A new cover

After posting my old draft cover for my Scottish novella (the girl in tartan) I know a lot of people here commented that they liked it, as, obviously, I did too, but I also got several private emails from readers who disliked it and explained why. As well, several of my writer friends disliked it. Some didn’t like “the boob factor” but the main criticism was that they thought it didn’t reflect my brand properly — and that, I suspect, was true.

I don’t often think of “my brand” — I just write what I write — but I know that branding is very important, especially in these days when so many more books are being published. It’s harder to stand out.

So I consulted Kim Killion, who designed the cover for The Christmas Bride. I thought maybe she could reduce the boob exposure, but she said much the same as my writer friends, and added that the headless girl covers were a bit old fashioned now.

So I asked her to design a new cover for The Laird’s Bride. I showed her some images that I thought might reflect the story — I’d made a collage for it many years ago.  

I actually wrote the extended story many years ago as well. In fact it was sitting on the kindle KDP site, ready to be uploaded back in 2014. But that was when my new contract landed, saying I couldn’t self publish anything longer than 30,000 words, and this story was now well over 40,000 words.

So, having expanded it, I would now have to reduce it, and I couldn’t face doing that, so I just left it there. Until this year.  My agent told me that given the long time between my last book  (The Rake’s Daughter) and the next one (The Heiress’s Daughter — May 2024) I could publish this one. 

And here it is. I love it. 

It’s not up for pre-order yet, but I’ll let people here know as soon as it is. I’m also getting a paperback version made, and I want to have both e-book and paperback ready at the same time. And if you read the previous post you’ll understand why it’s taking a bit longer than I’d hoped.

In the meantime, what do you think of the new cover?