The Process of Suggesting, Refining and Perfecting a Book Cover

This was a starting point, a mock up of the book cover, as it began.

                     I don't know how other authors feel, but I am always very excited at the prospect of the creation of a book cover for one of my books. Book covers are important. We know that most people are drawn to a book by its cover. So many books come to market each year that it's important to have an interesting cover that represents the work itself in some way.

                     Of the four books I have written, this was the most challenging book thus far, to write as well as to cover.  The first issue was that since it is a biography, that a picture of the person himself needed to appear on the cover.  Secondly, I only owned rights to a certain number of photographs.  Authors aren't permitted to use photographs taken by photographers without obtaining their permission.  This can be difficult because a number of the photographs I could access of Lawrence D. Kelsey, Jr. were taken by photographers who have long since gone out of business or died.  I am still not permitted to steal one of their photos.  Secondly, of the photos for which I did have rights, there was some damage. Work would need to be done to repair these photos digitally.  The one that we ultimately selected for the front cover, had significant damage to the original negative.  The prior books I had written had pictures taken for the covers fairly recently and so quality and clarity were not a problem.   Our cover designer is very good at what he does.  His first offering was a picture of an ice cave which included a version of the picture above.  It worked well, but my concern was that the subject of the book spent only two years in Antarctica and then a year in the Arctic, and this book is the story of many more of those years.

                    Then, the mock up you see above came.  This version showed the man, was clear as to what it was, and also tells the reader that this will tell a story from the recent past.   This week, the front cover and back cover were undergoing refinement.  I promise, it will be available to all of you soon.