Do you judge a book by its cover?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Right?  We have had such a difficult time selecting the cover for our book.  Way more frustrating than writing it.

Of course you ask for opinions … and you get them.  All favouring a different one.

Before all this started I actually went on a fishing expedition and had gone to Chapters to look at and check out the current covers for books.   Most have bright coloured jackets and words. No photos.

And I can tell you why.  It is near impossible to find a photo that accurately depicts

a) what your book is about or

b) who you want to pick it up and buy it.

I know because we tried.  We really tried.  Too young. Too old. Not diverse enough. Too diverse.  Looks depressing and this is a book about improving your life.

We had one with a gorgeous child on the cover but that bubble was quickly burst when both my daughters said that it looked like a parenting book and they wouldn’t buy it.

We tried all sorts - flowers, swans, the sea, just an arm reaching out, a girl at the subway - you name it. Then when we gave up on that, we started to explore designs, backgrounds but that raised the question – what colour? 

We had one that was pinkish – too girly was the conclusion.  We tried turquoise  but actually it is a popular colour for book covers these days and we wanted our book to stand out. So that was nixed.

Eventually we settled on a cover, but next… what are the tag lines.  Another round of deliberation.  Each word carried a certain weight, a certain nuance.

So here is the latest favourite.  What do you think?  And if you don’t like it… I don’t want to know.  This was way too painful a process to start over and repeat.  Besides, the book is weaving its way to be printed as we speak.