20 years of Magical Covers for Spellfall - Katherine Roberts

My magical cover quest for Spellfall began back in 2000. In those days, publishers took care of everything except the writing. They took my manuscript (this book was originally written on a typewriter!), edited it, proofread, formatted, typeset, commissioned the artwork for the cover and sent the resulting book to the printer. They also did most of the publicity, secured reviews and started my book on its journey from warehouse to bookshop, where it could make its way into the hands of my eager readers... provided they liked the cover. Because, no matter how brilliant your story or your editor or your publicist, most of your wonderful words remain hidden inside that cover, and somehow you have to persuade a potential reader to pick your book (from among the hundreds on offer) and open it to see what lies within.

I loved my publisher's first cover for Spellfall, and thankfully so did my readers because the hardcover sold out and the paperback went on to sell well, too.

SPELLFALL
(Chicken House first edition, 2000)

My American publishers took a different approach to the cover art, which my readers over there must have loved equally well, because my US sales weren't bad either - maybe helped by the fact Spellfall was my debut book in the US, and was featured in their independent bookseller association's Children's 76 as "The book most likely to fill the Harry Potter void this fall" (JK Rowling taking a breather that year). I was even invited to San Francisco to read from my book at the American Libraries' Association conference - and no, I don't mean via Zoom! Author appearances were a lot more fun in those days.

SPELLFALL
(Scholastic US, 2001)

In fact, Spellfall proved so popular it was later re-issued by my UK publisher in 2007 with an updated cover for readers who were too young for the book the first time around (see below). I think Chicken House were rather hoping I would have written a sequel by then, but I was in the middle of a seven book series for Harper Collins at the time and there are only so many decent books an author can write in a year.

Roll on a few more years, and publishing changed forever with the advent of Amazon's KDP... then known as the DTP.

Spellfall was my first backlist title to make it into ebook format on this early version of Amazon's Kindle Direct Platform. My book no longer need be printed in vast quantities to sit in book shops all over the country surrounded by other titles patiently awaiting a reader who liked the cover enough to take it off the shelf. Now, it appears digitally on a screen at thumbnail size (along with hundreds of other little thumbnails) in readers' own homes, awaiting someone who likes the cover enough to click for the 'look inside' sample, and then hopefully click the buy button. Nothing much has changed, except with ebooks the front cover is usually displayed online, rather than just the spine in a bookshop if you don't get special display privileges (and most authors don't). It is also quite a bit smaller, so fancy detail that looks good on a paperback is wasted on an ebook.

When I first published the Kindle ebook of Spellfall in 2011, there were still some traditional paperbacks out there so for continuity Chicken House kindly let me use their 2007 cover, which works quite well at thumbnail size:

SPELLFALL
(Chicken House paperback, 2007)
(Kindle ebook, 2011)

I knew I would need to change this cover when I eventually ventured down the indie print-on-demand route for the paperback - a slightly scary prospect at the time, since digital paperbacks were very much in their infancy and not yet part of the KDP.

So I got out my paintbox and attempted an indie cover for Spellfall, which I later tweaked with varying degrees of success. Not all of these efforts made it to publication, mainly because I am never 100% happy with my own artwork and struggled with fonts and design on my old computer with its outdated software. Also, they mostly turned out a bit too young for the story. Here are a few of my early efforts.

Then I complicated things by writing a sequel Spell Spring... only about 10 years too late (sorry, Chicken House!) Now I didn't merely need a magical cover for Spellfall; I needed two magical covers that would look part of the same series and series covers are a whole new design game.

It was back to the drawing/painting board, by which time I had discovered the amazing free design software canva.com, which has a library of free images plus a whole lot more you can use in your designs for just $1 each provided you are not printing millions of copies... and so far, with my indie titles, this is not a problem (if it were a problem, I would probably be paying someone else to design my covers for me!)

But back to the real world. Rejecting my own artwork in favour of someone else's at Canva, I came up with:

While I still rather like Canva's unicorn artwork for Spellfall, there wasn't a suitable equivalent available at the time for Spell Spring that would make both books look like part of the same series... and the pink flying horse/unicorn (although actually a small part of the plot) looks much too girly and young for the story, rather like my own initial efforts did. Also, it's likely a third book (Spell Summer) will at some point be ready for publication, and I needed a design that would future-proof the series.

So it was back to my own artwork. With Createspace now providing a decent digital platform for indie paperbacks, it was also time to get brave and tackle the print-on-demand paperback. My next project was to design two wraparound covers using my own artwork at Canva.

SPELLFALL
(print-on-demand paperback, 2016)

SPELL SPRING
(print-on-demand paperback, 2016)

When both Createpace and I were happy with my print formatting (a whole new learning curve), I re-published both books with the new covers, updated them on the KDP for Kindle, pushed the ebooks out through Draft2Digital.com for the main epub stores, and then I took a breather. My two Earthaven books were out there and selling (slowly) in both paperback and ebook format (Kindle and epub). I had several other backlist books to rescue from the out-of-print scrapheap, and yet more indie covers to design for these, which would keep me busy for a while.

Roll on another few years, and my entire backlist is now available as both ebooks and print-on-demand paperbacks in all the main digital stores. Amazon also acquired Createspace and merged it with their KDP, making the whole process smoother and easier. When I finally emerged from my cover designing storm, I realised that I had (a) learned a few things along the way about cover design, and (b) unwittingly created an author 'look' for my books consisting of my own artwork inside a circle against a suitable background from Canva's collection. The only books not quite following this new look were Spellfall and Spell Spring.

So I cropped my latest artwork for the series, hopped back into Canva, and came out with two fresh covers for 2023:

SPELLFALL
* Kindle ebook only 99p *

SPELL SPRING
* Kindle ebook only 99p *

To celebrate their magical new covers, both my Earthaven ebooks are on special offer for only 99p until 1st March.

*

Katherine Roberts writes fantasy and historical fiction for young readers.

Her debut fantasy novel Song Quest (Element Books 1999) was published in hardcover and paperback and won the UK's inaugural Branford Boase Award in 2000.

Her latest historical novel The Horse Who Would Be Emperor was published in digital format (ebook and print-on-demand paperback) by the Electric Unicorn Press in 2021.

Find out more at www.katherineroberts.co.uk