Tag: writing

This post is a fol­low-up to a pri­or post in my series about self-pub­lish­ing my debut nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, where I detailed the process of find­ing an artist to design the book’s cov­er. The process was both excit­ing and stress­ful as the cov­er is pos­si­bly the most crit­i­cal ele­ment of a book out­side of the descrip­tion. My nov­el must vis­i­bly shine over oth­ers pub­lished by big hous­es with hefty bud­gets and stun­ning, pro­fes­sion­al­ly designed covers.

To fur­ther fuel my anx­i­ety, this was my first expe­ri­ence work­ing with a free­lancer in any capac­i­ty. I did­n’t know the cost of such a ser­vice. Nei­ther how the process worked, or what would hap­pen if I ulti­mate­ly did­n’t like the design. Writ­ing this book has been a long and ardu­ous jour­ney, and I was intent to not screw it up this far in. The stakes (and my blood pres­sure) had nev­er been higher.

I spent untold hours brows­ing through free­lanc­ing sites until I final­ly stum­bled upon Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci on Reedsy, an online plat­form that con­nects authors and pub­lish­ing free­lancers. It took my dumb self a while to real­ize I had found a leg­end in the world of book cov­er design. Sum­ma­riz­ing his impres­sive tra­jec­to­ry is not an easy task, so I’ll bor­row his bio from his web­site (and tweak it slightly). 

Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci is an award-win­ning artist based in Lon­don, Unit­ed King­dom. He has illus­trat­ed hun­dreds of fan­ta­sy, crime, hor­ror, his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, and sci­ence fic­tion pub­li­ca­tions across the globe com­mis­sioned by major pub­lish­ers main­ly through­out Europe and the USA. Best-sell­ing authors includ­ing Anne Rice, Robin Hobb, Isaac Asi­mov, Mario Puzo, H.G. Wells, Ursu­la K. Le Guin, Andrzej Sap­kows­ki, William Gib­son, Steven Erik­son, Robert Louis Steven­son, and J.G. Bal­lard, to name a few, show­case Ale­jan­dro’s illus­tra­tions in their books. He’s also known for design­ing the orig­i­nal cov­ers of The Witch­er series.

With such a track record, you might guess that the quote for his design ser­vices was very much at the top end of my bud­get. And you’d be cor­rect. How­ev­er, after wit­ness­ing Ale­jan­dro’s stun­ning art, I was deter­mined to work with him. In the end, I signed him up, con­fi­dent my new cov­er would come out spec­tac­u­lar­ly and win over the eyes of prospec­tive read­ers. This post recounts my expe­ri­ence work­ing with this award-win­ning illustrator.

The project and preliminary discussions

Before I could work with Ale­jan­dro, Reedsy asked me for my book’s basic info: title, sub­ti­tle, genre, and char­ac­ters. I also attached the orig­i­nal, first-con­cept cov­er of GOLIATH FALLEN as a ref­er­ence in the brief. Once the project start­ed, the site allowed me to mes­sage Ale­jan­dro direct­ly in order to dis­cuss more specifics.

I had a vision for this cov­er from the get-go, which I detailed as much as pos­si­ble in order to give him bet­ter guid­ance. To be clear, this was­n’t under any cir­cum­stances an attempt to seize cre­ative con­trol from him; it would be ludi­crous to hire a stel­lar artist only to have them do it my way. I sim­ply want­ed to pro­vide an over­ar­ch­ing direc­tion to fol­low. We talked about my vision, but I also made it super clear to take many of my ideas with a big grain of salt.

My first idea was to design some­thing along the lines of my orig­i­nal cov­er. In my hum­ble opin­ion, it does a good job cap­tur­ing the mood of my sto­ry: iso­la­tion, destruc­tion, and chaos. How­ev­er, giv­en that I had a pro­fes­sion­al now, I was open to tak­ing the design in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion. At this stage, design­ing some­thing sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal cov­er would be a fruit­less endeav­or. I want­ed to see what was pos­si­ble to real­ly have GOLIATH FALLEN stand out on the shelves.

My sec­ond idea for the design was moti­vat­ed by feed­back from my beta read­ers. They often com­ment­ed that their favorite char­ac­ter from my book was Izzy Clarke, a tena­cious 12-year-old girl who dwells with her father in the wreck­age of the star­ship Goliath. At the begin­ning of the sec­ond act, Izzy con­fronts a howler, a vicious alien crea­ture resem­bling a tailed rep­til­ian bull. In imag­in­ing that scene, I always pic­tured some­thing akin to the “Fear­less Girl” and “Charg­ing Bull” sculp­tures near New York’s Wall Street. For the cov­er, I thought it would be a great visu­al to have Izzy and the howler stand­ing off in a sim­i­lar fash­ion with the post-apoc­a­lyp­tic inte­ri­or of the Goliath in the background.

