All about book covers

You can’t judge a book by its cover. That is a true statement, but a bad book cover can turn readers away before they open a single page. For the past several weeks I have been heavily involved in creating a book cover for my upcoming book I Will Ruin You. I’m lucky that I have a publisher who involved me in this important step toward publication. After some back and forth with the publisher and a couple of graphic designers, as well as two different book cover surveys, I’m pleased to announce that the publisher and I have agreed on a cover for I Will Ruin You.

I like the cover because there is a story behind the elements on the cover that are revealed as the reader progresses through the book. The flames have a double meaning. For one, fire played a role in the murders. Secondly, the flames are a metaphor for burning the place down, or in this case, destroying one man’s career and life. The pitch-black dark background is a reference to when a portion of this crime was committed.

Getting to this point was no easy process. There are many things to consider when deciding on a cover: How will the cover look when reduced to thumbnail size? Can you reformat the cover for use on the audiobook? Does the cover grab your attention? In the image gallery below, you will see some of the cover concepts we considered before deciding on the cover above.

In addition to the covers in the above gallery, I used AI to generate a few cover concepts. You will notice that all of these AI-generated cover concepts have words misspelled or jumbled up. I could have corrected that with multiple iterations, but I was only interested in the concept.

The other news I have to report is that we have an official publication date of March 26, 2024. You’ll be able to pre-order a few weeks ahead of that date. Also, we’re going to do our best to get some giveaway copies out on Goodreads.