Blog Tour: Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy by Paula Berinstein – Guest Post: Lights, Action, Book Cover!

Lights, Action, Book Cover!

Guest post by Paula Berinstein

Creating a book cover is a lot like directing a movie. You pick the script, hire actors, come up with a look and feel, and design your sets, props, and costumes. Then you turn everything over to the experts who know how to transform your ideas into magic, and voila, you have your cover!

Here is the process in a nutshell.

Create a movie poster. Pick a dramatic moment from the story that involves your protagonist (the protag is critical for the front cover of a kids’ book but isn’t necessary for the back, although it’s okay for them to be there). Your picture should tell a story, or imply one. Be sure that your image is provocative enough to grab readers’ attention. For Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy I selected the moment when Amanda and Nick discovered the secret room underneath the school. Atmospheric and creepy!

Design your characters. This step is so much fun! What do your characters look like? Your artist will ask you about their faces (even if they’re animals or other non-humans), their body characteristics, hair, clothing, accessories, and personalities. That last might surprise you, but personality is critical to character design. Getting inside your characters’ personalities is what actors do when they ask, “What’s my motivation?” Your artist will want to capture that, and yes, that also comes through in what they wear, how they move, their hair, and all the rest. Find pictures to use as inspiration if possible. Your artist won’t copy what you give him or her, but they will use it as a jumping off point. For example, in the Amanda books, I told Anna (Mogileva, my wonderful artist) that I want Headmaster Thrillkill to look a bit like the actor Gregory Peck, but bald. She hasn’t designed him yet. I’m dying to see how he comes out!

Following are some early concept drawings for Amanda. Note how at first she barely resembles the final character. Anna kept showing me samples, and I’d say, “Well, this is okay but that doesn’t look right” until we settled on the final Amanda.

Early Amanda concept drawings

Final Amanda concept drawings

Amphora Kapoor concept drawings. Anna nailed this one immediately.

Pick a style. If you look at a sampling of book covers on your shelf, you will probably see some realistic-looking covers (not photographs, but drawn), cartoons, and stylized characters of various kinds. Some figures are outlined, some are not. The varieties are endless. What do you like, and does it fit your story? For the Amanda books, I wanted realism a la the Hildebrandt brothers (http://brothershildebrandt.com/) who have worked with the stories of J.R.R. Tolkien. I didn’t feel that cartoons were appropriate, because although my books have humor in them they’re not comedies.

Select a color scheme. You will probably want to refer to other covers and artwork in general for inspiration. I knew from the start that I wanted saturated, game-like colors because they’re so emotional.

Figure out your lighting. The amount and type of light will depend somewhat on what’s in your text, but you can play with this. Your artist will want to know the season, time of day, and location of the scene. You may notice that the covers of my first two Amanda books, Amanda Lester and the Pink Sugar Conspiracy and Amanda Lester and the Orange Crystal Crisis, take place in the dark, with dramatic spotlighting, but the third, Amanda Lester and the Purple Rainbow Puzzle, is set outdoors. Note the difference in the lighting, which is due partly to the location, but also the season. The third book takes place during the summer, while the first one occurs in winter and the second in springtime.

Design your set and props. Much of your setting and accessories will come from your story, but there is room to experiment. You don’t have to be 100% faithful to the story. For example, Amanda does not actually have her video camera with her when she explores the secret room—she uses the one on her phone. But we thought the camera revealed something about her that potential readers would want to know, so Anna put it in.

In the case of the secret detective school in my books, I created the floorplans before Anna designed the school. Much of what we did was based on the text, which describes the school in some detail.

School design based on floorplans

3D rendering of the school

Final school scene for the back cover of the first book

Design your title and author’s name. Make sure the title and the author’s name are large and legible and placed in a way that doesn’t obscure the picture. Pick colors that make them stand out but go with the colors in the scene. Selecting a font can be tricky. We went with the ones my book designer, Jill Ronsley, used on the inside of the book. (And I made sure I purchased them rather than downloading them for free because they are definitely not in the public domain. Some deep research was involved there, as it wasn’t obvious who owned one of them.) We also added a logo, which we use on every book, including on the spine.

Design your back cover. The process for the back cover is very much the same as for the front, but you will have to make room for your blurb, the bar code, your Web address, and the publisher’s logo. Writing the blurbs for my books was painful. Anna kept telling me that they were too long and I kept having to shorten them, which as you know isn’t the easiest thing in the world. The fewer the words you have to play with, the harder it is to get the story across. Oh, and make sure your tag line really grabs people’s attention. Here are my three. Note that I like to use the elements of surprise and incongruity, as I did with the first two. The third is just a collection of evocative images.

A reluctant detective, a criminal mastermind, and . . . sugar?

If only Sherlock Holmes’s great-great-grandson weren’t such a dork . . .

Purple rainbows, a mysterious crypt, and pots of gold . . .

Design the spine. Betcha forgot about that. Yes, the spine actually has to be designed too. It should be legible and grabby so it can compete well with other books on a shelf. See what the best spines in your collection look like in terms of word placement, color, etc. If your book is part of a series, it’s helpful to show series information on the spine. Mine say “The Pink Book,” “The Orange Book,” etc. If your book is thin, you will have fewer options than if it’s thick. (Duh.) Here is the whole package for the first Amanda book. Note the spine.

Matte or glossy? I picked matte because I like the look, but you can use glossy if you prefer it. I don’t think my books are the glossy type. They’re atmospheric and a bit on the creepy side. Check your shelf (or the bookstore) for inspiration.

And that’s how Anna and I did it. There’s a lot of preparation and experimentation involved, but the result will be worth it, especially since most books are sold by their covers.