BooksChatter: ✉ Angelbound: Angelbound Origins [1]

Today author Christina Bauer takes over our blog to tell us about her novel, Angelbound (first published 17 December 2013, this edition 30 December 2016, Monster House Books LLC, 14 hrs and 48 mins unabridged), a Young Adult Fantasy Romance, book one of Angelbound Origins series, now available as and Audiobook!

|| Synopsis || Trailer + Audio Preview || The Series || Author Guest Post || About the Author || Giveaway & Tour Stops ||

Making the cover for my book ANGELBOUND

My book, ANGELBOUND, tells the story of a part demon girl who falls in love with a part angel prince. If you aren’t familiar with the book, there’s a quick trailer right here. In any case, I’m now doing an author tour to celebrate the launch of ANGELBOUND as an audiobook on Audible and iTunes, and I’ve been asked to share something unique about my book by the awesome folks at BooksChatter.

I thought about it, and I often get questions on how I create my covers, so I’m sharing a “behind the scenes” look at how one is made... hope you enjoy it!

Step One: Provide Direction to the Artist

The first step with a cover is to provide context and direction to our digital artist. At MHB, we are all about PowerPoint. (Okay, mostly I am all about PowerPoint and everyone goes along to humor me :-) For Angelbound, I created a PPT with directions for the cover and then shared it with the team. This part of the process can take a while. For example, the PPT for Portia took about 10 tries before it ever went to the artist.

Step Two: Choose Stock Art

In the second step, the artist sends us back some photos that we can purchase the official rights to use commercially. This process is called purchasing Stock Art. In this case, the artist started by sending me ideas for the Myla character. These came from a web site called Deviant Art, which is a great source for unique stock photos. There are larger stock houses out there too, like Getty.

Here were my options for Myla:

In this case, I liked the top half of the last model and the bottom half of the first. So, I asked the artist to 'Frankenstein' them together (and yes, I use Frankenstein as a verb all the time!) I also got a range of swords to choose from that Myla could hold in her hand. Once I chose a sword and an arena background, I was good to go onto the next step.

Step Three: The Mock-Up

After the stock art was chosen, I got a rough mock-up of the cover. At this stage, there's no blending, shading, or lighting, just the general placement of the elements. Sometimes, this is where I realize that the PowerPoint just isn't working. That's when I have to go back to square one and redo the initial concept.

In the case of the Angelbound cover, it all came together pretty quickly:

From here, I gave the artist a bunch of notes, like asking her to:

Smooth out the catsuit
Jazz up the hair
Make the sky Purgatory-gray
Pump up her shoulder muscles

These tweaks go back and forth for awhile until the art is final. Once I give the big a-okay, the file goes off to a graphic designer (that's a different skill set than a digital artist). The designer adds the text and—VOILA!—I have a final cover!

Step Four: Reveal the Final Cover!

I often work with a tour company like XPresso to help me get the word out about my new cover. They have relationships with the blogger community and can help make sure that everyone gets the files they need and all that good stuff.

So that's it... a sample cover from start to finish! Thanks so much for taking a look at how ANGELBOUND was made.

By Christina Bauer