Cover Me, Part Two

As promised, the The Pain Merchants cover.


And here's the full jacket all spread out. (They took that back cover copy from my website! For some weird reason I find that really cool.)


As I mentioned last week, the cover process for the UK version went a little differently than the US one. I wasn't included, except for one tiny little detail. My lovely UK editor said the design team wanted to do something iconic, and asked if the Healer's League had a logo. I said no, but told her I could whip something up if she'd like.

I gave her five simple black and white logo designs. Nothing fancy, as I knew her art department would work their magic and make it look all nifty cool. For funsies, here they are:

It's easy to see which one they went with, and how the others influenced their final design. They took this basic line art and turned it into a gold and enameled-looking image. To make the cover fit the story, I added a line that described the Healer's League pin into the story.

The two covers have a lot of similarities, such as the idea of the hands, the swirly stars and the blue (which is the color of the magic metal, pynvium, in the book). But they're also quite different. The Pain Merchants has an edgier look, and I love how the font style captures the Byzantine feel I based the architecture of the world on. You see some of that in The Shifter cover with the city along the bottom. I think they're both great, though my husband likes the UK version better--I wonder if he's secretly British?

Here they are side by side for easy comparison:

I find it fascinating how the same story is represented in two different cultures.

For another look at covers across the pond, my agent did a post a while back.