Bite Sized Picture Book Process - Part 3

Designing a cover

Welcome, welcome, come on in. I made us a den under my desk, get yourself a cushion and coorie in*. We’re gonna be talking about the picture book making process: more specifically covers!

We are looking at how I designed the cover for my new book Smelly Peggy.

If you missed the first couple in this Bite Sized Picture Book Process series, here they are: (I made them both free for everyone now 😃)

*the Scotts way of saying snuggle in, get yourself comfy.

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Sketch by my editor, and the final cover

So, you might remember we have talked about picture book covers before in the Pencil Pals den. Someone sent me this excellent question about which way the character should face on your cover. I decided to open up that post and make it free for everyone, here it is 👇

The cover for Smelly Peggy came quite easily, when I say easily, I mean not too much faffing or over-thinking. It was a nice simple one.

At what stage do you make the cover?

I like to make the cover artwork last, it’s the final job after the inside artwork is complete.

Sometimes publishers push for it to be made really early, before the inside artwork, so that they can trail it in their sales catalogues and on Amazon. But I always resist that. It is much esier to make a brilliant cover at the end, when you know the book inside out: you have drawn the characters a gazillion times and you have a palette that you know works. The danger of making the cover too early is that the palette or the characters change slightly once you start the final artwork.

Anyway, Walker Books are the masters of book covers, they really know their stuff and didn't ask for the cover artwork first.

Smelly Peggy cover decisions

We decided that the relationship between Pie and Peggy was the main deal with this book: Girl, smelly dog, best friends, the end. I promise the story is a LOT better than that 😂 but you know what I mean, the cover had to say it all nice and succinctly.

And in the post I linked above we talked about which way your character should face on a picture book cover: out at the reader, facing left to right (direction of travel to lead us to open the book), face to face with another character, but never (or hardly ever) right to left because it leads the eye towards the spine rather than the book opening.

So at a meeting in Edinburgh, when my art director and editor (Deirdre McDermott and Maria Tunney) were up here for - I want to say - the Edinburgh Book Festival? - we met for a quick cuppa and a chat about the book.