When I pre­sent­ed both ideas to Ale­jan­dro, he advised that we go with the sec­ond one since it’ll allow us to show­case the char­ac­ters more effec­tive­ly. At this stage, we were just start­ing pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions before Ale­jan­dro got to work on the cov­er a month lat­er (at my request).

Sketching the general direction of the book cover design

Once we set­tled on a gen­er­al direc­tion, I decid­ed to devel­op a very rough sketch to ensure Ale­jan­dro and I had a com­plete mutu­al agree­ment on the path we were tak­ing with the design. I found it impor­tant to set this cre­ative direc­tion upfront because Alejandro’s design would­n’t com­prise a com­po­si­tion of stock assets or images but a dig­i­tal col­lage mix­ing pho­tos, tex­tures, and dig­i­tal paint­ing. All this to say that if changes were required once the art­work was done, he would have to redo the entire thing (or at least a good por­tion of it).

In ret­ro­spect, I end­ed up com­plete­ly over­do­ing the sketch. I added the ele­ments that I con­sid­ered to be cen­tral to the sto­ry: the main char­ac­ters, the crea­tures, and the set­ting. In the fore­ground, we have Izzy con­fronting not one but two howlers (like the actu­al scene in the book). There’s fire and rub­ble on the sides and behind the sil­hou­ettes of lurk­ers, which are zom­bie-like crea­tures. Final­ly, in the back­ground, we have a clas­sic float­ing-heads arrange­ment fea­tur­ing the three main char­ac­ters: Izzy, her father, Nate, and sci­en­tist Lucas Sund­berg all in space­suits for some reason.

While Ale­jan­dro will ulti­mate­ly be the cre­ative direc­tor, these char­ac­ters, crea­tures, set­ting, and oth­er sto­ry ele­ments are described in a cer­tain way in the book that the final cov­er design will have to fol­low. For this rea­son, in addi­tion to the sketch, I wrote a brief con­tain­ing descrip­tions and ref­er­ence images. I uploaded every­thing to Reedsy and sent it over to him for com­ment. All along, I felt like maybe I was get­ting too much in the way of his cre­ative process. I didn’t want to sti­fle him. How­ev­er, once he replied, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised by how recep­tive he was.

Refining the book cover design

A pro­fes­sion­al artist with tons of expe­ri­ence doesn’t only pro­vide you with a high-qual­i­ty book cov­er. They can also chis­el your vision into some­thing that can tru­ly suc­ceed in the mar­ket. Ale­jan­dro has designed stun­ning cov­ers for dozens of suc­cess­ful books. Nat­u­ral­ly, he knows this indus­try far bet­ter than I do. His ver­dict on my sketch was that it was too busy and looked like a cliché movie poster. He is very polite and pro­fes­sion­al, so he did­n’t exact­ly use those words, but, in essence, that was his feed­back. And, hon­est­ly, I could­n’t agree more.

Amongst a dozen oth­er things, I had for­got­ten to leave space for the book title. And also, the sub­ti­tle, and my own name as the author. It would appear to me (and any­one half awake) that these are cru­cial ele­ments in a book cov­er. With my sketch, if we added any let­ter­ing at the top, it would have cov­ered the back­ground char­ac­ters entire­ly. What was I thinking?

Ale­jan­dro end­ed up sug­gest­ing a more sim­pli­fied com­po­si­tion with only Izzy fac­ing the howler. The scene itself is pret­ty pow­er­ful already and far more intrigu­ing than a bunch of float­ing heads. This would also be eas­i­er on the viewer’s eyes and leave plen­ty of room to play with lettering.

The book cover design reveal (and iterations)

Once we visu­al­ly com­mit­ted to the direc­tion, it was time for Ale­jan­dro to start the hard work of illus­trat­ing the book cov­er design. At this stage, my anx­i­ety was cer­tain­ly get­ting the best of me. I was con­fi­dent in Ale­jan­dro and his incred­i­ble skills, but I’d been work­ing on this book for six long years, and this was a big moment. On top of all that, Ale­jan­dro would have the cov­er ready in just one week. One week! My gosh… stop­ping to catch a breath is not an option in the self-pub­lish­ing world.

