Coming up with a cover for The Killdeer Connection was no easy task.
I thought it might be interesting for readers and writers to see the process at work before I officially reveal my cover for the upcoming novel.
What I’ll do in this series of articles is analyze some book covers and tell you what I liked about them and why I ultimately rejected them.
I started playing with cover ideas while I was writing the novel. Looking at my early attempts, I have to wonder what I was thinking way back when.
The overall goal for any book cover is to sell books. Along the way, I came up with two criteria to meet that goal:
(1) It has to mix in with other covers in the genre but it has to stand out at the same time.
(2) The cover has to convey the real story in a compelling way that connects with the reader.
So with that in mind, let’s look at my earliest attempts to create a cover.
The first two covers I created were of the killdeer bird and they’re pictured here. I like the coloring, especially the green cover. I was lucky enough to find a photo of the killdeer in such a mysterious setting. I mean a thriller and a swamp go hand in hand.
But outside of the atmosphere, it really didn’t mix with other covers in the legal thriller genre with the possible exception of To Kill a Mockingbird. But I’m no Haprer Lee so I wasn’t going to get away with such an abstract cover.
It also didn’t convey the story accurately. Sure, the book is about a type of bird, but more than that it’s about people and their relationship with the bird. It’s a legal thriller after all. The bird is really secondary to the story.
So while the atmosphere of the cover conveyed that it was a thriller to a certain extent, it left too much to the imagination. And when you leave too much to the imagination, you lose the readers you are trying to attract and you risk confusing everyone else. Is it a book about birds? Is it a horror book? Is it literary fiction?
Rejected!
I’ll post more about other rejected covers in the next part of this series.
As a footnote, I submitted the book covers to Pick FU in which 50 people were polled and asked which cover they liked better. They picked the green one, but not by an overwhelming margin. You can read their comments below.
Tom Swyers is an attorney, judge, and the award-winning author of Saving Babe Ruth, the prequel to the David Thomson Lawyer Series. His upcoming legal thriller, The Killdeer Connection, is the first book in the David Thompson Lawyer Series. It’s about a lawyer who must battle the fracking industry before it kills him and his family. Sign up to join the readers group to keep up to date by clicking this link here .