On Grace Cover Reveal

I am over the moon about the cover for On Grace. I think it represents the book perfectly. First, below, an announcement about the exclusive cover reveal and giveaway on 5MinutesForBooks.com and then the backstory of how we actually chose the cover for On Grace…

Cover Reveal on 5MinutesForBooks.com:
My amazing publicists at BookSparksPR arranged for On Grace to have its official cover reveal announcement on this great website that’s part of 5MinutesForMom, and Jennifer Donovan nailed it! I love how she wrote, “When I see this

[cover], I think of that old commercial that means so much more to me now that I’m a mom in her 40’s: ‘Calgon, take me away.’ I see serenity, a woman making time for herself and embracing this time in her life.” Thanks Jennifer! Grace is definitely trying to do all of those things. It’s a journey for us all! 5MinutesForBooks is also running a giveaway of an advanced review copy and a Starbucks gift card through March 4, so go there now.

Choosing the Cover
This had to have been one of the most fun things I’ve gotten to do in this whole adventure of book publishing. I worked very closely with Crystal Patriarche, the founder of SparkPress, the imprint that is publishing On Grace, and designer extraordinaire Julie Metz. First I created a brief that explained what I hoped the cover would convey, showed examples of other book covers that I love along with book covers I love less (how’s that for diplomatic), etc.

Then the photo research began. Crystal and Julie sent me loads of images. This is the beauty of working with a publisher like SparkPress. Most authors don’t have a say in their cover. At all. I had the opportunity to provide input every step of the way. We went through several rounds of images. It was difficult to initially decide what should be on the cover: Grace herself? An image that would represent an event or concept from the book? That one image would have to communicate everything I wanted my book to convey because, as we all know, people do judge books by their covers. Here are some of the preliminary cover mockups we considered:

The theme of the 40^th birthday:

The birthday luncheon scene:

Ultimately, I decided that I wanted the cover to show Grace, the woman. On Grace is so much more about Grace as a person and her evolution and less about her birthday or one event from the book. Julie found amazing images of women and when I opened the email with the images, I got so excited because I knew we were heading in the right direction. I’m holding back the two runners up in this category because I might use one of them as the cover image for my next book! Here are a couple of the ladies who didn’t end up being Grace:

When I saw the image that would ultimately become the cover, I had butterflies in my stomach. I knew it was “the one!” Here’s what I wrote to Crystal and Julie to tell them I had chosen this image: “I LOVELOVE the bathtub. Colors are perfect. That is Grace and that is her house. And she’s looking toward her future, thinking, contemplating, confident. Yum.” And, drumroll, here it is. Ta da…