter how often people say you shouldn\u2019t judge a book by its cover \u2013 we all do it. A cover can catch your eye and make you pull a book off a shelf, or click on a link. After that, it\u2019s up to me to write a book that sounds interesting. But without that initial attraction of the cover, you may never know.<\/p>\n

Cover design is a fascinating process. So I thought I\u2019d give you a bit of an idea how it\u2019s done.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The new book is another Coorah Creek Novel. (What\u2019s that \u2013 do I hear cheering and shouts of joy?) Because of that, certain design elements will be the same as the previous book on the series. The idea is to establish a brand that is instantly recognisable. The font, for example, will stay the same \u2013 although the colour may change.<\/p>\n

The other covers all had images that were uniquely Australian, to match the setting of the series. The new cover will also feature uniquely Australian settings.<\/p>\n

Because a cover designer can\u2019t read every book before they do the cover, there\u2019s a marketing\/cover design document for them to read. This document includes useful information such as the description of key characters and details of key settings \u2013 both locations and time.<\/p>\n

If the book has any theme, such as Christmas, that\u2019s always important.<\/p>\n

\"It's
It’s hard to see, but there are penguins there – holding flippers. Awww!!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s also discussion of any key images – for example, if the hero give the heroine a special gift, that might feature on the cover. Or if there are six million penguins in the book. Seriously \u2013 check out the cover of Bring Me Sunshine.<\/p>\n

But no matter how much I, as the author, contribute to a cover design, it all comes down to the skill of the designer\u2026 and in this I have been very lucky. My seven published books so far have had two different cover designers \u2013 and I\u2019ve loved every one of the covers they have made for me\u2026<\/p>\n

I might be able to show you a new cover in the not too distant future \u2013 and I\u2019m pretty sure you\u2019ll agree with me that it\u2019s fabulous too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week has been all about covers for me\u2026 First of all there was the staggering news that not one but two of my books had received an Award of Excellence for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnhocking.net\/jg2025demo1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}