We often spend days, weeks, months mulling over cover designs and it’s always interesting to hear what people think of our covers. And of course, it’s particularly nice to hear readers think we’ve done a good job, especially when we’ve reprinted a book and revamped the cover with a new design… you hope readers will see it as a positive upgrade and not the other way round.

This week I received an email from a reader looking to obtain a copy of The Parliament House and The Painted Lady, two books in Edward Marston’s Christopher Redmayne mystery series. She wanted to be sure that she would receive the new reissues featuring the green and brown covers as she felt they were a vast improvement over the old design…

“The engraved-covers artwork is excellent and positions the product/series really well (there is some similarity to Susan Gregory’s Chaloner series, of the same C17th period, but there’s sufficient differentiation for them not to be confused), whereas the covers with photo-images and foil-text seem – to my eye – to be rather anachronistic and tacky, in comparison.”

It goes to show that readers really do care about covers, and the time we (and our Art Editor in particular!) spend making them look as beautiful as possible is well worth it!

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Online Marketing Manager