Throughout the process of writing and querying, I was often asked if I had any thoughts about what my cover would look like. And the truth is yes and no. I had some ideas in my head but I never let myself get that far ahead in my thinking.
Cut to a few months ago—after I just submitted my final round of edits for my book—and I get an email from my editor asking me the same question. This was all kinds of real now. There were people, at a top publishing house, asking for my input on this. I needed to come up with something concrete, something helpful, something deep and meaningful. It was a big moment…and I failed pretty spectacularly with this response:
Hmmm…I’ve haven’t given it much thought except that lowercase for the title would be cool.
Well done Kelly. Well done.
But the truth was I was excited to see what the designers at Audible would come up with on their own. I wanted to see what they thought represented CAN’T TAKE IT BACK. I wanted to see what their industry experience and knowledge told them would be great.
And I’m very glad I did that because a few weeks later I got three options – hand-drawn sketches – for my consideration. They were all great but one was perfect.
We all knew it was perfect. It completely represented everything about my book in one image. There was a little bit of back and forth dialogue about minor details like spacing and colour but no major changes were needed. I know many authors don’t get any input on their covers and I was grateful that my thoughts and input were taken into consideration.
The cover is just so very important. It is the heart and soul of the book. It is the visual representation of the author’s hard work and efforts. And for me, my cover is perfection.
