A Journey to a Book Cover

I was really worried about getting a cover for my novel, Prophecy Girl. I know there is that old adage about how you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and I'm sure you'd believe a writer wouldn't do such a thing—but I definitely do. I scan books at the store, or on the internet, and I'm drawn to the ones with the covers I like. I do not read book descriptions. I find them to be absolutely full of spoilers! Even with a carefully written description, by someone who didn't want to spoil the novel, the description covers the first thirty percent of a book. In the worst case scenario, they told you the very end! I've seen this happen a couple of times.

So, I judge books by their covers. I go with authors I've already read, or who were recommended to me. I learn the genre most of the time, and I'll go ahead and check the rating on goodreads fairly often. This baffles a lot of people, of course, but they're also expecting that I'll stick with a book if I don't like it. My kindle list is full of samples of books—I crack open those digital files and I start reading. If I'm bored, I move on.

But what makes me download a sample in the first place, is the cover.

So knowing that about me, you can imagine how horrified I was at the idea of having a cover for my novel. What was I going to tell an artist that I wanted to see? What did they need to know about my book to know what to do? What if everything they came back with was just wrong, and I didn't even know what to tell them as an explanation? I had a long list of worries.

When I finally emailed my cover artist, I wrote her this long rambling email. I told her that if there was going to be a model on the cover, she needed to have red hair—and it had to have some volume. I described Lacuna Valley, the setting of Prophecy Girl. I told her I wanted something pretty with the title font. I told her that Prophecy Girl isn't a werewolf book, and I didn't want to be misleading by giving that impression, but it would be cool if somewhere small there was a footprint hidden in the snow or something. I told her all of these things and more, and then I waited nervously in front of my inbox.

When she sent the cover back to me, I was a little taken aback. It was such a strange experience to see the main character of my novel staring back at me.

I've gotten a lot of compliments on the cover since then, so I think it all turned out well in the end. I think if I saw my book on a shelf, I'd pick it up and read the first few pages. I like covers with interesting people, pretty fonts, and colors that catch my eye (Incarnate by Jodi Meadows is a great example of eye catching colors).

What do you look for in a cover?

Faith McKay writes stories about characters with real world struggles in otherworldly settings. She is the author of PROPHECY GIRL, a story where characters struggle with the idea of having a destiny. In comparison, she feels really lucky that her destiny was to struggle with comma placement and be that awkward lady who points out puns at parties.

Other things to know about Faith… She wears two different colored shoes. She is a survivor of child abuse. She has lived with chronic illness for over a decade. A lot of people don't like her because she laughs too much. It's also the reason a lot of other people do like her, so go figure. She listens to more music than people are probably supposed to. She's a nomad. The word sounds really cool, so a lot of people say it, but she actually lives in an RV with her husband and their pet bunny rabbit, Dorian Gray.