Book Cover Art Odyssey Part One: Kpollyphemus

I don’t know about you, but I tend to judge books by their covers. So when I decided that I was going to indie publish my fairy tales, I knew that a kickass cover was nonnegotiable. Using the guidelines suggested by David Gaughran (his book here), I knew what the specs for the final product would have to be. Now it was time to find an artist to make my vision a reality.

The stories I planned to publish are all fairy tales, and all share the theme of the dark forest to some degree. In fact, I titled the collection The Way Through The Woods. But because this is my first venture into indie publishing, I also wanted to offer a single story. From the collection, I chose Ashes, Ashes, a spooky, atmospheric take on Cinderella. I’m an unknown quantity as an author, so by offering a single story at a dollar, I figure people can try my work out and buy more if they like what they read. However, that meant I’d need two covers.

The hunt for an artist was a short one. I’m lucky to know a number of talented artists and illustrators. But for the dark fairy tales, I knew that Kristopher Pollard (aka Kpolly) was my guy. Here’s some of his stuff. I love his ability to mix natural and fantastic elements, the gigantic black eyes of his people, and the strong contrast that shows up in a lot of his work.

Kristopher takes commissions—hallelujah—so we quickly got down to a discussion of what type of look I was going for, and what he felt comfortable doing. I sent him some ideas, and keywords that I thought described my stories. (yes, I sent the stories too). Kristopher asked for more details and clarified some things. More importantly, he kept things realistic by explaining what ideas would render better as images.

So Kristopher came up with a few rough sketches based on our conversation.

They each had something to recommend them, but after several minutes, the first cover (upper left) drew me in. It possessed all the ideas I was looking for, and it wouldn’t be too cluttered; while I liked the idea of the third sketch, I worried that the “frame” idea would be too fussy in the final image.

My only suggestions to Kristopher were to lose the object in the girl’s hand, and to keep her clothing very simple. I wanted the focus to be on her face and eyes, which Kristopher always does really well.

He made a more detailed sketch using that plan:

I liked general look and position of the image, but I thought the girl looked too young (the Cinderella character in the story is a young woman, not a little girl). Kpolly agreed, and suggested changing the hair and the clothes a bit to make her "older." This type of thing is exactly why sketches are important. It's so much easier to change things early in the process than to go back later.

Using my feedback, he came back with this:

Awesome sauce, thought I. The tree silhouettes, the subtle autumnal colors in the background, and the otherworldliness of the girl's expression all really fit with what I considered to be the tone of the story.

So that was the cover saga. Except, no, it wasn’t quite over. My marketing department told me that the title words on the image might not render well as a thumbnail, which is an important factor, considering that most people shopping for ebooks scan dozens of thumbnails before clicking on a particular one. And since my marketing department is incredibly smart, I knew I had to listen. Boo, I thought. More work is needed.

I now had a great illustration, but needed typography. The next post will get to that….