As promised, (though many of you have already seen this if you’re on Facebook or Twitter or checked my books page) but I can now share Bathsheba’s cover with you! Isn’t she gorgeous? I feel like a proud mama bragging on one of her kids. 🙂 Though in truth, the praise goes to Revell for their great cover designs. I could not ask for a better team!
Some people have asked me about how the cover is put together – where do they get the models, etc. I don’t know how all publishers do this, but I’ll try to explain how they’ve handled mine.
When an author’s book moves through the publishing process, she is sent a Titling Questionnaire. In that list of questions, which includes much more than suggested titles, is a question asking for cover design suggestions. This is where my Idea Boards (see earlier blog posts) come in handy because when I make my Idea Boards, I search for photos of my characters. For David’s wives, I searched Google for Jewish actresses.
When I find one who comes close to what I picture, I print it, cut it out, and paste it on my board. I also keep a .jpg file of it on my computer and when that Titling Questionnaire comes through, I paste it in the body of the document.
When the design team starts looking for stock photos for the cover, they have that picture as a guide. Each time they have either found someone very similar, or found a model that fits my character even better than my choice.
As far as I know, models for Michal and Abigail were stock photos with new costumes set in place. For Bathsheba, things were different. At first, I was sent two different poses of a model – stock photos they thought to use. I made a few suggestions on how I would like to see them tweaked and told them which one I liked best. Then I waited. But apparently, those photos didn’t work out to do what they’d hoped, so they started over and I think they chose a live model this time. They sent me preliminary photos, which I thought were stock, but when they said they could pose her differently, lengthen her hair, and make other changes I envisioned, I realized they must be doing an actual photo shoot. I never asked for sure, so don’t quote me on this, but I think so. 🙂 Either that or they did a lot of work in Photoshop!
After the pose was taken, I got to see the cover again only without the palace in the background. That’s when the design artist does his magic. When the final cover was sent to me, I was ecstatic. I thought Michal was awesome! And when they did Abigail, I loved it just as much. But Bathsheba – wow! I hope my design team stays the same for all my books. They do fantastic work!
Now I hope the quality of the story fits the cover. 🙂 I love this book and hope my readers will fall in love with David and his wives, will see them in a fresh light, and realize God’s love and mercy evident on every page. The book releases March 1, 2011. The website pages on The Wives of King David website will be available in November 2010 where you can read a sample chapter and download Bible study and Book Club questions – and I’ll be working on a Facebook page too.
In the meantime, you can pre-order the book on Amazon, which means as soon as it is available, they will ship it. Sometimes they get the book sooner than it’s scheduled release. To all my readers – thank you for your patience. And thanks for letting me share this journey with you!