First iteration

As expect­ed, the fol­low­ing week flew by. Before I knew it, I had Ale­jan­dro back in my inbox with the first iter­a­tion of my book’s cov­er design. I had just wok­en up (Ale­jan­dro is sev­en hours ahead of me), and Reedsy’s noti­fi­ca­tion shot my heart rate up to a thou­sand. I couldn’t bring myself to open the attached image until lat­er in the day since I need­ed time to men­tal­ly pre­pare myself for this moment. But, at last, when I gath­ered the courage, I was final­ly able to fath­om the true mag­ni­tude of Alejandro’s talent.

I sim­ply can­not describe what I felt when I first saw this book cov­er design (which doesn’t speak too well of me as a writer but bear with me here). It was as if Ale­jan­dro had reached into my brain and pulled Izzy out of it and put her on the page. Also, he was absolute­ly right; hav­ing only the scene of Izzy fac­ing the crea­ture makes the visu­al come alive. It’s a more sound, well-bal­anced, and provoca­tive design.

After get­ting over the ini­tial shock, I did the same thing I always do with a com­plet­ed man­u­script: I put the cov­er away for a bit with the inten­tion to revis­it it lat­er with a cool­er head. That way, I would see it with a fresh perspective.

The next day, I gave the cov­er a clos­er inspec­tion. I noticed a few minor details that need­ed some work, like the title font being a bit too thin and Izzy miss­ing her char­ac­ter­is­tic back­pack. But, what wor­ried me the most was the crea­ture design; it wasn’t accu­rate to how they’re described in the book. Howlers are sim­i­lar to the scream­ing bear from Anni­hi­la­tion but more mus­cu­lar and thin­ner for faster move­ment. My anx­i­ety kicked back in just at the thought of Ale­jan­dro hav­ing to redraw the crea­ture. I felt like that annoy­ing cus­tomer (and no one wants to be that guy).

Any­way, if I was going to ask Ale­jan­dro to rework the cov­er, I would do my best to com­mu­ni­cate the changes to avoid giv­ing him more work than nec­es­sary. In the end, it’s a col­lab­o­ra­tion. The eas­i­er I make his job, the bet­ter the final prod­uct will be and the more it will align clos­er to my vision. And so, I took the lib­er­ty to anno­tate his cover.

In my response to Ale­jan­dro, I detailed the request­ed changes to the crea­ture as thor­ough­ly as I could. Feel­ing like the most annoy­ing per­son in the world, I uploaded every­thing and hit send.

He answered the next day, leav­ing me once again speech­less with how recep­tive he was. We dis­cussed the crea­ture design and the request­ed changes a bit more, and he asked for a few addi­tion­al days to com­plete the new design. That lev­el of qual­i­ty was worth wait­ing for. He could have tak­en the whole month for all I cared.

Second iteration

About a week went by before Ale­jan­dro returned an updat­ed design. For me, it felt like two days at most—he works fast, and I couldn’t even bear it. Again, I need­ed to take a few hours before view­ing the new design. If I was stoked with the first ver­sion, this new one had me twice as pumped.

From my per­spec­tive, the addi­tion of the fire in this new design ben­e­fit­ed the over­all com­po­si­tion by revving up the sense of urgency. It also helped bet­ter ori­ent the viewer’s atten­tion. With the low­er por­tion now more strik­ing, Izzy becomes the pri­ma­ry focus. We then have the title and, last­ly, the crea­ture. Izzy’s back­pack is also in there, which is the rea­son she’s fac­ing that crea­ture in the first place. In the nov­el, she goes out on a sup­ply run where she found it and gets ambushed by howlers.

As for the let­ter­ing, the book title now looks more robust, and the sub­ti­tle font com­ple­ments the visu­al theme bet­ter. The over­all design looks more “sci-fi”. Before we start­ed the project, Ale­jan­dro point­ed out that although his spe­cial­ty was fan­ta­sy cov­ers, he would try his best to design a sci-fi one. How­ev­er, one of the main rea­sons I picked him for this job is that my book is full of crea­tures and oth­er “fan­tas­ti­cal” sci-fi ele­ments, so I need­ed some­one with expe­ri­ence ren­der­ing such onto a canvas.

At last, we have the howler in the back­ground, now com­plete­ly redesigned. I had request­ed Ale­jan­dro to leave the long tail, make the eyes brighter, and change the body from some­thing resem­bling an insect to a more bull-like crea­ture. How­ev­er, while I was as stoked for this book cov­er design as ever, some­thing still did­n’t feel right. The howler’s face was per­fect, but its pos­ture and body type still did­n’t resem­ble my idea of a howler. For starters, they’re not as bulky. They’re huge and heavy but also sneaky, prowl­ing in the dark­ness around their vic­tims. The rest of the cov­er was per­fect, but the crea­ture still need­ed work.

