Wednesday Cover Story, Author at Allison & Busby

Wednesday Cover Story: The changing face of DI Charlie Priest…

23 March, 2011

The series design for the D I Charlie Priest crime novels by Stuart Pawson have undergone various changes over the years. First we had the rather dark look… Then we had the bottom-half-white look… Then we played with a monochrome design…. And now we’ve gone with a more eye-catching urban style… What do you think […]

Wednesday Cover Story: From advertising to publishing

16 March, 2011

Horror of horrors, I had to endure the journey home last week with no book to read, and there’s only so many times I can play solitare on my phone, you know. To add to my chagrin, the cover to the book being read by the woman opposite me was familiar in a niggling way […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Win a commission to create a Vintage Classics cover

9 March, 2011

I love it when the public is asked to take part in competitions to showcase their creativity – giving a voice to so many talented individuals that might otherwise go unnoticed. So for today’s Wednesday Cover Story, I am delighted to flag up the fact that Vintage Classics are sponsoring The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The ever-changing face of the paperback

2 March, 2011

There was a very interesting programme on book cover design on BBC4 earlier this week – part of the series The Beauty of Books. This particular episode, entitled Paperback Writer, examines how the paperback format ‘democratized reading in the 20th century’ and how cover design became an essential tool for selling books to the mass […]

Wednesday Cover Story: A page of book covers…

16 February, 2011

Anna Jacobs, author of Cherry Tree Lane – the first book in her Wiltshire Girls series – has just launched her new website. Amongst the features on the website is a page simply displaying all and only her book covers – a most colourful array of book covers I might add. Check out Anna Jacobs […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The new Weather Warden covers

9 February, 2011

I’ve just seen the new covers for the upcoming Weather Warden books by Rachel Caine and, if you’ll excuse the weather pun, they are HOT! I thought the previous design-style as seen here on the covers to Ill Wind and Heat Stroke were really cool (ok, enough with the heat references…) but removing the coloured […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Behind the scenes of cover art…

2 February, 2011

Ever wondered how book designs are created? Think you have to be a whizz at Photoshop and advanced Illustrator? Granted, basic techie skills are necessary, but sometimes it’s more creative – and certainly more fun! – to do it the old-fashioned way. Windmill Books have recently proved their creativity with their post about the aptly […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

26 January, 2011

We are very impressed with the innovative design for these obscure H G Wells titles recently republished by Orion in hardback. (Georgina spotted them at The British Library on the weekend). The title and author name features as a newspaper headline and the usual details on the back cover (bar code, price, publisher etc) are […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Sneak preview of Alice’s Girls cover

19 January, 2011

Here’s a sneak-peek at the upcoming cover to Alice’s Girls (out in hardback March 2011) – the third book in a series about a group of Land Girls on a Devonshire farm. Written by Julia Stoneham, whose mother ran a Land Army hostel in Devon, the book follows Muddy Boots & Silk Stockings and The […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Was the old man a winner or loser?

12 January, 2011

A few months ago we featured the four covers to Stephen King’s new book Under The Dome and questioned which book would have the most appeal. Well, I set about buying a copy as a gift just before Christmas and walked into Waterstone’s High Street Kensington only to find they only had the cover with […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The Flavour Thesaurus

5 January, 2011

The Flavour Thesaurus was one of the many books that featured as gifts under our Christmas tree this year (and considering every Waterstone’s I ventured into a few days before Christmas were out of stock – “it’s been very popular” – it probably featured under many others). This isn’t suprising considering it is an ingenious […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The importance of fonts

15 December, 2010

As any self-respecting cover designer will tell you, choosing a font is very important business. Just look at our moody vampiric swirls for the Morganvilles, or the art deco typeface used for the Laurie R. King series. Finding the perfect font is as important as finding or creating the perfect image for a cover. So, […]

Wednesday Cover Story: I Hate Christmas (but I now love sprouts…)

8 December, 2010

This has got to be one of my favourite covers on our list. Simple and to the point. And how lucky we are that the brussel sprout, that un-loved Christmas vegetable, is green and not, for example, orange. The Christmas colouring for the cover just wouldn’t have worked, would it… But on this subject of […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The 3D Effect

24 November, 2010

No matter what kind of cover design is chosen for a book, the goal is for it to stand out. And this clever design has taken that goal very seriously…and indeed literally, with a brilliant 3D effect. I take my hat off to the designer who has managed to make a striking cover out of […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Making a ‘serious’ statement with statues

17 November, 2010

Statues are a recurring feature in cover designs for modern classics, or books which want to position themselves as such in my mind. There was the cover I chose among a few different editions when buying a copy of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which perfectly suits the story superficially (a group of students brought […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Popular images…

10 November, 2010

In The Bookseller last week, it was noted that The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Anne Barrows and The Island, by Victoria Hislop used the same image of the pale-skinned brunette on their covers. The image in question is obviously a popular choice as we too considered using […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The secret behind Every Secret Thing

3 November, 2010

How does a girl from a Northampton indie rock band end up on the cover of a Canadian author’s book? By chance? Or cosmic choice? It is a question that has arisen following our reissue of Every Secret Thing – with a new cover below: We settled for the photograph of this particular woman because […]

Wednesday Cover Story: Pink is only for girls…?

27 October, 2010

There are two books in my house which stand out on our livingroom bookshelf for the mere fact that they are – pink. One is the book One Hundred Shades of White, by Preethi Nair – with a beautiful hardback cover that evokes the vibrant colours of Indian saris… and yes, that luscious pink, inequivocally […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The Finkler Question

13 October, 2010

So there you have it. The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson has just won the Man Booker Prize. (Congratulations!). And looking back at our earlier blogs this week, perhaps we should have seen this coming?? On Monday, Lara blogged about attending a recent Man Booker author-reading event, and whilst she said she had her money […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy

6 October, 2010

As you can see on the right there, Georgina’s current read is A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh. Unlike our erudite Editorial Administrator, who, if you haven’t noticed yet, likes her classics, I can’t say I’m drawn to reading the book. But, I am drawn to the cover. Probably because it reminded me somewhat […]

Wednesday Cover Story: The Apostle (The film that never was…)

29 September, 2010

When I came across the cover to The Apostle, by Brad Thor I was sure it was a film tie-in edition. The images look like stills from a movie (do they not?), so much so that I actually Googled IMDB to look it up, as I have a penchant for war and government action-thrillers. But […]