Journey of a Book cover: From idea to print….

They say, “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.”

Why do they say that?

Definitely because a majority of people do tend to judge a book by its cover. If this was not the case, there was no need for the above proverb to have existed at all :)

Well, that is how important book covers are!

Especially for my genre : Fiction!

Fiction is read to escape into an alternate world created by the author. Fiction is read to have an intense emotional experience,. And a good book cover contributes to that immensely….

So obviously, I was very worried and confused when I was thinking about the cover for my first book, ‘The prince of Patliputra‘ which will be launched in December 2015. You can find it on Facebook at       and on Instagram at

It all begins with an idea….

I wanted to do something different and intense with my book cover….

Something that had never been done…

After days of head scratching and biting nails…..i finally found out what i wanted to be on the book cover.

My story is a Historical fantasy set in ancient India. It is a story of multiple characters and events with focus on one protogandist —Asoka Maurya…who went on the become Samrat Asoka whose symbol now flies proudly on our National flag…

But the story is not just about him, but of his empire as a whole..

So i decided to put the map of Bharath ( INDIA) on the cover designed in a style of two point perspective look…

This was my first sketch to put my idea in front of my designers eyes….

Put it digitally in GIMP2.0, it looked like this…

Quite messy, being done by my amateur’s hand….But it was enough to convey my emotions to the  designer…

My  designer took my idea to the heart and used their awesome skills to create a professional look for the idea….which looked like this…

 

So how does it look…..???

Do you like it?????

 

Well…………I didn’t..!

It looked more like a cover of a travel magazine than that of a historical thriller….

Suddenly, my idea of putting the story world on the cover didn’t seem so cool at all!!

Suddenly, i felt lost….So lost that i didn’t even know what to put on my cover any more…

That’s when my designer came to my rescue. This, guys is the difference between an amateur and professional…..Seeing my fist idea turn out so bad made me feel nervous…..while it inspired my designer to try something different..

This is what she made while i was worrying that my book was going to have no cover at all…

And suddenly, my faith in my basic cover idea was rejuvenated.

I realized that the idea could still work…all i had to do was to change the way it looked. Change the perspective of the story world.

So, what I did was flip the new cover and go back to the same idea as before— ‘ Putting the story world on the cover..’

This is what i returned to my designer. We had a few discussions that the brown palace on the now back cover wasn’t contributing anything to the cover and seemed out of place…

After doing what designers do and waving a magic wand over the cover, She returned me this.. And trust me, it looks awesome..

 

So this is the New cover of my book :)

And this is how it went from idea to completion…

If you like it, do like it HERE…..

NOTE: All images are property of Leadstart Publishing private ltd

 

Have a good day y’all..