I real­ized I would have to request that Ale­jan­dro make addi­tion­al changes, and the dread start­ed to con­sume my soul. In any case, my inten­tion was to reach out to him, and if redo­ing the howler was too much work, then I would at least have this incred­i­ble cov­er that I could eas­i­ly use. Like the last time, I anno­tat­ed the cov­er design instead of just bom­bard­ing him with a list of changes. After all, that approach had worked well before.

Once again, I felt like I was seiz­ing cre­ative con­trol, but there wasn’t real­ly a way around it as my howlers have a very spe­cif­ic look. I had to make my vision clear. I also thought that a prowl­ing lion pose would make the crea­ture appear more men­ac­ing. If I had to pick an icon­ic scene from my book, this would be it! I want­ed the cov­er to accu­rate­ly bring it to life.

And so, while Ale­jan­dro expressed that redraw­ing the crea­ture was a great deal of work, he was com­mit­ted to full cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. At this point, it felt more like he was chal­leng­ing him­self to nail down the howler design. With­out fur­ther com­ment, he reced­ed back into his stu­dio to redo the cov­er. This man seri­ous­ly is a god­send. For my first time work­ing with a free­lancer, this has been an exceed­ing­ly sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence. I was con­fi­dent in Alejandro’s skills and that the next iter­a­tion would be perfect.

Third (and final) iteration

Alejandro’s next deliv­ery was my def­i­n­i­tion of per­fec­tion. I hon­est­ly have no words to this day to describe how impressed I am with this cov­er. All I can say is that a big smile drew on my sil­ly face when I first laid eyes on it. Take a look for your­self at Goliath Fallen’s third and final cover:

One word comes to mind when I see this ver­sion of the howler: men­ac­ing. The long tail, the scaled skin, the heavy but nim­ble-look­ing body, the ter­ri­fy­ing four-eyed face with blood drip­ping down a mouth full of fangs—this is exact­ly what howlers look like. How the heck will Izzy be able to get out of this? That’s pre­cise­ly the ques­tion I want to evoke in the read­ers’ minds. 

Just look­ing at this cov­er, I com­plete­ly for­got about how much it cost. I was extreme­ly sat­is­fied, and, more­over, I was glad to know that Ale­jan­dro was as well. I’ll just quote him here:

This is one of my favourite sci fi book cov­ers I made this year, by the way.

I felt ter­ri­ble about mak­ing him redo the cov­er so many times, but this com­ment reas­sured me. We were a team, and we both need­ed to be sat­is­fied with the end prod­uct. That’s an impor­tant take­away I got from all of this (aside from a kick­ass cov­er I can’t wait to use everywhere).

Final thoughts

Design­ing the book cov­er for my debut nov­el, GOLIATH FALLEN, has been one of the most excit­ing expe­ri­ences I’ve had to date. Just imag­in­ing my book sit­ting there on shelves with this incred­i­ble cov­er sends chills down my spine. I was incred­i­bly lucky to get to work with some­body as tal­ent­ed, pro­fes­sion­al, and com­mit­ted as Ale­jan­dro Coluc­ci. I can’t thank him enough for all his hard work and end­less patience. Hope­ful­ly, this hum­ble piece serves as a spe­cial, very well-deserved “thank you.”

As a final note, if you’re look­ing for an incred­i­ble design­er to bring your fan­ta­sy or sci-fi book cov­er to life, don’t hes­i­tate to reach Ale­jan­dro over on Reedsy or on his web­site. Let my new, blaz­ing-hot cov­er be a tes­ti­mo­ny to his end­less tal­ent. If any­thing, Ale­jan­dro has left the bar impos­si­bly high, and I can’t imag­ine myself work­ing with any­body else for future writ­ing projects.

I hope you enjoyed read­ing through the process of work­ing with a free­lancer to design my book cov­er. For me, find­ing the right design­er to work with was imper­a­tive, and I’d be curi­ous to know if any oth­er authors out there found that to be true as well. Let me know in the com­ments below. I’d also love to hear your thoughts on the new book cov­er design too. And, as always, if you have any spe­cif­ic ques­tions, please feel free to reach out.

Before we part, I’ll leave you with a ren­der­ing of how Goliath Fallen’s paper­back will appear in its full form. I’m gid­dy with excite­ment over it, and I just can’t not share it!

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