Book covers - the great debate

A Cate Myers design

Many authors love their book covers so much they have posters of them made, framed, and hung in their study or office. I must admit to liking some of the covers of my books that much.

When BeWrite Books sent me this cover for approval, way back in 2005, for my first novel Death in Malta, I fell in love with it at once. My fans loved it too, and this first novel has been a nice steady success ever since. Sometimes, a cover and the content of a novel just click together, and readers sense this.

A Tony Szmuk design

I feel that typography is one of the most important elements on a cover: after all, one could dispense with everything else. The words - title and author's name - are not something a book can travel without. I like solid no-nonsense typefaces whose style seems to match with the book's content.

When BeWrite Books sent me the cover for According to Luke earlier this year I was not immediately convinced. It took me a while to see the genius of Tony Szmuk's design. Ever since the book was released, I have received any number of compliments about the novel's appearance. People praise its appropriate 'puzzle' suggestion, and the background that indicates the watery location of Venice.

It's far from easy to design a book cover. Designers are visual people - and they rarely have time to read a whole novel in order to conjure the image that might interpret and promote it best. By the same token, authors are 'word' people who rarely understand visual prompts as well as those trained to understand what makes people love a cover. Or better still, makes them buy a book because they like the cover.

A Rosanne Dingli design

When it came to designing covers for my story collections, issued independently from a bunch of out of print collections, whose rights had reverted to me, it was a steep learning curve. All the years of art school seemed not to mean much at first, but my training there - and a background working in magazines and publishing - soon put me right. My latest effort, Encore, is here on the right. It's wrapped around my latest collection, released in time for Christmas gift-giving, so I hope it is suitably festive. Apart from being merely seasonal, however, it is meant to carry a bunch of stories all written around a music theme.

To come up with what you see, it took me a fortnight of playing around with concepts, images, words and colours. I am not the fastest person on earth to make a decision, let alone the two dozen or so selections one must make to create a cover. The process was slow and deliberate this time. The opinions of a number of groups and individuals were taken into account. Now the little book is out, and I hope will gladden me with the approval of a whole lot of happy gift-buyers this Christmas.

Your opinion is required: What do you think of the covers of all my books? These are only three ... there are several more, which can be seen on my website.

A candid opinion is a rare thing - I would like as many as you can muster. Leave one or two in a comment box for me.