My most recent novel, Sophie, is different to my previous work for a number of reasons. It is my first supernatural/fantastical story, it doesn't include any reference to nudity or undressing in the title... and it's also the first book I have published where I created the cover entirely myself.
Whenever I have published a novel, I have always thought long and hard about what image I want on the cover. I believe that even though these are books which are mostly being picked up for little money and read on e-readers and apps, a good cover is still both a useful promotional tool, and a nice thing to give a reader.
I'm not particularly gifted when it comes to making art digitally. There's a lot I don't know how to do in programmes like Photoshop, and while I've always meant to learn I don't have a lot of time once both 'real life' and writing time are done with. So I've found that to get the results I want, it's better to enlist the services of someone who does have those skills, even though it's something I have to pay for. My feelings are that a good artist or designer is worth the money.
However, when I decided to write some shorter works (novellas) rather than concentrate on full-length novels, I knew I wanted to price these to be good value for the reader. Amazon has a minimum amount you can charge for a book (unless you want to cut your royalties by 50%) and I knew I wanted my novellas to cost that and no more. That meant eliminating any expenses around producing them; and the only expense my other books have incurred is the cost of the covers.
That meant I would either have to find someone willing to work for nothing (which is their choice but in my view wasn't ethically an option) or do the covers myself.
When I came to publish the first of these, Carla Takes Her Clothes Off, I decided to take an easy option in my DIY approach, and use a stock image photo. I've previously shied away from using these because I prefer illustrated covers for my books, and also because I like the way the illustrated covers help them stand out a little from the basic visual language of other erotic and romance titles, which tend to employ stock photos of men and women in very little. Having unique illustrations on my covers is a point of pride for me and also helps me as an author visualise the story and characters.
But although I tried to produce my own illustration for Carla... it wasn't working terribly well. I'd gotten the photo I was using as a reference, and in the end decided that the photo itself worked well on the cover as it was, so I went with that. I like the cover overall (my idea was for it to look like the sort of cover you might find on 'chick-lit' stories about a woman who moves to the country and has adventures, although in this case with a naked bottom!) but it's probably my least favourite of all my book covers.
When it came to doing a cover for Sophie, I had a very clear idea in my head of what I wanted.
That's common for me with my book covers. As I've said, Carla... was supposed to have a chick-lit feel, and I always wanted the Naked Girl books to have a bit of an 'indie comic-book' vibe, in homage to Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise (one of my biggest influences as a writer) but also things like Scott Pilgrim (the big, bold, fun fonts).
For Sophie, from the start I decided that given that the book was meant to be more like the sort of fiction I like to read (in that it was supernatural/fantastical) I wanted the cover to also reflect some of those same interests. I'm a big fan of design and I take a lot of inspiration from a wide variety of sources, and in this case, I was really looking at art from manga and anime and from videogames. In particular, I went back to some old magazines I still have from my teens in the late 1990s (no, not those sort of magazines) - videogame and anime culture magazines which were full of examples of the sort of cover design and artwork I wanted to reference. There was a popular style in design when I was coming of age around the turn of the millenium (I'm talking not just Japanese products but also stuff like the work of Designers' Republic, the legendary Sheffield design house who gave the likes of Wipeout on PS1 its look); bold, often neon colours, simple and stylised imagery, very graphical, that I really wanted to evoke. Think of the Final Fantasy games with their simple white boxes and symbolic logos; or the video covers for the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, which had a singular character on each one, often with a graphic or logo behind them.
(Sorry if this got really nerdy; if you don't know what I'm talking about, just accept that the cover of this book is supposed to look like the things it looks like!)
The big challenge for me this time around was drawing the figures. I initially wanted to have Sophie alone on the cover but I wanted the 'clothed-female/nude female' concept to be represented, which meant including Laura as well. As I didn't want a re-do of the covers of the Naked Girl books (which also have a clothed and a nude protagonist front and centre) I decided to have them kissing or embracing (as unlike in Best Friends... it's not a spoiler to say Sophie and Laura get together) and in the end kissing worked nicely.
I'm not great at drawing but I'm probably better than I think I am, and fortunately this time with the help of a few reference images the figures turned out okay (please ignore Sophie's weird banana hands!). I decided quite early on that I wanted the characters in monochrome; initially they were going to be in shades of pink on a fully white background (another Final Fantasy homage) but in the end I remembered a picture I'd done a very long time ago that had been shaded in greyscale and went for that.
Once I had my illustration, it was time to work on the arrangement and the fonts. On this I was on more comfortable ground; I've done the arranging and lettering for all of my books so far, albeit using illustrations done by others, or a stock image. The only time I didn't was Brave Nude World - I did the text, but the placing of the image was decided by Danielle and they just left space for the lettering.
As soon as I found the symbol that's used on the front I knew it was perfect for what I was trying to do (I won't say what it is, it's a bit of an Easter Egg for the plot, although I will say that I didn't draw it and it is a public domain image so it isn't like I've stolen someone else's hard work). The cover came together easily after that. The font was something I was stuck on, until I happened to be out one day and saw someone in a t-shirt for the band Nirvana, and I was reminded of the tall, narrow font used in their logo, which worked great for my cover too. The lens flare on the 'P' was a last-minute addition but I think it adds to that late 1990s anime vibe.
I enjoyed making my own cover and I'm please with the way it turned out. It's given me some confidence to do more of this going forward, although I think the next book I put out at least will have a cover by a proper illustrator again.